LOST BUT NOT ALONE ON THE SHELTOWEE (OR THEREABOUTS)
“If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall thy hand lead me, and they right hand shall hold me.”
Psalm 139: 9,10
BY MARK NEIKIRK
It may be best to start out by saying that as of Nov. 7, 2024, which was just nine days prior to the events recorded below, Kate and I had been married for 43 years. And at this writing, we are still married.
While I’m dispensing with the preliminaries, let me tell you about our surroundings on the day that I am about to describe, lest you misread this as a tale of woe, which it is not.
Although we had started this hike at daybreak, we found ourselves still hiking after the sun had long set. The clear night sky with the year’s last super moon, the Beaver Moon, was a sight to behold from the Sheltowee Trace Trail, and there were times when Kate and I tried to enjoy that particular and special gift of the creation. My Lord! When I first typed that last word, autocorrect wrote “gift of the cremation.” Fortunately, that is not how this story ends.
Stars multiplied the further they were from the moon, which, when proximate, drowned out their light with its own. Walking beneath this, we pondered the incomprehensible infinity above us, framed here on Earth by the shadows of the Cumberland mountains. We marveled. Though alone in the forest, we were in the company of the universe.
This sky was the definition of what’s meant by the words midnight blue. The Beaver Moon did this, brightening the black night into this cosmic shade that was simultaneously translucent and impenetrable, like fog. The old almanacs named super moons based on native and colonial folklore, and this one was named for the beavers, who in late fall tucked themselves into their lodges for the winter — and, in the days of the fur trade, unwittingly made themselves easier to trap.
This Beaver Moon also cast its furcated fate on us, as the beauty was coupled with a risk to our well-being. With daylight long gone and night established, we had lost our bearings We were lost. Lost in the woods. Lost in the woods after dark. Lost in the woods after dark on a night that was getting colder. Lost and equipped with one headlamp for two people, a map app that failed us, and no cell service.
The beauty of the night was so incredible that we were compelled to take note of it. Our minds, however, were more tuned to the essential questions that the predicament presented. Those questions fired in order like pistons in a Porsche: Is this the trail and, if not, where is it? How cold is it going to get tonight? If needed, could we start a fire? Should we call 911 — and where can we climb high enough to even get a signal to do so?
The pistons, the questions, kept firing: Should we turn around and retrace our steps to the last directional sign we saw in case we misread it? Or should we press on? Why does our map app not show the Sheltowee? How much battery is left in my iPhone to even consult the app? Or to call 911? How much battery is left in our one headlamp? How much in our bodies?
Kate brought the one headlamp. In my hubris, I left mine because I had no intention of still being on the trail after sundown. My headlamp, which is rechargeable and on this particular day fully charged, clips on the bill of my cap and weighs about 3 ounces. It’s not as if the extra weight would have killed me. Still, I looked at it in the side pocket of the tent when I was dressing and told myself: “Leave it. It’s extra weight. Travel light.”
HOW THIS TRIP CAME TO BE
Kate might reasonably have asked herself at any point during the night why she ever agreed to come on this hike. She doesn’t have the passion for this trail that I have, though I try to be infectious. She had not trained for a long hike. There were plenty of fun things to do at home. We have a horse. We have grandchildren. We have central heating, good books, two Sony televisions, a wine refrigerator. On cold days, we go to hot yoga.
I had persistently asked her to go with me all year as I tried to hike as much of Sheltowee’s 334.5 miles as my schedule would allow. This section, I told her, would be among the easiest. It was also the last of the year. If she was ever going to say yes, now would be the time. I expected her to say, as she had before, “I’d really like to go but this weekend won’t work.” Instead, she said, “I think I’d like to go.”
Last December, I signed up with the Sheltowee Trace Association, which organizes and supports a yearlong Hiker Challenge. It’s an open invitation to inexperienced and experienced hikers alike to cover the Sheltowee one weekend at a time. Each month, there are two options for a section hike, typically the second and third weekends of each month, January through November. For a small fee, the association takes care of the logistics — a shuttle, any permits required, information about where to camp and where to be when, and, typically, snacks, otherwise known as “trail magic,” at the midpoint.
A good friend from a local running group, Paul Seibert, told me of the Challenge while we were out on Christmas Eve morning. Our group, Pain by Numbers, has an annual tradition of running through downtown Cincinnati loaded with hats, scarves, gloves, socks, a few coats and sweaters, and some Christmas candy. We depart around 6 a.m., with headlamps, from Newport, Ky., our home base, run over the Ohio River bridge to the city. When we see a person sleeping on the street or otherwise obviously without a home to go to in what is a festive season for most of us, we offer what we have until we run out. It doesn’t solve systemic homelessness, but we do good on a day meant to celebrate giving and love.
On the way back last Christmas, Paul mentioned that he was going to do the Hiker Challenge, and explained to me what it is. He had only modest experience camping and little equipment. I’ve camped in a tent for what amounts, in total, to at least a year of my life. I offered to help Paul equip himself and agreed, also, to hike with him when I could. I was able to do seven of the first eleven sections.
Now, nearly a year later, Kate and I would join Paul and the other Challenge hikers for Section 12, which begins and ends in the Big South Fork Recreation Area in Tennessee about 80 miles north of Knoxville. The total distance for the section would be less than 25 miles, whereas many of the other eleven sections are 30 miles or even 40. Spread over two days, it would be a reasonable distance for Kate, who is good in shape but she also has asthma and had not been doing this all year, as I had. Her legs were not in peak hiking condition. However, this section of the trail, though technical in places, didn’t have the steep, lung- burning climbs found in other sections. She could handle it. We would go at her pace.
I packed everything on Thursday for our Friday departure, consulting the weekend weather forecast to determine which sleeping bags to bring (the warmer ones) and planning our meals and how to cook them in the woods. I made sure I had the right map and the indispensable A Guide to the Sheltowee Trace National Recreation Trail, published by the Sheltowee Trace Trail Association late last year. The Association’s support team, led by the director, Steve Barbour, would be shuttling us to the trails, providing some midpoint snacks (“trail magic”), and generally be available as might be needed.
And I had a map app, All Trails, on my iPhone. All set. What could possibly go wrong?
GETTING TO, AND ON, THE TRAIL
We left on Friday afternoon, Nov. 15, and drove the couple of hundred miles south to Tennessee and then down a Forest Service gravel road to get to the halfway point of the planned hike, the Honey Creek Trailhead.
There, we set up our tents among the others already there. About 30 or 40 people would be doing this section. Some were camped here, others at the hike’s starting point or elsewhere; typically, a few get a motel room for Friday night. I started a campfire for the group, and we got acquainted or, if we’d met before, reacquainted. When others asked how many sections Kate had hiked, she smiled and replied, “This is my first.” Most of this group were about to be end-to-enders, having completed all twelve sections. Kate and I were the exception, but we were warmly welcomed.
Saturday morning, we drove to Section Twelve’s endpoint at the Burnt Mill Bridge parking lot and then rode in an Association shuttle van to the starting point at Bandy Creek. From there, we would hike to our tents, spend the night, and on Sunday morning hike just 7 miles to our cars at Burnt Mill Bridge. Then we would drive the 3 miles on the Forest Service back to our tent sites, pack them up on go home. A simple plan.
Pitching tents at the midpoint allows for a kind of hiking called “slackpacking” and contrasts to backpacking, which requires a full pack with your tent, sleeping bag, clothes, food, cook stove, all the rest. With slackpacking, you carry a daypack with little more than water and a light lunch. Maybe a rain suit, a lightweight puffy jacket, a Bic lighter in case you need to start a fire, and, if you are thinking straight, a headlamp. Nowadays, you also pack your iPhone and a charger. A full backpack might weigh 30 pounds. A slackpack might weigh ten. It allows you to cover more miles faster.
A LITTLE BACKGROUND AS TO WHY THE TRACE
I’ve known about the Sheltowee Trace since its founding in 1979 and had hiked significant sections of it. The Patio Boys (www.patioboys.com) is a neighborhood hiking group (“a drinking club with a hiking problem”) that I’ve hiked with for nearly 20 years. The group started out by hiking the Trace one weekend at a time until they had completed it, end to end.
By the time I joined in 2005, the Patio Boys were down to just a couple of four-day weekends from completing the whole trail. Having missed the rest, I’ve always wanted to hike the sections I had not. The Challenge provided that opportunity. I’d be covering ground I’d covered before from time to time, but at other times experiencing sections of the Trace for the first time.
I had two other motivations. One is that I’ve become deeply interested in the history of the trail and the forests around it. I am writing a book about that history, including the story of the Paleo-Indians, who had a thriving culture along the corridor of the trail thousands of years before we, the modern recreational users of the Daniel Boone National Forest — through which the trail passes — were born. You are as surely in the presence of past civilizations in these forests as you are in the presence of the Pyramids or the Acropolis. Here, people developed an agriculture from wild plants, they learned to use fire, they developed rituals for burials, they carved images into stone.
The geological history of the trail’s territory is part of the story, too. Here, a vast ocean rose and fell, its sediments forming today’s massive sandstone rocks which were subsequently shaped by water, weather and gravity. Sometimes, if you look up and see a big rock with a piece the size of a bus missing, you can look downhill and see the bus. Gravity.
Given my intention to write this story, my hikes this year have been research so that I can see the places I read about in various libraries and in the old journals of Kentucky’s early explorers or the published works of scholars or the court records left from the countless fights the environmental movement has waged to save the forest from mining, logging, and a host of other threats, often with inspirational success but also with devastating defeats.
OFF TO A LOVELY START
Bandy Creek is an expansive recreational area with campsites and picnic tables but also a visitors’ center, a general store, showers, an RV park, a swimming pool, and a park headquarters with rangers. It is a crossroads for many trails in the Big South Fork, including the Sheltowee Trace and the John Muir Trail, which converge near here. Other trails splinter off. The Litton Farm Loop. The Duncan Hollow Bike Loop. The Pilot Wines Loop. Twin Arches. Laurel Dell.
This is surely one of the most scenic forests in the east, with stunning high places overlooking vast valleys and then equally stunning but more intimate low places, often laced by mountain streams large and small. There is local history, including an old moonshine still and the grave of infant, Archie Smith, who died in 1932. He was just shy of being five months old when he was taken by dysentery.
The shuttle got us to Bandy Creek a little after 7:30 a.m. After a festive group photograph, Paul, Kate, Paul and I set out with the other hikers, our group numbering about ten. Everyone was chatting and laughing. “You won’t have to worry about bears with this group,” Kate remarked, citing the best-known bear deterrent — making a joyful noise.
The core of this group had been together since January, and now they were on the last section of the trail for two days. Saturday would be longer day at 17 miles. Sunday, the final hike, would be just seven miles from the Honey Creek Trailhead — where our tents were set — to Burnt Mill Bridge over the Clear Fork River, a tributary of the Big South Fork of the Cumberland River.
It was a cool but warming morning. Though it was her first hike with these good people, Kate could feel the joy of the community they had built over the course of a year of hiking together. She was impressed by the number of women in the group and commented that the Hiker Challenge gave the support needed for a woman to go into the woods for a long hike without the worries a woman hiking alone might face. As crazy as it is, a woman in 2024 must be concerned about threats that men don’t face. The fictional scenes of Deliverance aside, rape and violence are a much greater concern for women than men.
This threat may be even more so in 2024 America than it was, say, 15 or 20 years ago. The enemies of decency are having a moment. Women worry, so do people who are different in some way if “different” even means anything given the great diversity of the human race. Aren’t we all different? This hike is peopled by people who welcome all people to hike and be part of this community. I don’t wish to get political here, but I so like this kind of direct action over rhetoric. Instead of talking about including, include. The Sheltowee Trace Association’s Hiker Challenge is a counterweight to an unfortunate trend.
ON OUR OWN — AND LOVING THE HIKE
For the early miles, Kate and I stuck with the group, covering about a mile every 30 minutes or so. After a ways, we fell back. Kate hasn’t had a year of on-the-trail training, so we took our time, slowing to 40-minute miles. At that pace, we should have finished around dinner time and before the night’s cooler temperatures settled in. There was no particular need to feel rushed.
We took the short side trail to the Angel Falls overlook, which provides a soaring hawk’s view of the Big South Fork of the Cumberland River as it spills over and splits around boulders. Here, another hiker released the ashes of his late son into the fall air to be carried into this place for all time. Fare thee well, Hunter.
Back on the trail, we came around a turn to a vast rock shelter, and a biologist from Oak Ridge, which is nearby, was teaching friends how these rocks were created and shaped by the ocean that once covered this place. Iron deposits, she explained, colored the sandstone this reddish hue. She pointed to the pebbles embedded in the stone. White, they are quartz and look exactly like pebbles you might find on a Carolina beach. This is no coincidence. Nearby rivers that drain east dissolved some of the stone into sand, then carried the cargo to the ocean and its shores. Freed, some of the pebbles went along for the ride. I’ll never look at a rock shelter, or a beach, the same after her informative descriptions. She did it with such ease, reading the rocks as though she were reading a book.
From this point, the trail went down and followed the Big South Fork. Mostly flat, the trail paralleled the river and provided long, uninterrupted views of it. I am a fan of wild rivers, the way they pool behind boulders, then cut loose into rapids and rivulets over and around others. Rivers like this are extraverts in a forest of introverts. The towering rocks and hardwoods are the forest’s quiet, well-behaved residents. Staid. Solid. Stationary. The water in the rivers is just passing through, on its way to elsewhere and often in a hurry to get there.
Around 2:30 p.m., we reached the hike’s approximate midpoint at the Leatherwood Ford Bridge over the Big South Fork. We were 8.5 miles into the day’s hike, with about 7 miles to go.
The Sheltowee Trace team was there with cold soda and chips. The aforementioned trail magic. Steve Barbour and his partner, Karen Weber, welcomed us, checked on our well-being and told Kate that if she was worn down, she could ride back to the Honey Creek Trailhead in one of the association’s vans and skip the rest of the hike. “No,” she replied, “I think I’ll be fine.” She wondered, though, if we were the last of the group. Steve said there were still three more hikers behind us. By now, most of the hikers who came on the later shuttle (we left at Burnt Mill at 7 a.m., they left at 8:30 a.m.) had passed us, their pace considerably faster than our own.
The trail continued flat along the river for about 2 miles to another bridge, this for the old Oneida and Western Railroad. We crossed, then took time to chat with a group of horseback riders. We have a horse, and once had two. Kate rides and pitches in at our boarding barn to feed all the horses. She is at home among horse people. And one couple on the trail was from Boone County, Ky., where we board our horse, and they knew our boarding barn. We talked, as strangers with common interests do.
One of the three hikers behind us passed ahead as I answered a request to snap a group photo of the trail riders. Kate offered to hold one of the horses — a handsome white walking horse — that wasn’t tethered to a nearby hitch. His owner asked Kate if she was comfortable holding the horse. “Oh, yes,” she answered, more comfortable probably than she had been all day.
The day’s most taxing climb awaited. A 600-foot altitude gain. Kate has asthma. Consequential asthma. On an uphill, she has to go slow, take breaks, and sometimes needs her inhaler. This hill took its toll, and those last two hikers passed us. Still, we seemed to be on track to be at the tents in time for a cookout with burgers and chips. The Challenge hikers planned this celebration of their last section and, though he didn’t yet know it, of Steve Barbour’s 70th birthday, which was around the corner. Everyone chipped in for the food. We had brought buns, pickles and mustard.
With the big climb accomplished, we slowed a little more. By now, Kate was exhausted enough to mention it. She required more rest to recover her wind. It was, I think, about 5:30 p.m. “I’ve never walked 15 miles before,” she observed, but then corrected herself. She has walked the Flying Pig Half-Marathon, 13.1 miles, several times, and since participants usually park at least a mile from the starting line, she had in fact walked 15 miles a few times in her life.
But the rocky, up-and-down trails of the forest are not the paved, unobstructed streets of the city. With greater surety, they turn the lungs into pain centers and the legs into jelly. “Don’t worry,” I assured my wife, who had trusted me when I first asked her to come on this hike with an assurance that it would not be hard. “We just have a couple of miles to go.”
The next distance sign we came to said three miles. Two miles. Three miles. Either way, we were on the homestretch.
GETTING LOST, OR AS WE LIKE TO SAY, “MISPLACED”
From the mileage sign, the trail turned downhill, which would be nice except that down always means one thing: Up will follow. In hiking, it’s a bummer to give up hard-earned elevation. We had just gained those 600 feet. We were about to give half of it back, and, in the end, climb another 100 feet to the Honey Creek Trailhead, this route’s high point. So net, we could expect 400 feet of climbing before day’s end.
That’s if we did everything right. That’s if we didn’t lose the trail in the dark and find ourselves wandering uphill and down, looking for the lost trail. Since we did lose the trail and did go up and down over and again in the coming hours, our gross elevation gain was destined to be a big number. And gross matters more in hiking than net. If you climb 1,000 feet and go down 900 your net is 100 feet, but you still climbed 1,000 feet. It is the gross, not the net, that wears you down.
When this hike was over, the All Trails mapping of our route showed a simple, single line down and then a tangle that looks like an Etch-a-Sketch in the hands of a two-year-old. Scraw. A pile of spaghetti. A bird’s nest of fishing line. That’s us looking for the trail.
Before the night ended when we arrived safely back at our tents at 1:30 a.m. on Sunday, we were beginning to feel lost — or as we say in the Patio Boys, “misplaced.” One is never “lost.” That is reserved for the dissolute, for profligates, for sinners. It’s easier to keep your wits about you when you are only misplaced.
When I returned and told a friend the short version of this story, he complimented Kate for not freaking out and said his wife would have said, “I don’t care if you have to empty out the savings account and the 401K, get a helicopter here right now.” Kate displayed considerably more patience.
SO … AH … WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED?
I have tried to come to terms with how we could have spent so much time looking for what turned out, in the end, to be a simple enough route. The best I can do is tell you how it all unfolded.
As we came down, the trail turned technical. At one point, we were on all fours climbing between a boulder and a rock shelter. There was an arrow painted on the boulder to tell us “this way,” but it seemed sketchy. Kate asked me if we were off trail. Surely, she reasoned, the main route would not have us crawling around like insects. “This is the trail,” I said, feigning confidence. “We’re fine.” What I didn’t say was, “I hope we’re fine. But a trail marker other than an arrow painted on a rock would be helpful right now.” Hiking requires constant assurances. Trails split, and while one route might go where you want to go another might go to Alaska. Or Walmart. Or just in a circle. We were not sure where we were going at this point — but on we went, hoping for clarity ahead.
The Sheltowee is marked with metal triangles, called blazes, on which are printed the image of a turtle, designed by Vern Orndorff, who laid the trail out in the 1970s. A landscape architect for the US Forest Service, Orndorff had a vision and the will to see it through. He trudged up mountainsides through thickets, measured grades, negotiated right-of-way as well as bureaucracies, and flagged the route for volunteers, who cleared the final pathways.
The trail’s original path is through the Daniel Boone National Forest in Kentucky. Like the forest, the trail also takes its name from Boone’s Shawnee name, given to him while he was a tribal captive. It means Big Turtle, and hence the image on the blaze. To see a turtle blaze is to know you are still on the trail. Over the years, the trail has been extended further south through the Big South Fork and into Tennessee. It will be extended a little further in the years to come.
As we descended further, we saw a turtle blaze. It should have been convincing evidence, but we still had doubts because the trail was getting much more primitive than it had been to this point. Kate’s doubts especially were growing. She didn’t sign up for this, and she simply could not believe this was the main trail. She urged that we turn back, climb to that last destination sign, and confirm we were going the right way.
That would involve a one-mile backtrack uphill, and if it told us to go back down, as I expected it would, we would have wasted an hour at least. I asked for patience to press on. But the trial wasn’t helping me convince her. At one point, it was necessary to sit down on a flat rock at the precipice of a drop of about five feet, then slide forward until your feet touched solid ground. What else would be asked of us?
This was definitely getting harrier, and our light was fading. Also, while daytime temperatures were in the 70s, nighttime temperatures were going to drop into the high 30s.
AND THEN THINGS GOT A LITTLE DICEY
This would be a good time to mention again my hubris. I was in short pants, I had two layers of wool pullover shirts and a lightweight down vest. The morning had been cool but as the sun came up, I removed layers. For the same reason, I didn’t bring a headlamp, and I didn’t bring my warmest clothes. I expected to be back to the Honey Creek Trailhead before it got cold, dark, or both.
Kate had packed her headlamp with fresh batteries, and she had a down puffy jacket with a hood. She also had gloves. The only concessions to potential failure in my daypack were some snacks, a water filter, and, thankfully, a clever little carabiner that has a sparker on it — like an old Zippo lighter, with a flint and small grinder wheel. I could start a fire if it came to that. I had toilet paper that would ignite easily. As I walked, I mentally inventoried all of that just in case. We might be out here longer than expected, I realized.
Sometimes you think you are the smartest person on the planet as you proffer advice, then learn you were, in fact, stupid. I told Kate at the start of the hike that she could leave her puffy jacket in the shuttle as she would be unlikely to need it for the rest of the day. She said it didn’t weigh much and she preferred to keep it with her since, whenever we stopped, she sometimes felt chilled, especially if in the shade. Her decision was providential; ignoring my advice fortuitous. While I wished I had a puffy jacket at this point, I was damn glad she had one.
By now, I had also consulted All Trails, but it is not the preferred navigational app for the Sheltowee. Its competitor, Far Out, is, but I did not have that app. All Trails was not showing the Sheltowee at all. It seemed to suggest we were on or near the Honey Creek Loop. I consulted my paper map, which indicated that the loop, once you committed to it, wasn’t much longer than being on the Trace. But honestly, by now little was clear — except that soon we would be completely in the dark and dependent on our one headlight to help us to decode a labyrinth. We might be on the loop. We might be on the Trace. We might be on neither.
The trail carried us downhill further, ending finally at Ice Castle Falls, apparently a sight to see if you came in daylight. For us, it was a shadowy, foreboding wall of rock that gave us the impression that the trail had abruptly ended. Ice Castle Falls. You can’t go over it, you can’t go under it. Could you go around it?
Here is where the biggest problem of the evening availed itself. A directional sign pointed straight up with an arrow above the words “Ice Castle Falls.” On the same sign, two other arrows pointed in opposite directions and bookended the words, “Main Trail.” It was confusing as hell. It was telling us to go both left and right. What did this sign mean?
Mocking us further was a backpacker’s tent, pitched to our right but with no sign of an inhabitant. We called out, hoping for a word about which way to go. No answer. Either the tent was vacant or the occupant was not taking any inquiries this evening.
PROBING IN THE DARK FOR THE RIGHT WAY
We probed for a trail. Or rather, the trail.
Because animals also use the woods, there are trails all over the place. There are also side trails made by humans exploring this and that. Those false trails peter out quickly. A real trail keeps going and eventually is marked with a blaze. It obviates itself by not ending. Simple as that.
The sign with the arrows should have been some confirmation we were where we should be. But it was a perplexing sign to see. Perhaps the trail was in both directions and looped back on itself. I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t even sure if “Main Trail” was a reference to the Sheltowee or some other trail. With few options other than to explore, I went to the right first but simply encountered a rock wall that was taller than my field of vision. Together, we explored left over a small creek, which wove through tipsy flat rocks. What might be a trail came out across the creek maybe 50 yards down. Repeating what had become the night’s routine, I left Kate to sit and rest while I took the headlamp and followed the possible trail into thick woods. There was no blaze, and soon enough the trail ended in a tangle of underbrush. I returned to where Kate was waiting and tried the All Trails app again. Still, no evidence of the Sheltowee and the Honey Creek Loop was further away. I tried the left trail once, just in case it bent around that underbrush. It did not.
Maybe you are right, I told Kate. Maybe we should go back to the sign on top of the ridge and see what we can figure out. We’d be up higher. Maybe we could get a bar on our phones and make a call and get some guidance.
And so we headed up, teased again by a couple of Sheltowee blazes along the way. They were maddening. Are we on the trail or aren’t we, and if we are, why does it just end at Ice Castle Falls? We climbed back up over this very technical part of the trail, coming to an expansive flat rock. A trail went off to the right. It led back to the creek, and then over to the mute tent and Ice Castle Falls. We called out again for a helping hand. No reply.
Letting Kate rest, I probed left and right again but could find no way forward in the dark. No blazes down that left trail, which I walked on a little further this time. That was definitely not the trail. I felt I had at least determined that. We had one less choice to consider. That’s a good thing. Just not a good enough thing.
We committed again to going back to the directional sign on top of the ridge. That, however, proved difficult again and again. Each time, we ended up in one of two places — either at a big flat rock with no trail leading up or diverted to a side trail that led to mini-cliff with a thick rope hanging over it for climbing down. We knew we had not climbed up that rope to get there, so that could not be the way back.
Over and again, we went up and down these trails hoping to see something we had not seen before. Each time we came to the tent, we tried to wake the dead man in that tent, who must be having the best dream of his life. Or maybe the tent was just empty.
We walked back up to the flat rock. On the way up, my right hiking pole got stuck in a rope and pulled me down hard. My knee, my arm, and my face hit the ground. When I looked to my right, I could see a cliff’s edge. I have no idea how far down it was. Maybe five feet. Maybe 500. I stood up, not seriously injured. A scratch or two. A sore knee. Onward and upward.
Sitting on that flat rock to try and think things through, I pulled out the paper map and the Sheltowee guidebook to see what I could figure out. After all, we had two good indicators to work with. One, Ice Castle Falls was on the map, and we knew all too well where it was. Two, there were Sheltowee blazes down the hill from us, suggesting we were not off trail.
One problem, though. I could not see to read. I reached up to my face. My trifocals were missing. They had come off during the fall. I hadn’t noticed since my distance vision is good to 30 years, about the distance the headlamp shines. However far that cliff might have been, my glasses – which I had just replaced a month earlier at a cost of $800 – were at the bottom of it.
With Kate reading for both of us, we found something important. The guidebook had a picture of that ridiculous sign at Ice Castle Falls with its arrows pointing in opposite directions. This was absolute proof that we were where we were supposed to be. Up until then, I thought maybe the Sheltowee Trace somehow passed by the top of Ice Castle Falls and we were at the bottom. This picture proved the bottom was the right place. The only question was where the trail went from there, left or right. Apparently, we had not looked hard enough.
I would later learn – when we got home – that I was here before in 2017 with the Patio Boys. There’s even a photo of that sign in our archives. I have no recollection of that, maybe because we were in the daytime. But this fact is nearly driving me nuts. I should have recognized something.
We walked back to the sign. Oddly, we had been up and down so many times that the trails down — there were at least two, one with a spur to the rope — had become a confusion as to which was which. We went down but ended up at the rope. I took the light, Kate took a break, and I went looking for the trail to the tent. Fearing we were getting too separated; I returned to get her. “I think I just saw a bear,” she said. She might have, although at this point in the night every shadow seemed to be something menacing.
I looked up. The night sky was incredibly beautiful. We were uninjured. We were in reasonably good spirits. Kate even joked, “At least you’ll have something to write about.” And though my glasses were missing, it was my glasses that went over the cliff, not me. Providential.
We made our way back to the Ice Castle Falls sign one last time to look for the trail. I tried left and right again and again found nothing. Kate, plaintively, called out to the tent where the mime slept. “Please help us. We are lost. We will not harm you. Please. We are lost. Just point us to the trail and we’ll be on our way.” The rocks of Ice Castle Falls were more responsive inasmuch as Kate’s voice echoed off them. Not a sound came from the tent.
Back up we went, Kate resting at the junction with the trail to the rope to the left and, uphill, to the flat rock. I wanted to take a better look at the rock and rope. When we first encountered it, we were trying to find our way uphill to those last seen directional signs on the top of this ridge. We had not come over this wall to arrive here, so the rope was not the way back to the ridge top. But where did it go? It was after 11 p.m. now. Nearly five hours had passed since that 3-mile sign on the ridge. Maybe the trail below the rope and rock went somewhere other than this lost valley.
At the rope, I shined the light over the rock and, lo and behold, its beam reflected off a blaze. It was a blue silhouette of two walkers, a blaze we had seen along the trail all day. It meant this was a walking trail, closed to horses, bikes, and ATV’s. It was not confirmation that the trail was the Sheltowee, but it was confirmation of an actual trail. Furthermore, there was a wooden bridge just past the blaze. This trail was well-used enough to warrant infrastructure.
I went back to get Kate. She was justifiably unsure about this route and asked, “Are you sure?” I was not, but we seemed out of options. We needed to keep moving; anytime we stopped, I was shivering. It was either walk or stop, build a fire, and give up until daylight. We weren’t ready to do that.
HOMEWARD BOUND … UNTIL WE WEREN’T
With no experience rappelling, and having to do it in the dark, Kate was reticent about the rope. This was rudimentary and the distance to the ground modest — maybe eight feet. Nonetheless it involved strength and faith to execute, and she was low on both at this point. I coached and, like gym class, spotted her from the ground until she was safely down. Another of the night’s small challenges had been overcome. We were now where we should have been hours ago.
It is stunning how simple the solution seems once you solve a problem. It’s true in calculus, automobile repair, and hiking.
The combined Sheltowee/Muir trails goes to Ice Castle Falls so hikers can enjoy its majesty. It is worth seeing — in daylight. Seven years ago, I saw it. As we would later learn, the arrow to the right was pointing toward the rope and rock. The trail, however, was blocked by a fallen tree, and thus difficult to discern in the dark. What Kate and I had stumbled up on was a second route to the rock and rope that cut off the main trail a little short of Ice Castle Falls.
Within the next half mile, we saw trail blazes confirming that we were on the John Muir Trail. The Sheltowee shares its route with John Muir here. We were feeling like progress was being made.
And then there was a junction.
The trail came to a place where there were well-spaced trees with little undergrowth. It was not clear if it went right, left, or straight. Because the forest floor is covered in fallen leaves at this time of year, a trail can be hidden beneath them. Everything looks like a trail. And nothing looks like a trail.
A sharp right seemed the most trail-like, so we took that and immediately saw one of the walker blazes on the backside of a tree, placed there for people coming uphill and signaling to them to turn left — that is, toward where we were coming from; toward, that is, the bridge, the rope, and to Ice Castle Falls.
I took the right, leaving Kate to rest. She curled on the leavy ground and took a catnap. I walked about an eighth of a mile. No more blazes. And the trail was descending steeply. Shouldn’t we be going uphill by now? After all, we left those directional signs with just three miles to go and we must have come at least two by now. The Honey Creek Trailhead is the high point. It seemed illogical that we would be going steeply downhill at this point.
I went back to tell Kate that going right was probably incorrect, and I probed straight ahead, which was uphill and seemed promising. I returned to get her and we walked uphill, now with the headlamp off to preserve its battery. This trail, which, as it turned out, was not a trail at all, just a clearing, was unobstructed and easy to walk. The moon gave us abundant light here. Elsewhere, the high walls of the cliffs and mountains and the heavier tree cover blocked the moon’s light. We could save some headlamp battery here. As Janis Joplin put it, “Get it while you can.”
WAIT: YOU HAD A SMART PHONE … AND YOU STILL GOT LOST? WTF?
You never know in remote areas which service will work best. I have Verizon, Kate has T-Mobile. Neither had a bar whenever we checked. Mostly, we kept the phone on airplane mode to save battery, but after a day of use, including for All Trails, my battery was now down to 10 percent and fading quickly into single digits, a fateful countdown. It was a particular insult to think that I had wasted power on a map app that was, as they say in these parts, more useless that tits on a boar hog. That ate power.
Incidentally, there are wild boar hogs around here — and they can be dangerous. Fortunately, we did not encounter any of them but the coyotes were making those devilish shrills they make in the night, and Kate asked nervously, “Do coyotes eat people?” I immediately answered with unwavering certainty, “They do not.” If only I was as sure as I sounded. An owl hooted, too. I was more certain we would not be attacked by the wise one. The hooting was weirdly comforting, maybe because we had heard it Friday night in our tent. If this was the same owl, then we were close. Delusional thoughts are a byproduct of being misplaced.
Our walk uphill was not fruitful. If we were ever on a trail at all, it soon disintegrated into nothing more than an open forest, its floor covered in a thick layer of leaves. I thought I saw a Forest Service road ahead; it was just a flatter spot of mountain. We turned back. The downhill trail to the right must have been the way to go. I just hadn’t gone far enough.
We had thought to bring a phone charger. When Kate went to REI on Friday morning to buy some hiking pants to replace a pair that had ripped open on another hike, she asked if I needed anything. “A power bank if they have one at a reasonable price,” I suggested. REI had a nice one on sale. I put in it my day pack along with an iPhone cord. But when we went to use it, we discovered it had its own chord built in. Nifty. Problem was, it was not an iPhone chord but a USB-C that would have fit, with cruel irony, my headlamp — had I brought my headlamp.
I took Kate’s phone off airplane mode to see if we could hear the beep of a signal as we walked. Soon enough, we did – and I turned my phone back on to see if Steve or Paul has called or sent a text. Both had; Steve’s read: “You all ok? Getting late.” The time stamp was 12:23 a.m., but he likely sent it hours earlier. I called Steve. He answered.
“We’re fine. Not injured,” I reported.
“Where are you?”
“Not sure…” and the phone went dead before I could give him landmarks that would have given him enough information to guide us in.
My phone was dead, and we didn’t have Steve’s number programmed into Kate’s phone.. And our half bar of service kept coming and going, making it difficult to find the Sheltowee Trace Association website, where Steve’s cell number is posted. Out of choices, we tried to make an SOS call from Kate’s phone. It didn’t go through either.
We resumed walking, heading back to the junction to see what we could see. The woods were homogenous. It was difficult to be sure of the way back to the blaze, so we walked slowly, deliberately, my head sweeping right, then left until the headlamp reflected off the blaze. We turned right and headed downhill. There was no other discernible trail. This downhill trail was the only option, so we headed down.
Not much further than the distance we had first probed, another blaze appeared, and, lo and behold, it was a Sheltowee marker. We were, it seemed, exactly where we should be now. Some part of me still wondered, though, if we had somehow dissected the woods and come to another part of the Sheltowee, and Kate asked, “Are we just back on the part of the trail we already have been on?” We were not. “We would be at the wooden bridge by now,” I responded, and we walked on, warming up and feeling as though this was going to work out without a night of hunkering down. Or a rescue.
1 A.M. AND THE HOMESTRETCH AT LAST
Something marvelous happened. The trail began to go uphill. Maybe this was it. The final ascent to the Honey Creek Trailhead. Maybe was the operative word. But odds were improving and, finally, we had strong cell service. A text we sent Steve to let him know this was Kate’s phone had gone through and he had replied, “Are you physically ok? Do you have cold weather protection? Can you make fire?” I had responded: “Yes. Not dire.” I felt by then we would make it out and wanted to be sure he did not come looking for us.
He next asked: “Any idea where you are?” At the time he sent that, we were still on that ambiguous uphill, searching for the trail, but by the time I received it were on the Trace — and I responded now in real time: “We are on the ST going up a steep hill.” His answer: “OK.” Next from me: “Hoping this is the ascent to the road… will know soon. Kate is tired but in good spirits.” His reply: “Good.” As Andy Griffrin used to say of those who are succinct and learn, "He doesn't chew his cabbage twice."
“Happy birthday,” I added, as we had missed a campfire party celebrating the occasion.
A few more minutes passed, and Steve sent this text, “See headlamps,” meaning he saw ours, bobbing in the night, “Do you see my van lights?”
We did. We were there. It was 1:30 a.m. While I walked the 300 yards from the campsite to the parking lot where Steve was trying to sleep in his van, Kate headed to the tent. And to the comfort of her zero-degree sleeping bag. If relief were a thing you could see, we would have been blinded by it.
I apologized to Steve for the consternation we caused, gave him a brief report about the night’s confusion, and left him to get what sleep he could before daybreak. Hikers would be heading out for the last 7 miles of the Challenge, and Steve would be there to greet them with a congratulatory banner on the old Burnt Mill Bridge, where they could pose for a triumphant picture. I would make that hike with Paul and celebrate with him, but Kate already had informed me, “I’m not hiking tomorrow.”
Back at our tent, Kate and Paul were chatting. We were all in a good mood. This has ended well, and as I said at the beginning, the fall woods under a bright Beaver Moon on crisp, clear sky was gorgeous. I told Paul I would be ready to go by 8 a.m. As a sort of “by the way,” I wondered if that tent by Ice Castle Falls was there when he and others passed by in daylight. It was, and apparently had been there for some time. A couple of months later, when the 2025 Hiker Challenge covered this same trail, the tent was gone. It shall remain a mystery.
I woke up just after 7, as did Kate. When I looked over, she was smiling. We could hear Paul outside — his tent was pitched beside ours and the others were pitched on a flat spot in the woods at least an acre in size. He was making coffee and talking to a woman who inquired of him, “Did that older couple make it back last night?”
Did she mean us? She did. At 68 and 69 respectively, I guess Kate and I are older. But we were feeling kind of young. Frisky even. Yes, we had been lost – misplaced – but we made it back.
In retrospect, I could catalog the reasons this happened. Our hiking pace was slow, and that meant we would be hiking alone without the collective wisdom of a group, which, when at a confusing junction such as Ice Caster Falls, figures it out together. Likely, there would have been at least one person in the group who had been there before.
I also should have read every line in the guidebook and committed it to memory. The double-arrowed sign is in there. And I now know the sign’s intentions. Its arrows are angled slightly downward, and that was the sign maker’s way of saying the trail was behind us, not straight out to either side. While that makes perfect sense now, and is in fact is where the trail was, it did not “read” that way to me at the time. The trail we came down to arrive at Ice Castle Falls was behind us to our left, and the trail away from Ice Castle Falls was behind us to the left.
Another lapse involves the trail app I relied on The Sheltowee Trace Trail Association advises the use of the map app Far Out rather than All Trails. The Association is a partner in keeping Far Out updated, and by and large Far Out has proven more reliable than All Trails. But I already had All Trails and have used it successfully in many places in America, including on the Sheltowee. It wasn’t a problem until it was. I should have paid the modest price of a Far Out subscription.
A final lesson: Plan for trouble, then avoid it. I should have had a headlamp. I should have had a warm jacket, knowing it would dip below 40 once the sun set.
One final thing to report. Kate told me “I love you” more times during the seven hours that we wandered through the woods in the dark than she has in a long time. We should get lost in the woods more often.
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