Getting Myself Into Trouble at Blue Valley

Time off during the Summertime is few and far between in the hospitality industry. The small town I was raised in thrives during the summer months when families vacation to these mountains of mine, and so one has to get while the getting is good. That being said, I found myself with a Wednesday all to myself a few weeks back, and I desperately needed to go somewhere new.

New is what Blue Valley offered. Established as an “Experimental Forest” in 1964, this densely forested valley has provided researchers with the opportunity to study pristine white pine forests (one of the most common Appalachian communities) for over fifty years now. But I’m not a researcher, I’m an adventurer, and so adventuring is what I was looking to do. "

A friend showed me videos of him and others repelling into a collapsed mine hidden deep in the thicket of the valley along with other interesting locales and tons of fun stories of their exploits, so I figured it was about time I went and wrote some tales of my own.

I started by loading my camera gear into my bag taking off towards the Pickleseimer Rock House. The path towards the waterfall provides an interesting contrast as you pass through dark woods and into a fully exposed field with grass as tall as hikers and shortly thereafter pressing through dense laurel tunnels. It quite literally felt like walking through worlds in mere minutes. I imagine what it was like before the trails were established. I thought about how hard the terrain would have been to navigate with the swaths of bushwhacking that needed to be done to press on, and here I was just strolling on with nothing to concern myself with but the threat of snakes in the grass.

I stayed at Pickleseimer for about an hour, just kind of taking in the space and shooting as much as I could considering the phone attachment to my tripod managed to break off while I was crawling through the laurels. Afterwords I packed up and made my way down to an unnamed waterfall my friend and Blue Valley veteran had suggested.

The directions were simple enough. “Then before or after that get back in your car and pull over at a spot… get out and listen for a waterfall and try to find it.” Challenge accepted.

About forty yards after the parking for Pickleseimer was a small pulloff big enough for one car. You could instantly hear the faint rush of water down in the valley, and with a little detective work one could find a trailhead buried in branches. I took off down the way excited to reply to my friend with pictures of his hidden waterfall, and I felt it getting louder and louder as I walked down the trail.

I approached the final embankment that would lead me down to the river. It was a steep descent accented by mountain laurels that I planned to use as rungs on a mountain-sized ladder which would allow me to access the waterfall. I started descending, hearing the water rage at full capacity below, and that’s when I felt my boot sink… “Shit.”

Sitting between two of my laurel ladder rungs was a ground hornets nest, and I found myself ankle-deep in their home. My first round of punishment came in the form of one of the nest’s soldiers crawling inside my hat and attacking the back of my head while another homed in on my throat. I felt the burn creeping in immediately on the heels of the stinging, and I began scrambling back up the steep embankment to the main trail. I was grabbing laurel branches in each hand and catapulting myself up the mountainside as fast as my arms and legs could move. By the time I made it to the top I had received the full extent of the hornets’ hospitality in the form of swelling sting marks that appeared on my head and neck as well as my legs.

When I reached the top of the hillside I took off like a bullet and sped down the trail at full sprint. The calming beauty that I had experienced on my way down the trail was now an obstacle course for me to conquer at the risk of more stings should I fail to keep pace. The trees in my peripheral blended together as if I were whizzing by on a bullet train. Once I made it to my car, it was a woozy drive to town and a quick bath in liquid Benadryl before I started feeling better.

I’ll have to go back sometime and find that waterfall.

Adventure On!

-JGM