9 Days With The Black Bears

[Tipi Walter]

BACKPACKING THE CITICO WILDERNESS(Trip 99)
August 11-12-13-14-15-16-17-18-19 2009

OUT OF THE CAR AND INTO THE RAIN

FOUR BEARS ON MILL BRANCH

LEG BLOWOUT

WILL PEERSOL FROM FLORIDA

MEETING JEFFREY HUNTER, POKEY2006 AND HILL CRADDOCK ON THE BOB

DAY ONE
Trip 99 begins by driving a sidetrip up to Bald River Falls and retrieving an emergency cache I left under a blowdown from a previous trip and taking it to the car for my continuing journey into the Cherokee NF and the Citico wilderness. Once again I'm starting at a new favorite trailhead called Grassy Branch as it drops down to the South Fork Citico after about 9 creek crossings. The first photo shows my pack sitting by the South Fork creek crossing.

INITIAL DRENCHING I only got a quarter mile from the trailhead before I was walloped with a 30 minute downpour so I dumped the pack and covered it, took off my quickly soaked t-shirt, hat and glasses, leaned up the pack just right so the cover actually kept everything dry(sort of), and waited out the worst of it. It passed and I wrung out everything and hit the trail. The second shot shows my tent set up on the North Fork Citico by the very first crossing.

Here's the campsite as seen from inside the tent. The North Fork is off to the left and there's a high little area for another tent to the right.

DAY TWO
I come down off the North Fork and the South Fork and enter a big camping area called Warden Fields where I dump the pack and talk to several guys car camping in a popup trailer. All veterans, one was a Marine in Vietnam and we talked for a bit about Con Thien and the DMZ. Afterwhich I leave the group and start up the steep Rocky Flats trail and get to a great little creek valley where I set up at Ed Abbey Camp. A late evening visiting pig comes down to my tent and we swap eye contact and then it lazily bounds off.

DAY THREE
Day 3 begins with a gear list: THE SEVEN HOLY NYLONS
Mystery Ranch G6000 pack
Hilleberg Staika tent
Prolite 4 large pad
Marmot Couloir bag
Sigg liter bottles
Food
Clothing(two Smartwool Mountaineer socks, Icebreaker merino long johns, Outdoor Research goretex rainpants, Mountain Hardwear nylon t-shirt, silk turtleneck top, Wintersilk turtleneck sweaters, Arcteryx Delta SV fleece jacket, watch cap, Patagonia baseball cap, Asolo FSN 95 boots).

I leave Abbey Camp on the Rocky Flats trail and picture 5 shows the old chimney site located near the end of the 4.5 mile trail. It's a good place to rest.

LITTLE BLACK BEAR
I left Rocky Flats and tied into Mill Branch trail and as I was climbing and sweating and hauling my silver refrigerator up Mill I suddenly saw two baby black bears stumble down onto the trail from a little gully wash on the left. I got real quiet, pulled out the camera and waited for the mother. The kids ran down the trail and went up a tree on the right so I slowly hoofed it in their direction and stopped. Soon the big mother popped out on the trail with another little cub and then these two shot up and off the trail to the left, the way they came.

Then the other two cubs stumbled down the tree and onto the trail and ran back and forth, sometimes towards me, sometimes up the tree, and again back onto the trail. By this time I was filming, if you can call it that with my Cybershot, and at the same time I was calling out to let the mother know about me and to take flight.

My calls seemed to draw in one of the cubs and in a curious fit he ran right to me and then sprung back and into the brush. Goofy little guys much like baby pigs, darting all over the place. I got some decent footage and felt great about seeing four members of the bear nation, true American patriots who love America the Beautiful and America the Wild. The mother bear will probably be shot and killed by Christmas by local hunters. Fotog 6 shows the little bear.

The last foto show new trailwork on the Mill Branch by Ken Jones and his Crosscut Mountain Boys.

[Tipi Walter]

BACKPACKING THE CITICO WILDERNESS
August 2009

DAY THREE continued
EMERGENCY CRAMP
On the steepest part of the Mill trail and after seeng the bears, I stepped over a yellow jacket nest in the ground and jumped up the trail in a short sprint whereby I felt a painful knot erupt in my right calf muscle and it hurt so bad I thought for sure I got copperhead bit but, in fact, it was a popping torn muscle cramping so bad I had to drop the pack and take a looksee. After a few minutes I saddled up and walked sideways like a crab to a top, another 400 yards of near vertical treadway. I finally made it to a high camp on Mill Branch which is in the first photo.

DAY FOUR
I left Mill Camp and climbed to the gap, turned left and climbed steeply to the Little Big Horn(where the white man in me is killed, etc), and then began a pleasant Fodderstack ridge walk thru laurel to the flat grassy opening called Crowders Camp with its BMT trailpost and two firepits. The second photo shows me in camp at Crowders.

The third photo shows the tent set up in Crowder Camp, a nice place to stay and right on the Benton MacKaye trail.

DAY FIVE
I'm on the trail by 8:30 and pull one little hill to Little Big Horn and then drop to Mill Gap where the big hill of the day gets me hot and bothered but I make it to the Pine Ridge junction where I stop and take this fotog. So far I'm hornet unstung and pit viper unchallenged. My main concentration is on the left bank of the trail as I look for the telltale signs of yellow jacket nests.

Wonders upon wonders but as I sit in Harrison Gap resting a solo backpacker from Jacksonville, Florida walks and so we talk for a bit. He came in from Wolf Laurel and crossed over the Bob and dropped on Fodderstack ridge and is heading to Slickrock Creek via Crowders and the Big Stack trail. His name is Will Peersol and we talked about some of his previous backpacking destinations and Grayson Highlands came up along with the Wilson Creek area in Pisgah and so I gave him detailed insturctions on how to get to Upper Creek and the rock canyon below Babaji Point.

FOTO SIX
I stay on Fodderstack ridge and go past Cherry Log Gap and arrive at my favorite campsite I call Snow Camp. Everything's set up for the night. I'm having a one man and a dog Woodstock Festival on Fodderstack ridge.

DAY SIX
On Day 6 I leave Snow Camp and climb up a brushy trail to Bob Bald where I get a welcomed surprise and see Jeffrey Hunter(Mowgli), Pokey2006, Hill Craddock and his wife and son, Bill Hodges and others camping atop the high ground. The last fotog shows Jeffrey on the left and the rest of the group gearing up to leave.

[Tipi Walter]

BACKPACKING CITICO WILDERNESS
August 2009

DAY SIX continued
This one shows Jeffrey Hunter and Pokey2006(Jessica)gearing up camp and preparing to move out.

THE MAGNIFICENT GROUP SHOT
What's so great about this shot? My dog Shunka lines up perfectly for the picture, that's what! Here's the crew:
Jessica
Jeffrey Hunter
Bill Hodges
Hill Craddock
Elaine
Hill's son
Hill's wife
Unknown
MIGHTY SHUNKA

The next shot shows Hill and his wife Paola(hope I spelled it right)getting ready to leave. Her pack is an old European 1970s model. Looks like a cordura masterpiece.

Jeffrey Hunter with his nice camera case about ready to head off the mountain.

Hill and his family leaving the Bob.

I also leave the Bob and hoof it thru the bumblebees on the cow parsnips along Bob's Wall and drop off down to Naked Ground where I find a brilliant white and black hawk feather sitting on the trail. A very good sign and I wonder if it's from the same hawk Jeff and I saw flying over the Bob?

DAY SEVEN
After camping at Naked Ground a backpacker comes up, a guy named Rod from Alaska, and he's pulling a long trip to his old stomping grounds in the Slickrock.

[Tipi Walter]

BACKPACKING THE CITICO WILDERNESS
August 2009

DAY SEVEN continued
I leave Naked Ground and go up and over the Bob again and drop down into the Citico on the South Fork trail and fall like a rock down to a nice place I call Iron Camp. Along the way a stray hunting dog joins me(first photo) and he's a little pest. Would I leave Shunka out on the side of the road and let him wander thru the Citico for a couple of days? Uh, no. Hunters are a peculiar breed here in the southeast where I backpack, they seem to use nature for some kind of educational Kit Carson wannabe workshop but they themselves never pump nylon or sleep outdoors overnight with their dogs(or do so rarely).

THE AGE-OLD LURE OF HUNTING
You could say that hunting has been with us since the stone age, but then, so has living in hide shelters and going without flush toilets or electricity, and yet why don't hunters live like early men in these things with as much gusto as they apparently have for hunting? If hunting is a primordial macho rite of passage, so is the vision quest and living outdoors constantly, but you don't see hunters doing much of either.

GUN DROOLERS
If bear hunters feel the need to get outside, well, get a pack and start hiking, there's no need to interrupt and end the life of a forest creature who was born and bred out here but killed by a couple of probable couch potatoes from town with zero bag nights and no real overnight forest time. I always figured vegetarianism would be a better solution, both for the bears and the dogs, or a visit to Sav-A-Lot for meat, an easy alternative that uses up farmed cows and pigs but saves the bears.

OBSIDIAN BLADES
In the old days a guy in moccasins and a loin clout snuck up on a black bear with a large obsidian tipped spear or knife and brought home meat, nowadays we have organized hunts with 400 bear hunters and one thousand dogs who don't even need the meat to survive. So ends another trip rant.

DAY EIGHT
The second fotog shows Uncle Fungus on the South Fork trail and preparing to climb up the Jeffrey Hell trail.

I reach a great campsite located on a flat little dirt table somewhere on the Jeffrey Hell trail.

DAY NINE
Here's another shot of camp on the JHell trail.

And so it must end, another fine late summer trip into the Citico.