After two days in the workshop, there was no sign of the intermittent starting problem we’ve been experiencing with our van. If I was going to spend a few days in the wilderness I decided I had better pick a trailhead with easy access for a tow truck. The Tower Trailhead at Hercules Glades fitted that bill nicely. Fifty-ish miles from Springfield and just off HWY 125 with an access road in good condition, lots of room for a tow truck to maneuver in the parking lot, and a good cell phone signal.
I’ve visited Hercules Glades several times this year. It would be nice to be going further afield and checking out a new location, but there are some advantages to going somewhere you know. Especially when trying out new gear. This trip I was also checking out how well I’d cope with backpacking in colder conditions. To keep it interesting, I thought I’d try and mix it up a bit with the route and places to camp.
I haven’t been out hiking since July, so I’m out of condition and practice, which also means everything will take longer. I was expecting to be tinkering with my gear, hiking slowly, enjoying the trail, and seeing how I cope with some less than ideal weather.
A Note About the Trail Names
Trail names in parenthesis are the original trail names that you’ll see used in many online maps and on the USGS maps. I’ve written a short article on the renaming of the trails.
Preparations
The weather was going to vary from warm sunny days to a high probability for rain and snow, and nights with temperatures around freezing. Quite a mixed bag. Day one — Thursday — was going to be chilly. I decided to layer up with a thermal base layer, shirt, fleece, down jacket, and my huaraches. I was tempted to wear a utility kilt, but the lower temps decided me to opt for pants instead.
I planned on a drinking a lot of hot drinks to keep my core temperature up on the colder days. Mysteriously I also thought I’d want lots of hot drinks on the warmer days too. I’ve no idea why I thought that. I ended up lugging around loads of weighty hot drink sachets for four days.
My main meals were Mountain House freeze dried dehydrated meals, and I also took two dehydrated breakfasts. I had my standard almonds and raisins for lunch/trail snacks, and again packed far more lunch/snacks than I ate. More unnecessary weight to be carried.
With rain/snow in the forecast, I packed my poncho, gloves and shockingly for me, socks(!).
I’m kitted out for stealth camping; most of my gear is camo or earth/vegetation colors. My trip coincided with the last few days of the November deer hunting season so I took a blaze orange vest which I wrapped around my backpack when hiking and hung it over the tarp’s ridgeline when I was camped. Blaze orange is a very visible and effective color, even in low light conditions.
I’ve been having difficulty getting to my water bottle while I’m hiking. Hydration bladders and tubes are not an option. We’ve had too many problems with them leaking, and it is very difficult to judge how much water is left.
To date, I’ve been keeping a one-liter Platypus soft bottle in my pack’s side pocket, but I cannot reach it without half taking my pack off, which is a right pain. My old stainless steel Outdoors Products’ water bottle has a neoprene belt hanger, so I dug it out of the ‘no longer used gear’ bin and found that it fitted perfectly on the hip belt of my backpack. Now I can easily reach my water without taking my pack off. It’s a pity that this water bottle is no longer available to buy, I’d better not lose this one! While I was out on the trail I discovered another advantage of having a stainless steel water bottle, which we will come to later.
There wouldn’t be any water available for my first night so I also took along a Platy 2-Liter Ultralight Collapsible Water Bottle. which actually holds a bit more than two liters, so I would have around 3.5 liters in total.
My packed weighed in at 27lbs including food and fuel — I packed a lot of fuel (14oz) in anticipation of all those hot drinks.
My pack was fairly full, but not in ‘extended mode’ (which gives an extra 10 liters of space) — which was lucky as we shall see — My 0°F sleeping bag is heavy and huge, taking up a lot of space even when fully compressed, but everything fitted fine. I strapped my rolled up fleece wrap (an old Bass Pro fleece sleeping bag I use the keep the cold off my back while sitting around the campfire) onto the outside of the pack.
Day One – Thursday
I left my packing until the morning and consequently was late leaving.
I arrived at the trailhead shortly before 1 p.m. The only other vehicles there were a car and a big trailer. It was around 44°F nice and sunny but with a cold wind blowing from the west. As the predicted wind chill was in the low to mid-twenties, I wore all the layers I had. I hadn’t thought about where I’d keep all those extra clothes on the hot day(s) that were predicted, so I was going to have some pack space challenges ahead.
From the trailhead sign-in sheet I saw that there were two people on the Pees Hollow trail, and that was all in the direction I was heading.
There were a lot of leaves across the trail and I had great fun crunching and crackling my way along the leaf-covered trail which was crisscrossed by shafts of pale but bright sunshine. It was a good day to be out. I had hoped that there would be some vestiges of fall color to photograph, but any leaves that were still on the trees had mostly browned off, leaving things looking a bit subdued.
I quickly realized that hiking was going to be challenging in places. It’s been a while since I’ve hiked a leaf covered trail, and I’d forgotten how difficult it can be to hike the rocky parts of a trail when the trail is buried in leaves. I had to tread carefully and slowly in places as I could not see where the rocks were. Wearing huaraches makes feeling and assessing the stability of the rocks a lot easier, but the lack of visibility slowed me down.
Despite the leaf covered trail, it didn’t take long to get to the Pete (Pole) Hollow Trail junction where I stopped to take off my jacket — I wasn’t feeling the wind chill — and have some lunch.
As I had started late, I was rethinking my plan to hike around five miles today. With stops for pictures and exploring, I typically average 1.1 miles an hour. Sunset was around 5 p.m. (and probably earlier behind the hills and in the hollows). I wanted to be camped well before it got dark.
There are a couple of old forest roads heading north from the Tower (Pilot) Trail, with the first being somewhere near the junction with the Upper Pilot (Devil’s Den East) Trail. I decided to see how things went, and if it was getting late, one of those might be worth investigating, especially if I could find a spot on the east side of a ridge where I’d be sheltered from the wind.
For my first
I found a very obvious road less than 200 yards west of the Upper Pilot (Devil’s Den East) trail Junction. I took the road, following it for two-three hundred yards before I started looking for a suitable spot to bushwhack off the road in search of a spot to camp. I went to the right (east) side of the ridge. I ended up around a quarter of a mile from the Tower (Pilot) Trail and a good distance to the east of the road. As usual, Goldilocks (that would be me) spent quite a while circling around looking for a camping spot that was “Just right.”
Suitable trees found, I set up camp and gathered wood for my campfire. With the huge amount of piled dried leaves on the ground and a gusty wind, I decided that it would be wise to make a fire ring to stop my campfire getting out of hand.
As soon as I had some wood ready, and a fire laid, I attended to the other chore that’s best sorted out while there’s light — finding a place to hang my food bag. Luckily I quickly found an excellent tree to hang the bag from, with a suitable branch around 25ft up. Much to my surprise, I managed to get the line over it quite easily.
I cannot write enough good things about stowing line in a figure of eight. Since I’ve followed this tip I’ve not had any problems with my lines getting knotted or tangled. It really is worth doing. If you haven’t tried it yet, give it a go.
When the sun set the temperature started to drop rapidly reaching 35°F, which was the predicted low for the night and it kept on falling. I had the fire lit before 6 p.m. Dinner was a Mountain House Italian Style Pepper Steak, which has to be my favorite Mountain House meal to date. I turned on my phone and was surprised to find that I had
I find that my first night out in the wilderness is always a little unsettling. Sitting by the fire, with the forest around me bathed in moonlight, it was disconcerting to hear a couple of packs of coyotes nearby performing their ethereal yipping, yapping, and howling. I challenge anyone not to feel a little bit discomforted by that sound, especially when solo backpacking.
I kept the fire going for a few hours before deciding to turn in, and here’s where my stainless steel water bottle came in handy. I filled it up and left it by the fire to warm up. By bedtime, I had a nice hot water bottle to warm my bed ready for me to get into.
Later on, snuggled up in the hammock I spent a while reading. I put on gloves to keep my hands warm while holding my book. I also wore a buff as a balaclava topped off with my beanie. Between them they kept my head nice and warm. I only managed a few pages before I put my book down and went to sleep.
Getting up in the middle of the night, the moon had set, and the sky was brilliantly clear. Without my glasses I can’t see the stars, but I was deeply impressed by the dark sky punctuated by an exceptionally bright, if blurry, starry display. It was far too cold to hang around stargazing for long though.
Day Two – Friday
It was still dark when I woke up at 6 a.m., so I turned over and snoozed for a while. When I next surfaced I could see blue skies and the sun was catching the tops of the trees. The temperature had dipped to 26°F overnight, I was surprised to see that there was no condensation or ice on the inside of the hammock cover. I’ve read that this can be a problem. But so far, it has not been an issue for me.
I have the huge ‘Sidecar’ pocket set up on the left, head end, of the hammock. This was to be the first time I attempted the hammock camping holy grail of making a hot drink while still in my hammock. I had thought that the sidecar might get in the way, but it didn’t, and I was soon enjoying a cup of hot chocolate.
I didn’t see any reason to hit the trail before the temperatures had risen. While I sat and enjoyed the rising sun I reviewed my plan for the day, which was to hike to Rock Spring and camp there. My reasons for stopping there were simple:
- It’s a spring, there’d be water.
- It’s a long way away from Long Creek, it’s not well known or marked on any of the popular maps, so there’d be no people.
- The next day I could take the Middle (Cedar) Trail out towards the Pees Hollow loop where I planned to camp Saturday night.
However, my slow progress on the leaf-covered rocky parts of the trail the previous day, made me think that I might be better off making more progress towards my planned campsite for Saturday. I decided to hike down the Upper Pilot (Devil’s Den East)
In March I’d discovered a wildlife trail or maybe it was an old hiking trail on the north side of Long Creek. I reckoned I knew where it would meet the Long Creek Trail, so I decided to see if I could find somewhere on that trail to set up camp on the north side of the creek. If that plan fell through I could always stop where I spent the night in March. Water wouldn’t be a problem, as I knew from my earlier visit where there were some fairly big and healthy pools nearby on Long Creek.
After breakfast — Mountain House Scrambled Eggs with Bacon — I packed up camp and headed back to the trail. The weather was warm, so I had to find space in my pack for all my cold weather clothing. Fortunately opening up my backpack’s extra ten-liter collar gave me enough space, and with all the water, except that in my water bottle, gone my overall pack weight was still lighter than yesterday.
Hiking back to the trail I somehow missed the r
Back on the main trail, I headed east and turned south onto the Upper Pilot (Devil’s Den East) Trail. I’ve hiked this trail before, but the reality of it didn’t match my memory at all. It climbs up over the shoulder of the Pilots and crosses several glades before making its way down to join Long Creek (Rock Spring) Trail. The hiking was easy, the trail clear, and it was very pleasant in the warm sunshine. The trail wound through some densely wooded areas that I couldn’t remember; for a moment I thought I’d wandered off the trail. Being lazy I just took a quick peek at the GPS, and sure enough, I was on the trail, it was just my memory that was wrong.
The trail joins Long Creek (Rock Spring) Trail at what we call ‘Sheep Frog pond’ It̵