SWITCHING PLAN B ON THE SHELTOWEE TRACE (PLUS PLANS C, D, E & ETC.)
When: April 23-26, 2025
Who: Bob Pauly, John Curtin, John Hennessy, Bill Ankenbauer, Mark Talbert, and Mark Neikirk
Where: Sheltowee Trace Trail, Peters Mountain to Yahoo Falls — all or in part, depending on the person
Distance: Up to 37 miles (not all participants hiked the same distance)
By Mark Neikirk
The Sheltowee Trace Trail may seem settled and unchanging on a map. It is a solid red line that squiggles through the contours of ridgetops and gorges and valleys and watersheds. It looks fixed. Like an interstate. Or a state line. Here today, here tomorrow.
The permanence is an illusion. When the Trace was first laid out in the 1970s by the late Verne Orndorff, a landscape architect for the U.S. Forest Service, it was 231 miles and, as such, Kentucky’s longest trail and among the longest in a newly created inventory of National Recreation Trails, authorized by an Act of Congress in 1968.
The Trace began changing almost from the start, as Orndorff and others tinkered with the original route. Mainly, it grew longer as new sections were added and reroutes were approved to take it deeper into the forest. By 2000, it was 257 miles, 280 miles by 2007, and then bit by bit longer and longer until reaching its current 343 miles. The Sheltowee Trace Association, which acts as the trail’s quasi-official steward, sells bumper stickers that are an archive of the trail's most recent growth:, from 319 and progressing to 323, 327, 333, 340, and, finally to 343. As I write, the next lengthening is on the drawing board to Rugby, Tennessee, adding another ten miles.
It pays to be mindful of all this when planning a trip. Ours was penciled out using a map copyrighted in 2015, which put the length of our planned hike from Peters Mountain to Yahoo Falls at 22 miles. Had we used a more current map, we would have known that the trail had been rerouted and was now 12 to 15 miles longer. I’m using a range because the 2020 map, the current guidebook, and the navigaional apps that most hikers use each have their own distances. The map is the longest of the sources but the apps may be the most accurate, as they take the most recent changes into account. So for the sake of some measure of clarity, let's say a hike we thought would be 22 miles would actually be 34 -- if we finished it.
Clarity, though, isn't guaranteed. On any given day, the actual length of any section hike is shortened or lengthened by conditions, primarily weather. A trail that goes through mountains laced with streams and three significant rivers — the Big South Fork of the Cumberland River, the Red River, and the Licking River — is bound to flood and, in spots, wash out. This year, heavy rain in March and April closed parts of the trail in many sections, and, after the waters receded, mud and debris had erased the the trail. Mostly, these sort of detours are seasonal adjustments destined to be restored once the original trail can be cleaned up, mudslides stabilized, and a pathway restored.
Other real-time changes also are weather-related. Wind and lightning fell trees. One section of trail was nearly erased some years back by a straight-line wind. And weather is not the sole culprit. Once last year the trail was rerouted because of some pesky dogs that the owner refused to control.
It should not go unsaid that another factor in adding, or subtracting, miles from a hike on the Sheltowee is the propensity of hikers to get misplaced, or as some call it, lost. By straying, we likely add miles. I’ve certainly done so. As one Sheltowee veteran put it, “If you haven’t been lost on the Sheltowee, then you haven’t been on the Sheltowee.” That veteran is Stephen Bowling, who wrote A Guide to the Sheltowee Trace National Recreation Trail. He knows the trail like the back of his hand. But none of us knows the back of our hands perfectly, right? Like the trail, the back of our hands change. Maybe an age spot appears one day. The hair turns gray. A knuckle swells or contorts with arthritis. You have to keep up with the changes, even to know the back of your own hand.
The Patio Boys thought of the Peters Mountain to Yahoo Falls section was known territory when we set out on a partly cloudy, mild Wednesday afternoon in late April. We’ve done it before. But within the first mile and a half, Bob Pauly — who planned our trip as he does all of our trips — was advising us to go left ahead as we walked on Beech Road east from our starting point, a small parking lot at Peters Mountain. The signs and the online map app FarOut, however, said to go right and downhill along the Laurel Hill Trail.
The elevation at the intersection of Beech Road and the Laurel Hill Trail at 1,516 feet — just 45 lower than Peters Mountain, so our hike started essentially flat. Things would change over the coming miles and days. The old trail rode a ridge top. The new route was not only longer, it descended into a valley, then rose out of it. Then did so again. The elevation graph for this sections looked like the cardiogram for an arrhythmia patient.
You can see all of this happening on the FarOut app, which tracks where you are and what’s immediately ahead of you. FarOut is the gospel on the Sheltowee. The trail association partners with the app’s design team to provide updates when the route changes. It’s an app that allows users to comment, much as Waze does for drivers. If you encounter something on the trail worth sharing you can do so. A campsite. A good water source. A blockage caused by storm damage. A patch of poison ivy. A hornets’ nest. A pack of pit bulls. Having been on the trail without FarOut on my iPhone, and now with it, iI can testify that it is for hikers a proper heir to the old American Express slogan, “Don’t leave home without it.”
BIRDS AND BOURBON
We followed FarOut’s guidance on Wednesday, our first day, to Difficulty Creek — aptly named if the intention was to warn hikers of what would be ahead. Our goal for the day was modest: find a place to camp, settle in. We had no intention of hiking much distance on this first day; maybe five or six miles.
FarOut reported a campsite near Difficulty Creek, but the word “campsite” is generic not specific. One person with a hammock needs far less space than our group of six with six one-man tents and the expectation of a campfire. So a marked campsite could be a wide open, flat site with a fire ring and obvious tent sites. Or it could be nook or cranny with two strong trees appropriately spaced to hang a hammock.
Bob and I arrived at the wooden bridge over Difficulty Creek first. We determined we could camp just beyond the bridge over the creek if necessary, but it would be cramped and most sites were on an incline. Bob did what he calls his “seven-minute walk” to see if better options were ahead. No one wants to pitch a tent on an iffy site, then find out the next morning a great campsite was right around the bend.
I walked back to the bridge to stare at the mesmerizing water, as is my wont, and to listen for birds. A few weeks before this trip, I was reflecting on an observation of mine and others that while hiking the Sheltowee we did not hear many birds. Often, the forest is silent, oddly so. Posting this observation on a Sheltowee Trace Facebook page, I wondered if others had noticed, too. Where had the birds gone? The responses were typical of a Facebook post. Some were quizzical — wondering why. Some were sardonic — older ears (mine are 70) don’t hear as well as younger ears. Some were educational — birds migrate; wait until spring.
There is substantive research that there are fewer birds in the Appalachians than there once were, a function of civilization’s disruptions. A stunning number of birds collide with buildings, powerlines, cell towers, cars, and other obstacles as they fly migrate. Others are disoriented as whatever atavistic sensors guide them are disrupted by the human-altered landscape. Despite that, it is correct that spring brings birds back to the woods. At the bridge, I got my iPhone out and opened the Cornell University Merlin Bird app, which listens for birds and identifies them when they chirp or sing. It was mid-afternoon, 3:45 p.m. to be exact, and within minutes my list grew long: a blue-headed vireo, a red-eyed vireo, a tufted titmouse, a Carolina wren, a Carolina chickadee, a Louisiana water thrush, and three kinds of warblers — a black-throated green warbler, a hood warbler, and a black and white warbler.
Bob returned from his seven-minute walk and reported no evidence of better sites. Difficulty Creek cuts through a rapidly deepening gorge, water tumbling over rocks with a succession of small waterfalls. It is a small creek, maybe 20 or 30 yards across, but impressive as a natural work of art, with boulders stacked on boulders in varying sizes and the walls of the gorge rising from the water at an almost vertical angle. There was barely room for a trail and none for an expansive, flat campsite for six. We began to unpack and set up on a gentle slope above the creek. It would do for a night.
One by one, Bill Ankenbauer, John Hennessy, John Curtin, and Mark Talbert arrived and found places to pitch their tents. We gathered wood and started a fire inside an existing ring of rocks. We weren’t the first to camp here but, from the look of the fire ring, we were the first this year.
Soon enough, it was dinner time. Lot of freeze-dried food came out and preparation commenced. The procedure is simple: Boil water. Pour it into the foil packet. Wait ten minutes. Consume flavored cardboard. One among us, Mark Talbert, had a better idea. He brought a strip steak. Mark fashioned a roasting tool from a forked stick and cooked his dinner to order. Mark, who is from Northern Kentucky, where the rest of us live, went to high school with Bob, Bill, and John. He lives now in Greenville, S.C., and heard about the Patio Boy trips at the Class of 1972’s 50th reunion. As he has twice before, he drove north to join us, each time bringing a steak for his first night’s dinner. I had steak envy, as did others. My first meal once I got home was a steak on the grill. So was John Hennessy’s.
This night, I ate a perfectly awful freeze-dried chicken and rice curry, some of which went into the fire. The highlight of the meal was the Elijah Craig bourbon that Hennessy shared. An ounce of Kentucky’s finest and the memory of a foul dinner fades, dissolved in the warm spirits of mash aged to a kind of honeyed nectar of the gods, if any gods other than Dionysus are given to drink.
Think about the two processes. Freeze-drying is a kind of liposuction for food and even has a scientific same that sounds like it: lyophilization. Food is frozen under pressure so the water in the food is turned to a gas before it gets a deep freeze. It is then removed by a process called sublimation. It all happens fast and involves expensive, stainless steel devices with gauges. A full-size, industrial machine looks like the HVAC unit for an office building. The bourbon process, in contrast, is magical and happens unseen and unmanipulated over a period of six to ten years in charred, white oak barrels. It’s no wonder Elijah Craig single barrel tastes better than Mountain House chili mac, which is the gold standard of freeze-dried food. It's fool's gold.
A harbinger of trouble quietly entered the evening’s proceedings. Bob, still trying to figure out why we were guided right instead of left off the road from Peters Mountain, got out his map. It displayed the route exactly as he remembered it from hikes in 1996 and 2015. He asked for my map. It told a different story. Where his map’s route from Peters Mountain to Yahoo Falls was 22 miles, my map’s route put the distance at 37 miles. The route of the trail has been changed between 2015, when Bob’s map was copyrighted, and 2020, the date on my map. Since we had barely covered 5 miles on this first day, we now had 32 miles ahead of us instead of 17. We’d have to cover some ground over the next three days. Or plan a new route.
That was tomorrow’s problem. For now, we consulted the next day’s forecast on our weather apps and headed to bed, figuring it might rain a little on Thursday but probably not much. Indeed, there were stars out as we headed to our respective tents. Somewhere in the distance, an owl hooted.
AFTER DIFFICULTY CREEK CAME ACTUAL DIFFICULTY
Thursday would be a trying day. We are all in our seventies now. Septuanenarians. We're younger than the president and the exp-president, Mick Jagger, and Ringo, but we're still old. We are lucky things are still working, but, honestly, they don’t work as they once did. Hips. Backs. Knees. Even shoulders. Our joints creak. Our lungs and legs labor. Our digestive systems rumble. Our prostates, if we still have them, either make it hard to pee or make us pee several times a night. Vertigo. Small melanomas that result in the purchase of hats with extra flaps. Bunions. High blood pressure. Lactose intolerance. As Bette Davis observed, "Getting old is not for sissies."
Personally, I could not walk in December and January because of sciatica, which required two months of three-times-a-week physical therapy, traction, yoga, two 90-minute Thai massages, two one-hour pressure point therapy sessions, a steroid pack, muscle relaxers, and two mini sessions of sonic waves. My goal was to walk 30 miles on the Sheltowee Trace Trail with a pack on my back. I did so in March as part of the Sheltowee Trace Hiker Challenge. I limped to the Challenge’s orientation in December, when my condition first expressed itself. Wincing on the short walk from my car, I couldn't find a seat fast enough.
The Hiker Challenge is a program of the Sheltowee Trace Trail Association, and it works like this: Once a month, you hike about 30 miles and an association van shuttles you from your car, which you leave at the end of the trail, to the starting point. Typically, you start early on a Saturday morning, camp that night at the midpoint, then finish the 30 miles on Sunday. Over eleven months, from January to November, you cover the full 343 miles.
I did seven sections in 2024 and plan to do at least the remaining five in 2025, which will make me an End-2-Ender. Although the other Patio Boys are not doing the Challenge, the group has its origins in Sheltowee Trace hikes. Bob Pauly, Bill Ankenbauer, and few other friends began hiking the trail in the 1990s one weekend at a time, with a spring trip and a fall trip each year until they had done all of the trail. My first trip was in 2004. I had resisted going, having had my fill of hiking in my native state, where too many people trash trails and had long since turned my beloved Red River Gorge, through which the Sheltowee passes, into one big fraternity party. Animal House in the forest. But the Sheltowee section we hiked for my first trip with Bob, Bill, and others offered something else. It provided the solitude the Gorge had lost, and it showed what Kentucky’s wild places could be wild again with sufficient stewardship. Furthermore, the camaraderie on the trail was, and still is, infectious. I knew only Bob on that first trip. Twenty-one years later, I count the Patio Boys among my closest friends. We go to weddings and funerals together. We know how many grandchildren each other has.
This trip, though my body was working well, Bob’s hips were hurting, Mark Talbert's lower back was giving him fits, and John Hennessy had blisters on his pinkie toes, which may not sound like much, but it is. Every painful step is worse than the one before as the blisters tear and expand. "I don't know what's wrong," he said, perplexed, "I am wearing the same socks and the same boots." Whatever the explanation, the blisters were torture.
Where our first day was just five miles, our second day was nearly twice as long and many of those miles uphill. The trail from Difficulty Creek was a rolling, flat passage for about .8 of a mile before it began to rise steeply from about 800 feet above sea level to about 1,100 feet. That would be the trail’s pattern for most of Thursday. Rise. Fall. Rise. Fall.
It was those alternating steep climbs and descents that beat us down, and one of those climbs in particular. The Ledbetter parking area, where people can drive to the trail (as they can at Peters Mountain) was about one third of the way between our starting point at Peters Mountain and our intended stopping point at Yahoo Falls. At 1,266 feet, Ledbetter is the highest point on this hike other than Peters Mountain. Since the trail never reaches the height of Peters Mountain again, you could say it’s all downhill from there. But that distorts the fact that every time you give up elevation, you find yourself regaining it on another climb. The last miles of this section of the Sheltowee toward Yahoo Falls flatten out and are an easy walk for probably ten miles. But getting to there would be a chore, and Ledbetter was the worst of it.
On paper, the elevation gain to Ledbetter is not that horrible. It’s barely 500 feet if that. In backpacking, no one frets until the elevation gain is 1,000 feet or more. But Ledbetter’s 500 feet are delivered in a straight up, one mile spurt. There are no switchbacks for catching your breath, no flat interludes to take the pack weight off your shoulders. Imagine climbing a mile of stairs with 30 pounds of weight on your back. That’s the experience of hiking up to Ledbetter. Climbing this, it seemed appropriate that the day started at Difficulty Creek and proceeded past Troublesome Creek. It’s a wonder the trail didn’t also pass over a stream called Pain and another called Suffering,
I was walking with Bob, who likes to take a 15-minute break every hour on the button. He's as a religious commitment to this. We had already walked past his hour and had missed lunch. Slogging up the Ledbetter incline, we were just trying to make forward progress, not looking at the map or the app and, therefore, not sure how far we were from the top. At 1 p.m., Bob announced he had had enough: “This breaks my rule of never stopping below the top of a hill. But I’m hungry. I’m stopping for lunch.” He had some peanut butter; I had a couple of mini Snickers and a nap while we waited.
Within 30 minutes, John Hennessy and Bill Ankenbauer arrived, but John Curtin, our oldest hiker (“Age is a number and mine is unlisted,” he has said long before that line was in a pharmaceutical ad) and Mark Talbert, whose painful back was a governor on his pace, were still unaccounted for. After an hour or so, Bob, John, and Bill put their packs on to finish the hill. I agreed to wait for John and Mark. It would be 3 p.m. before they made it up the hill, weary but in good spirits. John had even managed to nap on one extended break.
After Ledbetter, the trail was kinder, passing through meadows and, when it did rise and fall, did so with less severity. At a low point by a stream, Bob, Bill, and John found a wide, flat area that would have made an ideal campsite. Mark, John, and I caught up with them there, and we considered stopping for the night. By now, Bob was formulating a new plan that involved hiking to Blue Heron, an old mining camp about six miles away. There is an abadoned railroad bridge there that crosses the Big South Fork. A highway is nearby on the other side of the river, and from there Bob could call for a driver to pick everyone up but me. To stay on course to complete the Hiker Challenge this year, I needed to keep going to Yahoo Falls, still 24 miles away according to the map. Bob and the others would shuttle Yahoo Falls, where they would hike back toward me and pitch tents on Friday night. On Saturday morning, we’d all hike to the cars together. We’ll call this Plan C. It would not be the last revision, however.
The campsite where this discussion took place was beside a beautiful little stream, Laurel Crossing Branch. It’s riffles passed over it stones, composing their own Chopin. You could get a good night's sleep with that in the background, and the tent sites were ample and flat. A little debate ensued. Let's stay. Let's go. Back and forth it went. In deference to the distance I would have to go on Friday to Yahoo Falls, the group agreed to hike one more hour, which would put them just 5 miles from Blue Heron and me a couple of miles closer to Yahoo Falls.
So, on we went, eventually stopping at a place called Big Spring Falls, where -- based on FarOut -- we had expected to find a campsite. There really wasn’t much of one. Our tents had to be pitched trailside on yet another slope and atop bushes and brambles. We got set up, got out the camp chairs, built a fire, and made our dinners. Followed by bourbon and stories, as well as codification of Plan C.
Call it the Blue Heron Extraction Plan. All my fellow Patio Boys had to do would be to hike a few miles to the bridge, cross it, walk up to the highway, and call Tom, who could take the to cars at Yahoo Falls.
Before I go any further, I need to tell you about Tom Tounge.
RENDEZVOUS WITH A TRAIL ANGEL AND HIS TRUCK
The Sheltowee Trace Association provides a list of local people available to shuttle hikers to various points on the trail. Tom Tounge volunteers to cover 121 miles of trail in southeast Kentucky and into Tennessee. With white curly hair and an oversized head, he looks a bit like Spencer Tracy and has the same smile. He’s from a river town east of Cincinnati but has lived near Cumberland Lake long enough to acquire Kentucky’s melody in his voice. He was a lineman for a utility company, so if he looks a little weathered, he earned that. He arrived at the Yahoo Falls parking lot with a kind of immediate friendliness few people possess. “Ya’ll waiting for me?” We had been, but not for long. Tom is a prompt man.
His slate blue Chevy Silverado seated four people in the cab, one up front beside Tom and three in the backseat. Mark Talbert took shotgun, the two Johns and I got in the backseat, and Bob and Bill climbed into the bed with the packs. “Anyone want a beer?” Tom asked, and then opened a small cooler for root beers. It’s a joke he has used before and, 100 percent guaranteed, will use again. “How about a bologna sandwich?” John Hennessy asked, half in jest and remembering a ragged country store on this trail where, ten years ago, we had a thick-cut bologna on the softest of white bread with cheese and a slice of tomato. A sandwich for the ages, especially after a few miles on the trail. That old store was toward the end of the hike, which meant that by then we had eaten only trail food – a diet that puts a bologna sandwich sound as good as filet mignon.
“I know where to get a good one in town. You want me to stop?” Tom replied, assuring us that, although the store we remembered was now closed, McCreary County still has people who know how to make a bologna sandwich. No need, we told him. Let’s just get to the trailhead. He asked Bob and Bill if they wanted a cushion to sit on while riding in the truck's bed. Bill said he would be fine. Bob said sure. Tom handed Bob a canvas coat lined in flannel, folded to make a seat cushion.
The ride to Peters Mountain would take about an hour, which is longer than usual because the direct road there was blocked by a landslide caused by the recent rains. The Forest Service, Tom told us, had just hired a contractor to clear it — a complicated job that would take some time. We’d have to get to Peters Mountain another, longer way.
The old gravel logging roads that lace the mountains here are not wide. Tom made a point of slowing down at all the blind curves, of which there were many, and moving to the shoulder if there was one.. “You don’t know about the other drivers,” he explained — they might be in a hurry and hogging the road. If he approached a pothole, of which there were many, he slowed for those, too, out of respect for his passengers. He liked to holler back to Bob and Bill in the bed and apologize if he hit a particularly big bump that bounced things (and people) around. At one point, a piece of heavy machinery, a grader, came toward us. Tom pulled his truck to the side, put it in park, got out, walked back to the bed, opened his cooler, took out an ice-cold root beer, took it over to the driver and handed it to him, “Hey, want a cold beer?” The grader's operator smiled as if it were Christmas.
Back in the driver’s seat, the hour passed quickly. Tom’s stories were nonstop. There was the time he came back here in snow, his truck handling like a charm and , in case it did not, that thick coat at the ready for the walk out. The time he came back to pick up some guys in their eighties. They were in no distress, they were just ready to get home after a few nights out. The time a young lady got disoriented. She had no idea where she was but with a few descriptive details, Tom figured it out, told her not to move, and drove to exactly where she was. I doubt you could describe a spot on or near the trail that Tom would not recognize.
And so the stories came, fast and furious, endlessly entertaining – and informative. This was coal country, he said, and people had coal jobs. But the price of coal dropped, and a conglomerate decided it would be cheaper to just buy out the contract and shut everything down. “The bean counters decided that one,” he told us. He had a way of saying “bean counters” without being mean yet still conveying some level of disregard for their decision-making. As much as I hate what coal did to Kentucky’s land and water, I found myself rooting against the bean counters. Later, on sections of the hike, pieces of coal, rounded from tumbling through fast water, were part of the ordinary gravel and stones that cover the trail in places. I thought of Tom’s reflection on coal’s once dominant spot in the economy of this place. On the trail, coal was merely what it had been for millions of years before we started burning it. It was just part of the landscape.
Tom got us to Peters Mountain, and we paid the fare, $25 each, for a priceless passage. If you need me, he said, just call.
Well, as it turned out, we would.
‘MANN TRACHT, UN GOTT LACHTT’
As I’ve previously described, the new plan for this hike had two parts. Part one, I would hike on toward Yahoo Falls, keeping me on track to be an End-2-Ender this year. The others would hike to Blue Heron, call Tom, get shuttled back to Yahoo Falls, then hike from the parking lot there to Princess Falls, set up tents and meet me there.
Sound good? Sounds good. Confirmed.
But this trip followed the old Yiddish saying, “Mann Tracht, Un Gott Lacht,” which translates, “Man plans, and God laughs.”
A week before this hike, we had a planning meeting at John Curtin’s fire pit with bourbon and hot wings on the patio. The Patio Boys know how to enjoy a patio. There, we made a plan. We would hike the Trace’s northern terminus from Morehead. Later at home, Bob studied his maps and determined that route might be short on water sources, which would mean carrying extra water. A couple of liters of water, which would be the least amount needed per person – more might be needed – adds almost five pounds to a pack, which is significant weight.
So, within 24 hours of finalizing one plan, Bob had a new one: We would be going from Peters Mountain to Yahoo Falls, a route with abundant water.
The plan also included seven people – the six already in this story plus Paul Guethner, a Patio Boy stalwart, who hoped to go but his bunion-ravaged feet would require a cortisone shot first. After he got the shot, the doctor told him he should not hike immediately. Paul, a retired doctor himself, is hardwired to follow the doctor's orders. Hence, the plan nailed down at the fire pit took another hit. Six hikers, not seven.
Finally and as planned, on Wednesday, April 23, we left Bob’s house in Fort Mitchell a little after 7 a.m., both Johns and I in Hennessy’s Ford Edge and Bill and Bob in Bill’s Honda CR-V. We would follow Bill. A simple plan. Easily followed. Then, somewhere about 60 miles south of Lexington, Bill and Bob called. “Did you take Exit 62?” Bob asked, and from his tone knowing we had not. No, we explained, we are just following you guys. That was the plan. However, somewhere along the way John Curtin had started following a different dark grey Honda CR-V that, it turned out, was being driven by a woman. Fortunately, our destination was off U.S. 27 south of Somerset, and I-75 and U.S. 27 both run north and south, reasonably close to each other. We only had to go further south to another exit and cut over. We arrived shortly after Bill and Bob at Yahoo Falls — as planned, and the hike went more or less according to plan until it didn’t.
THINGS GET MESSY
Friday morning, Plan C seemed solid. It wasn't. The old Tipple Bridge at Blue Heron was closed. It pilings were leaning, and so the Forest Service had boarded up its entrance and posted a warning to not cross it. I was unaffected, since I was continuing past there, but Bob and the others would need a new plan. Plan D.
There was little choice for them except to keep going to the next major intersection of the Trace and to reach a highway where they could call Tom to pick them up. The logical intersection would be with Yamacraw Bridge on State Highway 92, still 7 miles away. It would be later in the day and, by the time they got to Yahoo Falls, too late to safely hike to Princess Falls. Their best option would be to camp at the Yamacraw Bridge, where there were tent sites.
I should point out the significance of Princess Falls and its distance from where the cars were parked. The Patio Boys track nights out and have done so since the hiking group started in 1996. It’s a bit of a game. A competition. Leading into this trip, Bob Pauly had the most nights out at 145. Bill Ankenbauer stood in second at 136. I was third at 99, and with this trip would break 100. John Hennessy started at 97 and John Curtin 95, which meant Hennessy could also break 100 and Curtin would get close at 98.
A night out is defined as a night camped in the woods after backpacking from the car. Car camping is not counted as night out. Bob makes the rules and, like the length of the Sheltowee itself, the rules change. The current rule is that you must be at least three miles from the cars to earn a night out. Princess Falls would be more than twice that distance, so if the others got a ride from Tom to cars and then hiked back to Princess Falls to meet me, they would still get a third night out on this trip. Even camping at Yamacraw Bridge would salvage the third night out for this trip.
But on a trip defined by plans that change, they changed again.
I hiked on from Blue Heron, alone now. The wildflowers were magnificent, and I stopped from time to time to photograph them. Blood root. Fire pink. Pink azalea. Wild geraniums. Delphinium tricorne. Jack in the pulpit. Trillium luteum. And another trillium, yellow wake robin. The forest floor had armed itself in a panoply of blossoms, guarding against the last, dull, dead colors of winter. I saw a deer by a rock shelter, a turkey ahead on the trail, two tortoises sunning at two different places in trail, one black and orange and the other black and yellow, and the birds sang nonstop.
Early in the day and into the afternoon, the trail was up and down, bending in places around ridges. Some spots were tricky, going rapidly downhill, and one of those spots had a wooden ladder down the side of a small cliff. In low places, where residual water turned the trail into mush, long wooden planks were in place to carry hikers safely over squishy soil. The boards, most of them mossy, could be slippery underfoot. Hiking alone, I became more keenly award of the risk of turning an ankle or worse, and so, after slipping once, make a point of securing my footing with each step across these boardwalks.
This section of trail is is mostly well-marked by the Sheltowee Trace blaze, which is an image of a turtle designed as a woodcut might be. Now and then, the blazes are not there. Whether never installed or stolen as souvenirs, they could be missing at places where they were most needed, including at intersections with side trails. I lost the trail once and had to bushwhack through a laurel thicket to get back on track. Mostly, my walk was an uneventful matter of just covering the miles and enjoying the surroundings. I told myself some stories, sung out loud (“How many roads must a man walk down…”), counted steps, thought about our new grandson, Bear Giovanni Taluskie, and otherwise got lost in my thoughts as the miles ticked off, one by one — some going fast and some seemingly taking an eternity. All miles are not created equal.
Just after noon, I passed the “three-day” hikers from the Sheltowee Trace Hiker Challenge. The Challenge was doing a portion of this same stretch but going south while we hiked north. Also, we left on Wednesday and the Hiker Challenge is a weekend event. Most leave on Saturday and finish on Sunday. The three-day team leaves on Friday and finishes on Sunday. Having left that morning, the three-day hikers had not yet spent a night in the woods and the rain had not started yet. They looked so clean and fresh. I did not. This is a phenomenon of backpacking; you get so used to being grimy that you forget how clean that clean people look. Fresh as daises. They smell like soap. I did not.
I chatted a little with Barney Stengle, who hikes with “The Gents” — which is kind of a branch of the Patio Boys, with “our” Mark McGinnis (60 nights out) as its leader. Barney is hiking this year with the Hiker Challenge. Interestingly, The Gents were hiking this weekend, too, but further south, which is why McGinnis was not with us and the Challenge explained why Barney was not with them.
Follow all of that? I’m not sure I did. Getting kind of granular, aren’t I? It would get more so, as our group of six found itself off in different directions toward different destinations on different schedules. Mann Tracht, Un Gott Lacht.
IS A SHOTGUN REALLY NECESSARY, MA’AM?
Reaching Yamacraw Bridge, I took my pack off. Up to this point, I had pretty much hiked without stopping, not even for lunch, except for the time it took to photograph the flowers. I needed a break. Also, I had cell service for the first time in several miles so I tried calling Bill, whom I assumed would be with Bob, whom I knew did not have a phone. Bob is an i-Luddite. He goes to the woods to get away from calls and text messages. He prefers a paper map to an app. If he needs to find you, he doesn't call or text. He hollers "who-dee-who," as if on an episode of "Andy Griffin." This has evolved into the Patio Boys' primary means of backwoods communication. I hope the good folks of Mayberry are happy with this.
My phone call to Bill went straight to voicemail, suggesting that wherever Bill was, he didn’t have service. He called back after I started hiking again. It was nearly 4:30 p.m. by then. Bob and Bill were somewhere on Wilson Ridge Road, which intersects with the Sheltowee Trace three or so miles from Yamacraw.
They didn’t get there together. Bob got there first, following the trail blazes that mark the Sheltowee. Bill, a little behind him, heard a car as he hiked, meaning a road was nearby. That was Wilson Ridge Road, which parallels the trail at one point, and Bill made his way up to it. “I didn’t see any sign of anyone else, so I sat down to wait for them so I could tell them to walk up the road, where Bob was." Walking on the road would be easier, and the trail and road went the same place. After 30 minutes or so, Bill assumed he had missed the others and so he walked on, finding Bob about a mile later. Mark Talbert arrived simultaneously, taking the trail not the road. The whereabouts of John Hennessy and John Curtin were still unknown.
Bill’s detour was not without incident. Along the road, he encountered a sign warning that intruders were on camera. A man confronted him, asking if he was lost and telling him pointedly that the trail was “up there” – not here. Bill, one of the more polite and nonconfrontational people on the planet, explained that he was tired, wet, and was walking toward the road’s intersection with the trail. He intended no offense. The man told Bill the trail used to go past his house, but every time hikers went by, his dogs barked, which he considered a nuisance not of his own making. “So they moved the trail,” the man said.
It is usual for our group to be split up while hiking. No one hikes at the same pace, and there’s a saying in backpacking, “Hike your own hike.” Generally, we try to be sure no one is too far behind, and so those in the lead pause from time to time to wait for those behind to catch up. We don’t worry much. Hiking can involve risk, but it is mostly safe. That said, if someone doesn’t show up for an hour or more, worry works its way into our thoughts. Luckily for us, nothing had gone badly. Hennessy and Curtin were coming, if slowly. “I think we were just dehydrated,” Hennessy would explain on the drive home. His blisters were worse. The rain added to the misery. Then the sun came out, and they heard a car. A road must be nearby. They could maybe get a ride to Yamacraw. The glass, half empty a moment ago, was now half full.
Hennessy and Curtin made their way through the underbrush to what, as it turned out, was Wilson Ridge Road, probably at the same approximate point where Ankenbauer had found it – but Bill was long gone by this point. Exhausted and uncertain where the others might be, John Hennessey got out his phone. He had one bar, 10 percent power. So he tried to call for an Uber.
An Uber. To Wilson Ridge Road. On the Sheltowee. On a Friday night. Nearest town, Whitley City, Kentucky, population 968, most of whom can walk home from wherever in town they might be because Whitley City is only 2.32 square miles. No one need call an Uber. One of last dry counties in Kentucky, McCreary County only voted to permit alcohol sales in 2019. The local bar scene hasn’t quite caught up to the change in the law. Isn’t a vibrant bar scene part of the Uber business model?
I don’t think John Hennessey was thinking clearly. And why should he be. He and Curtin were gassed. Their clothes were damp, and it soon started raining again. It was after 6 p.m., a good two hours since Bill had arrived here. The sun was going down. Shivering, they were curled up side by side under a blue, plastic tarp – like, as Curtin would put it, “like a couple bums on the riverbank.” The Patio Boys like to hike with a simple rule: No misery. The rule was being broken.
They were able to flag a car down, but the driver was from Florida and on his way to Bandy Creek, a campground across the state line in Tennessee. Hennessy offered him $100 to take them to Yahoo Falls, but the driver wanted assurance the road there was on the way to Bandy Creek. Told it was not, the driver, already lost, declined the $100 as well as his chance to be a Good Samaritan.
Hennessey’s next call was to a shuttle volunteer, whose number he found on the Sheltowee Trace Association’s website, but the volunteer he reached happened to live in Cincinnati and so couldn’t just swing by Wilson Ridge Road, which is three hours away. Using what was left of his 10 percent charge, he revisited the website and found Tom Tounge’s number.
Tom could be there in maybe 45 minutes. “Want me to bring bologna sandwiches?” he asked. He arrived with two such sandwiches, as well root beers, and a whole new batch of stories. He loaded the two Johns up and went down Wilson Ridge Road to turnaround, which seemed to irritate a resident who had posted a sign on this public road that read “Stay the Fuck Out.”
Certain no one should come near his hermitage, he spewed a glossary of foul words as he was joined by mamma who wore a see-through nightie though what was there was to see was long past prime viewing. Armed with a shotgun that at first she cradled, then pointed at the truck, she made sure everyone knew she meant business. Curtin rolled up his window, hoping the glass was buckshot resistant. Tom apologized profusely to Mr. And Mrs., if that's what they were, not because he had done anything wrong but because saying “I’m sorry” was a small price to pay for life and limp.
ALL ROADS LEAD TO YAHOO FALLS
As Tom shuttled the two Johns from Wilson Ridge Road to Yamacraw , they passed Bob, Bill, and Tom, and asked if they wanted a shuttle out, too. No, they said, their tents were set up. They were settled in. They would just spend the night beside Wilson Ridge Road. Tom drove on as night fell and offered Hennessy and Curtin an option other than pitching their tents at Yahoo Falls or sleeping in the vehicles there. He could take them to Whitley City, where a newly remodeled motel had rooms with clean linens, Wi-Fi, the NFL draft on cable, and a swimming pool out front, not yet filled with water except for whatever the recent rains had left, which was just enough for two Canada geese. The price was $100 a night. For our weary travelers, that was a no-brainer. Curtin went inside to register. A latter-day hippie in cutoff jeans, stringy blond hair, tatted arms, and an easy countenance asked how many rooms. “One. Two guys,” Curtin said, quickly adding, “And TWO queen-sized beds,” paying no attention to the implications of the word queen but wanting to make certain that, in a county where billboards proclaim, “Holy Matrimony … One man, one woman,” the motel clerk understood these were not two men looking to challenge local ethics.
By sleeping in a bed in a motel, Hennessy and Curtin would not earn their coveted third night out this strip Rules are rules, but neither John lost sleep over the matter.
That same night, I made it another five miles past the Yarmacraw Bridge to the Cotton Patch shelter, a wooden structure with a tin roof and one side open toward the waters of the Big South Fork, and tucked about 130 feet off the trail. The rain had subsided. The day had cooled but wasn't cold. It was now 7:30 p.m.
The shelter was empty and, since it was designed for six, roomy for one. Really the only uninviting thing about it was that someone had written on the wall with pocket knife: “Bed bugs.” I would have to risk it. I blew up my air mattress and hung up my sleeping bag to dry out — it was damp from the rain. Then I made a dinner of ramen noodles and chicken bits, which come in a foil package. It was no bologna sandwich, but it would do for the night.
I settled in, propped my back against a post of the shelter, and turned on the Merlin app to let it listen for birds. In 45 minutes, it identified 18 species, and just after I shut it down another, an owl, hooted. ‘Twas time to go to bed. A time or two during the night, an animal, possibly a raccoon, could be heard coming near. I struck my walking sticks against the floor of the shelter, shined my flashlight into the woods, and the animal retreated.
The next morning, I checked in with Bill by phone, learning that the two Johns had shuttled to the cars (their motel decision was not yet known to us – it was, I suppose, the last revision of the oft-revised plans). By the time they had picked up Bob, Bill, and Mark and brought them back to the other car at Yahoo Falls, it would be 10 a.m. on Saturday. My ETA from Cotton Patch to Yahoo was exactly that. I packed up, put some music on, threw on my pack, and started walking, stopping once to purify some water. Shortly before 10, I was at Yahoo Falls. Shortly after 10, the others arrived.
Along the way, I stopped to filter water. I drank my last two ounces for breakfast, skipping a morning coffee and oatmeal. But now I was getting thirsty. John Curtin had loaned me his water purifier as I had inadvertently left mine at home. That was not a problem when I was with the group. Bill often pumped water for all of us. John’s filter had a hairline crack in the cylinder where the clean water comes out. It didn’t appear to be compromised in the cylinder where the purifying happens – so the crack seemed inconsequential. Turns out, it wasn’t, as two days of diarrhea would confirm.
Together again, we head to the Dairy Bar in Whitley City, a Tom recommendation. Burgers. Fries. Cokes. Milkshakes. Even an order of fried mushrooms. Another successful trip, plans be damned. The rain was gone, the sun out, and no one was injured or dead.
BUGS THAT BITE, AND INSTESTINAL BUGS, TOO
I inadvertently left my water pump at home, which was of no consequence while I was with the others. Someone else with a pump willingly filled my water bottles. But once I was on my own, I needed a pump. John Curtin obliged me, loaning me his. It had a crack in the output cylinder, where the water, after going through the filter chamber, passes into a hose and into a bottle. That crack, however, apparently extended unseen as a hairline into the filter chamber, meaning unfiltered water was getting to the output. I drank some of that water on Saturday morning, thinking it was filtered and any intestinal threats nullified. Apparently not. When I got back home, my gut rebelled. A bacteria had made its way through the compromised water pump and into me. Much flushing of the toilet followed.
That was one bug. Ticks were another.
They are no idle threat, inflicting discomfort and diseases. IAs for diseases, I’m currently on antibiotics just in case. As for discomfort, a fellow hiker who shall remain nameless shared his experience with the worst of these miniature predators, the abominable dick tick. Packed up at camp on a previous trip, he picked a few ticks off the usual places. Ticks are inexplicitly drawn to waists. They love the love handles. Our anonymous Patio Boy put some hand sanitizer on his love handle attackers, and they loosened their eight-legged grip, apparently a little blitzed on the isopropyl alcohol. Thus relaxed, they could then be more easily removed.
That done, he went over to some secluded trees to take care of nature’s call, only to see what he thought was a speck of dirt on the tip of his instrument. Alas, it was not dirt. So he applied some hand sanitizer on the tender flesh, enduring the sting. The tick relaxed, then went to its death. It would take years for him to tell this story. But we can all relate.
I pulled one tick off my chest on the way home, then woke up at 2 a.m. on Sunday with terrible itches on the back of my legs. My wife, Kate, gamely got up, got tweezers, and went to work, removing three deer ticks, which are tiny and known to carry Lyme disease at least. Hence the antibiotics.
Next day, two more, one elsewhere on a leg and the other clinging to my armpit, had to be tweezered, too. At least they weren’t bed bugs from the shelter.
All I can say about the ticks is that they weren’t part of the plan. But then, what on this trip was?
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