I woke up early and packed up as fast as I could. The fog was still thick. I knew Bugs and Moose wanted to get up early to start the bushwhack, and I didn’t want to keep them waiting.

I got to Little Ball Lake as Bugs, Moose, Cookie Monster, Morning Star, and Rocks were packing up their tents. There was an anxious feeling in the air - everyone wanted to get this day over with. I chatted with Bugs and Moose, and we decided that since the weather wasn’t looking great, it would be best to take the low bushwhack route through the forest, rather than the high rock scramble. Rocks told me he still planned on taking the high route, and he was off before the rest of us.

M.S. and C.M. left next, and then Bugs and Moose and I left together. The bushwhack began right at the campground – the first goal was to get around the shoulder of the mountain (0273P) and hike along the contour until we were on top of a ridge. There were a lot of faint boot paths heading out of the campground, and we took turns pointing out possible routes through the thick vegetation.

Once we were around the shoulder of the mountain, we had a clear sight line to the ridge we were aiming for – there was a fair amount of rock scrambling to get there, which was more fun than walking through thick brush. The sky was really cloudy, but we saw a bright spot on the horizon and hoped it would eventually reach us.

We got up to the ridge and followed it for a while before seeing a series cairns marking potential drop-off points into the valley. I guess different hikers had different opinions, but we chose one and took a minute to get our bearings (and say our prayers?) before diving in.

Gotta check the compass

The descent off of the ridge was slow and tedious. Bugs and Moose taught me the term “veggie belay”, which just descending backwards using sturdy plants as handholds. The brush was thick, and it was usually hard to see where my foot would land, which made for slow going – I had to spend extra time feeling around on each step.

We caught a few glimpses of Morning Star and Cookie Monster on our way down - we would yell back and forth at each other, then disappear into another patch of fir trees. The forest got thicker as we progressed down the hillside. We all happened upon the stream at the bottom (SW of 0275P) at around the same time, and took a break together among the bushes.

Once the descent was complete, the next phase of the bushwhack would be following Lion Creek for another three miles or so until we picked up the remnants of an old trail that used to be there. The forest was thick now, and the gnarliest bushes grew right around the stream. We set off, sometimes opting to walk directly in the creek rather than getting tangled in the brush. Both were equally bad options – when I got tired of slipping on wet rocks, I would switch to bushwhacking alongside the stream, and when I got tired of climbing through scratchy bushes and over downed trees, I would get my feet wet again. I caught glimpses of the rocky Lion’s Head ridge to the north.

Shortly after we started following the creek, the weather turned on us. The thunder seemed distant at first, but a massive thunder crash nearby made me jump and scream, which made Bugs laugh at me. But when the rain came, it washed away the humor that we had managed to sustain for a couple of hours. The freezing-cold raindrops soaked through my shirt and sucked away my body heat immediately. We took a quick break to re-layer, and I put on my down jacket and rain jacket, knowing I had only a matter of time before the rain would seep underneath the rain jacket and soak the down.

We started picking up faint traces of the old trailbed pretty early on, and that helped us move a little faster. We would follow the trailbed for a hundred feet or so, lose it for a while, and pick it up again. The rain poured harder, and eventually turned into hail that pelted us as we worked our way through the brush. We had to yell to communicate over the constant roar of the hail and the thunder crashes. We took a tiny snack break underneath a tree, and my fingers were so numb that I struggled to open my ziploc bag of trail mix. The snack break didn’t last long – preserving body heat was our highest priority, so pressing on was the only option.

We came upon a large clearing – some large rock slabs covered in moss – just as the rain/hail stopped. Using her GPS, Bugs determined that we were out of the worst of the bushwhack. We took a lunch break to celebrate.

Still soaked and shivering.

Cookie Monster and Morning Star caught up to us a few minutes later. Unfortunately, Morning Star had fallen and injured his rib cage while he was walking in the creek. He was unable to take a deep breath without a lot of pain. It wasn’t an emergency, but we were all pretty concerned about him. We wondered aloud about Rocks, who had taken the high rock scramble. He seemed pretty confident, but the thunderstorm seemed incredibly fierce even down in the valley.

It started raining again pretty quickly, so we packed up and moved on. It was fairly easy to find the old trailbed from here – there were even little flags tied to trees an branches to mark the path forward. The faint path evolved into a Real Trail, and my relief came gradually.

The experience of coming out of the bushwhack was wild. Something I will absolutely never forget. I don’t know how it happened, but suddenly the sun was shining and all of the clouds had disappeared. This transition happened in minutes – I didn’t even notice it. And as soon as the sun came out, we saw about a dozen groups of day-hikers, in literal shorts and t-shirts, walking on the now well-defined trail. We were still soaked and shivering in all of our layers. It was like coming out of purgatory. Some day-hikers asked if we swam in the natural waterslides (apparently the main attraction). Are you kidding me? Do you know what I just went through? Being soaked, shaking, near-hypothermic, and having a guy in swim trunks and a towel casually ask me if I just went for a dip, was possibly the wildest experience I had on the entire PNT.

Bugs, Moose, and I started looking for a spot to camp once we got to the forest road (0280P). We walked back and forth a couple of times in one spot, and found a little side road up to a beautiful, wide clearing. Bugs drew a message on the dirt road for Cookie Monster and Morning Star so tat they could find us. They showed up a little later, but they realized they had lost their tent stakes in the bushwhack. Morning Star went down to the road to try to get help from a day-hiker, and it was only about 15 minutes before he came back up to the clearing with a fresh pack of stakes that someone had just given him. Trail magic. The sun was still shining. We all laid out our stuff to dry, ate dinner, and went to sleep.