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I really didn’t want to climb back up to the trail so I probably
stayed longer down there because of that.
But I knew that I had a five mile hike back and that I should
be going.
Back at the Lodge I took the trail past the DEC headquarters to the
bridge that crossed Johns Brook to the Ore Bed Trail.
The bridge was closed. It
had two steel cables that spanned a gorge and supported two metal
beams that had wood across them.
It look old and the signs were very big and right in the way of
getting on it. So I
figured it really meant that it was closed.
I looked over the edge and couldn’t see a way down or across
so I went back to the DEC cabin and asked about another way getting
across.
“Well”, the Ranger said, “some people scramble down under the
bridge and go across there and some people say, ‘no way’, it’s
up to you”
I thanked him for this wonderful advice and went back to the bridge.
I went off to the right of the bridge and lowered myself down
an embankment that I really didn’t want to go back up.
There was only one thing to do.
Jump across. I
could see where if I negotiated this one jump I could easily make it
across the other parts of the gorge and up and under the far side of
the bridge. But it was
making this first jump that was slightly alarming.
It was about 6 feet and 6 feet down.
For sure if there was someone else with me I would have done
it, but being alone and not wanting to be alone and in pain if
something went wrong and knowing that Sue would be highly pissed at me
if I got hurt I chose not to do it.
I was studying the underlayment of the bridge and it looked pretty
good to me, so I made my way back up the embankment I didn’t want to
go back up and I got down on my belly and low crawled under the sign
and barrier and onto the bridge that was closed.
Hmm…the cable seemed fine so I put a grip onto that and studied each
board I was walking on, I figured the cable would certainly support
me. I made it across with
no problems.
I thought I was in for an easy glide through the forest down to the
pools where I’ve found round rocks before, but I was wrong.
This Ore Bed Trail gets pretty rugged and I was walking through this
gorge right on the Brook at one point and then up on a rock promenade
overlooking the brook and looking down on some beautifully green pools
of water. At one point
there were house sized boulders just tossed everywhere, where another
stream came into Johns Brooks and you could see that at some time in
the distant past there was a calamity of some kind here.
At one point I thought for sure I was off the trail, I looked behind
me and saw no markers, I look in front and saw no markers.
I looked down and it didn’t look like a trail at all, but I
kept walking across boulders until I came upon one that I had to scale
by holding onto a root. I
was back onto the trail.
From that point on it was a glide, but for two miles it was rugged.
I didn’t stop and look for rocks because I
didn’t know what time it was, but I was feeling chilled from all the
sweat and I was so tired. This
was my first big hike in two years.
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It
was a perfectly lovely morning in the Adirondacks as I started on the
Phelps trail along Johns Brook.
