I Got Bit

So my buddy Austin bailed on me for this week, thus I had to come up with an alternative plan. So I set out for the Pine Valley Wilderness on Monday. I hiked up a seldom used ATV track along Wet Sandy Creek. It was mostly uphill and took me about three hours to get to my campsite. I set up camp right near the creek so that I would have a water source. With a couple hours of daylight left, I took off in search of one of the three trails that left from this area. I did not find them. Instead, I ended up walking up the creek for a couple hours. It was kind of cool as it narrowed out into a canyon. It was just that the walls were made of alluvial deposits rather than hard rock walls. There were some small waterfalls, but nothing much more exciting than a ten foot drop or so. So I headed back to camp to make dinner and spend the rest of the evening chilling in my tent. I forget how much time is spent in darkness during late fall/winter backpacking. I got a lot of good reading in and sleeping, but I was happy to see the sun come out the next day at seven. I started out on the pseudo trail I found the previous day coming back to camp. All it was for a trail were some rock cairns with not much visible sign of boot treads beating down upon the trail. The Wet Sandy Trail was supposed to access the peaks above, but when I went for it, all I got was frustration. The common scene was a fallen over rock cairn leading into a bunch of flesh tearing scrub oak. I dealt with this for some time, thinking that the trail should open up at some point. After a while, I bagged the idea thinking that maybe a dozen people have hiked here in the past dozen years meaning that this trail is not much of a trail anymore. Across the creek, I could see another trail heading up the side of the hill, so I decided to take that one as my alternative. That one turned out better, although I never seemed to get away from all the bushed ripping at my flesh. Unfortunately, it was too hot to wear pants even in the middle of November. So I just had to take the blows and go with them. I made it to the junction of the loop and thought that I might as well undertake it. The first trail I hit was the highline trail, which went at the very base of the peaks. It was okay, very overgrown with not too many good views. About the coolest thing I saw were the spires rising up. I hustled through this trail getting to the road from Leeds at 12:40pm. I then went down the road and met up with the continuation of the Cottonwood-Harmon Trail. This one was rather similar and it looped back a little bit lower providing for some excellent view of the peaks and Zion beyond. I even found one of those balloons that kids release to litter the wild places, so I carried that out. Right after that was when I found the tick burrowing into the area right near my armpit. (I found another one once I got home) I continued to pick my way through these "trails", although I thought about it during and was happy with all the wilderness experience that I had because this is not an area for inexperienced people to spend time in. I finished the loop and finally finished making it back to camp at 3:50pm. My original plan was to stay the night and do another hike the next day. After my brutal day of tearing flesh and difficult route finding, I decided not to give the Pine Valley Wilderness any more of my time. So I quickly shoved some food down my face and packed my tent and gear up as quick as possible. I was on the ATV trail by 4:30pm and I really put the hustle on. I was able to make it to my truck by 6:15pm, which showed me that I am really not putting my best foot forward on the uphill when I can do it in only about 60% of the time on the downhill. Oh well, I was happy to be out of there, so I could spend the evening with my beautiful fiance instead.