Weekly Hike: Possum Creek Gorge

 

 

Over my many years of hiking and adventuring, I have learned that there will come a time when mistakes happen and things go wrong. Generally speaking, after some difficulty, things are resolved, life lessons are learned, and we walk away with a good story. That is what happened on our afternoon hike today. 

 

 

 

While lessons learned on the trail are good for the trail, they are also good for life. Learning resilience in little things that are hard help us handle life's hiccups that are sure to come our way...

 

 

This afternoon we met up with our hiking group at the Heiss Mountain Trailhead to hike a portion of the Possum Creek Gorge on the Cumberland Trail. This section of the CT is 9 miles from point-to-point. When our hiking group is completing a section like this, I generally set an alarm as our turn-around time and we go as far as we are able and then head back.

 

 

We have had several new families join us on these weekly hikes, so before we started down the trail I made sure that everyone knew we would be hiking on the trail marked with white blazes, and that everyone needed to stay in pairs (buddy system), and there should be absolutely no throwing of rocks or sticks off cliffs (this is my biggest rule).

 

 

After that we set off. Most of the boys (over half the group) love to run the trails on these weekly hikes. They will only stop to climb boulders, but generally they are full-out running. I started out this hike running at the front with them (for over a mile) before getting them to slow down and wait for the rest of the group to catch up.

 

 

We continued in this manner for about an hour before finally reaching a boulder field. Most of the kids climbed the boulders straight up the side of the mountain, and gleefully shouted back down to us saying they had discovered a "short cut" having reached the trail again at the top. The moms chose to follow the actual trail up to meet them. 

 

As we went down the back side of the mountain into the gorge, some of the moms and kids continued on to the bottom where the creek was located while  the rest of the group explored a rock wall that was covered with icicles.

 

 

 

At this point, I checked in with the moms where the icicles were and several of them decided to turn back and make the slow climb back up the mountain trail. Most of their own kids were at this spot, so I assumed moms and kids alike would head back up. 

 

 

My boys and I headed on down to the creek to catch the families who were ahead. One extra kid walked down with me and my boys and we came to another wall of icicles. We stopped for a few minutes before I prodded them on saying we needed to get to the bottom. As we continued down, there was a section where the trail turned left away from the bluffs and Jack and Isaac and I made the turn and went on down to the bridge where we followed the trail across to the other side where leaf hikers were hanging out.

We played by the creek for about ten minutes before my alarm went off and we had to head back, I expected to catch the group that was already on their way up.

Right before we headed back across the creek I noticed some people on the other side of the bridge coming down the mountain, but when we went to leave, that group wasn't there. I assumed they must have headed back up the trail because they were no longer visible.

As we headed up (I like to be the last one to leave to make sure we have everyone and everything), I had a nagging feeling something was off. I thought I heard kids laughing, but I couldn't tell if it was from kids ahead of us on the trail or somewhere else. And the one kid who had been with me and my boys coming down to the creek was no longer with us...

I started yelling ahead on the trail (there was no cell reception) to see if anyone had seen this one kid. The message was eventually relayed all the way to the front. Everyone was over halfway back to the cars when we had confirmation that said kid was not with the group AND there were other kids and one mom missing.

Dun.Dun.Da.

At that point I knew I was heading back to find the rest of the group. I made a decisive plan that everyone needed to continue back to the parking lot immediately. I put another mom in charge of my boys, along with hers, and was very clear that everyone needed to get back to the cars. The sun would be going down soon and standing still on a trail was just going to make everyone cold. Also, I told the mom closest to me to call my husband if we didn't make it back to the trailhead within an hour of everyone else.

I, along with one other mother (who was missing a child) started running back down the trail in the opposite direction. As soon as the plan was in play, I received a text (still no cell reception) from the missing mom asking where everyone was and stating that she had the five missing kids and they were headed toward us.

Cue relief.

I was able to contact the rest of the group via text and then I ran until I had the missing friends in my sight. Thankfully I didn't have to run all the way back to the bottom of the gorge!

Some things that went wrong: the missing mom and kids were in the middle of the pack and I had no idea they were coming on down the trail. The missing group had missed where the trail turned left and went down to the bridge and creek crossing, instead they continued to follow under the bluffs. This was an easy mistake to make: when I was heading back up some of our group almost made the same mistake bearing left when they should have turned right.

 

 

Things that went right: the mom with the kids realized that they hadn't seen a white blaze in awhile. She remembered me saying we should all head back in about 15 minutes (her last physical contact with me I had made sure everyone knew about the timeframe) and when she felt like it had been more than 15 minutes, she took charge of all the kids with her and headed back up to meet us.

 

I don't expect things to go perfectly on each hike. I am so thankful the missing party remembered what I had told them at the start. I am so thankful no one was truly lost. I am thankful the rest of the group made it back to the cars and happily waited for us. Mistakes happened, but the right things happened as well.

Hopefully we all learned some valuable lessons. That is part of spending time in wild places. And now we have some new stories to tell.

 

This was the 13th hike for the year, with 4 miles (mostly running) bringing my total miles for this year to 37.5.