The Foothills Trail (Part 2)
Day 3 was the longest of them all. We rose at 3:30 after a storm had passed, and made our way deep into the darkness that morning. The trail moved as a sidewinder would, bringing us back and forth from the Whitewater River, and as we entered Duke Energy’s land we felt as if we had truly stepped into the next phase of the adventure. Hours passed under the illumination of headlamp and the sound of trickling water. There’s something so interesting about those hours of treading through darkness. The subtle bouncing of the headlamp as we walked was hypnotic, and time passed almost in an instant. Only the rising of the morning sun could break the spell we were under, and coincidentally enough it came just as we crossed the Thompson River, our next checkpoint.
I took a few minutes to fill our water in the river before beginning another steep climb up the mountain. Halfway up we feasted on grits, summer sausage, and cheese whiz (another one of my mountain cuisines). Doubt began to set in during that mountain climb. Even after trudging through the morning we were still behind, far behind, and dad saw in my eyes the distress I felt about our schedule. Normally I would’ve gone without such a tight itinerary, but it was necessary for work reasons, and the last thing either of us wanted to do was go home without having completed what we started. We took a few minutes to rest, broke out the map, made our gameplan (it was going to be a long day), and took off like a rocket down trail.
We swung down through Gorges State Park, in and out of South Carolina, across streams, through valleys, up mountains, and every other iteration of exploration these woods had to offer. Service roads, abandoned logging roads, stream sides, they were all our companions that morning and deep into the afternoon as we tried to make it to the Toxaway. I caught wind of a new bridge at the Toxaway, a massive 150+ foot suspension bridge that shot across the river as it passed Lake Jocassee, and that was my hope for the end of the day.
Overall the day passed on quietly with us simply placing one foot in front of the other, and breaking about every three hours for snacking and rest (Pro Tip- dive into every river you break at, it will bring you back to life), and sure enough we did make the Toxaway.
The dirt was still fresh from the installation, and I made it a point to swing back and forth on this massive construct like a small child, all the while being encouraged and laughed at by my father. We shot tons of pictures of the bridge, the river, and the lake right at sunset, and had one of the most rewarding meals across our trip. The rocks below made a platform in the middle of the river, and we helped ourselves to celebratory bourbon and cigars as the sun set over the lake. It was well-earned, but we still weren’t done yet. I reviewed our progress on the map while we laid by the stream, and even though we had crushed the day, we were still behind schedule.
Here’s where things get interesting. In one moment of “F**k it!” my dad sits up and tells me that we were going to throw on our headlamps and crush six more miles. Six! Six miles that we knew nothing about other than they were standing in our way, and we were not having that.
So on we went back into the darkness we came from that morning. The same hypnotic dancing of the headlamps, the same quiet harmony of water crashing against rocks, the same…stairs?
Yes, stairs. So many stairs.
The entire next hour and a half of the trip was straight up the mountainside. It seemed that every time we turned a corner and topped out that we would inevitably find more stairs to climb. We constantly joked that this mountain was really a gimmick in an episode of Punked where they kept adding more mountain and more stairs right as we approached the top. The mixture of grits and bourbon in my belly left me in good spirits for this section, so the whole thing was a comical affair. Dad and I climbing, me constantly one or two flights ahead scouting for the top, but all that he heard was me cheering “Stairs!” at the top of my lungs. I laughed so hard at the impossibly long climb that I almost fell backwards down the mountain, and in all honesty I would’ve laughed just as hard coming back up a second time.
We eventually did top out on the stairs, but that didn’t stop the mountains from rolling down and up again through the night. The laughter stopped about two hours in, and our spirits were steadily draining as midnight passed. It was a constant battle to keep going, and the frustrations of constantly changing from walking the woods to walking the road started getting to dad as there was no way to really know how far we had left to walk that night. “Just a little more,” “get to that tree,” “to that mountaintop,” “to the bottom of this valley.” I would say anything I could to keep our attention focused on finishing that night at the Laurel Falls campsite. Primitive though it may be, the idea of staying at a place designated for sleeping was really appealing and was the only thing we had left to keep walking towards after 1:00 AM. Nonetheless we kept going. Fresh bear scat kept our eyes open, as did the five-foot rattlesnake that sat mid-trail digesting its freshly eaten food. An owl or two called to us, encouraging our steps forward, and after a full day of walking for twenty-two hours, rising in the darkness and trudging through the same that evening, 2:00 AM rolled around and we finally made it. I don’t think I’ve ever built camp so quickly. Dad began fading while he sat down at camp, and it wasn’t but an instant after getting him into his hammock that he went out like a light. I passed out just as quickly, exhausted, but knowing that the hardest day of the trip was over and that we had finally made up our lost ground.
Check back next week for the trip’s conclusion.
Adventure on!
-JGM