To back up a bit and explain how we got to this point: We left Cass around 3 after a ride on the Cass Scenic Railroad followed by a late lunch. The train ride wasn't as exciting as I'd remembered from when I was a kid, but it was enjoyable and the history lesson interesting.
The trail out of Cass went from gravel road to a grassy roadbed, to a well established trail and eventually to what we're coming to accept as normal: walking blaze to blaze through the woods. At some point the gold blazes stopped and after 15 minutes of wandering around, Dwight located a blue blaze. We knew we would eventually need to start following some blue blazes today--but because the trail guide is written from a N to S-going perspective, it wasn't clear when that would be for us. So since there were no more gold blazes to be found we went with the blue. That led to the next problem--the blue blazes were not only extremely faint, they were 'few and far between'. The map showed the trail following ridgeline, so we decided that if we couldn't locate the blue blazes, we could stay with the ridgeline until we ran out of that. In doing so, we periodically ran into blue blazes and at times a faint indication of trail, leading us to believe we were still on track. After !
descending the ridge a bit we encountered orange markings on trees that have no particular pattern to them. In some cases, there is both an orange marking and blue blaze on the same tree. Since we are in the vacinity of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory at Greenbank, I'm wondering if it could be their boundary marker. Regardless, we heard the river before we saw it and knew at that point we'd officiaaly lost the trail. Hopefully tomorrow, th trail will find us. <g>
No comments:
Post a Comment