For Christmas I decided to have a little adventure. So I went to Kisatchie National Forest,
the Wild Azalea trail to be precise. I started walking around 11 AM. I parked the car at the north camp site of Valentine's Lake. From there, it was about 1 mile to the beginning of the trail.
It was very easy to walk through the trail. You just have to follow the tree with yellow marks
on them. After 0.5 miles there was an observation tower (middle below) built around 1930.
Access was restricted though.
It was impressive to see fallen trees as torn from the root. There were several of them along
the trail. I liked a lot that you cross several creeks along the way. Unfortunately,
the water is not drinkable.
The trail had the distance marked every 0.5 miles. I had a steady speed of 2 miles/hour. A bit
faster at the beginning and a bit slower by the end of the day. I started to take pictures
every 2 miles, as a way to record my progress. I was stopping to rest every 3 miles. At
the third mile I found two mountain bikers going in the opposite direction to mine.
It was around 3 PM when I reached 6 miles. I stopped there to have lunch. The same two bikers
I found earlier were on their way back.
I found yet another mountain biker. He told me that usually you don't find people hiking during
the week (it was Tuesday) and that I wouldn't find anyone besides some hunters. He also told me
that there were some hunting dogs running close to the trail. We said goodbye to each other
and move on.
It was getting dark around mile 10. I found a nice place to set the tent. It was getting cold
as well. During the night temperature dropped to -2 degrees Celsius. I could hear the dogs
barking in the distance even late at night. The shadows of the trees, due to the faint
moon, fell on one side of the tent. When the moon was below the horizon everything was
pitch black. The stars were so bright and there was no wind at all. There was no sound to be
heard and no color to be seen. When an occasional soft wind blew, the branches of the
trees moved slowly and gave me the impression of the stars moving in the sky.
I started hiking again around 10 AM. By mile 12, I had a late breakfast. Two things happened
there. First, it was the fact that a few miles south the trail there is an army bombarding
range. There was this plane flying in circles and dropping some sort of bombs! There were
no explosions but I could hear very clearly that hight pitch whistle, exactly the same as
the one you hear in the movies when a plane is dropping bombs. There were though, a few
explosions. But they seemed to be unrelated to the planes, maybe another kind of shooting
practice. The second thing was the blisters in my feet. They were becoming more annoying
and slowed me down a bit.
I was close the mile 13 when I hear some dogs barking. This time the sound was getting louder
until I saw them in a not so distant hill. I panicked immediately! I grabbed a branch as a
weapon against the dogs (below right).
A minute latter four dogs stepped in the trail. I was relieved when
I saw they were small hound dogs and that they were not even hostile to me.
When I reached mile 14, I was satisfied and starting to feel really tired. Thus, I headed back.
It was around noon. Now the blisters had become painful and I started to put pressure in other
parts of the foot. Later on that would cause pain in the heels too. I walked back four miles
along a road. That is always easier and faster than along the trail. When I got to Evangeline
Camp, I was so happy because that was around mile 9. Now I had to walk along the trail again,
no road this time.
I thought that with 10 miles left at 2 miles/hour I was going to finish at 8 PM. That meant
to walk a bit in the night. That was not a problem. The problem was that I was very tired.
I couldn't walk at 2 miles/hour. The half mile marks appeared every 20 minutes instead of
every 15 and I was resting every mile. When I got to mile 3 it was already 8 PM and
again, very dark. The wise thing to to was stopping there for the night and continue the next
day. But probably it was too late for that: every time I stopped to rest, it was harder
and more painful to walk. If I stopped for the night, walking again the next day would be
unbearable (as I were to discover later, indeed it was). By this time it was not only
the blisters but also my right knee. I was walking with branch as a cane.
Hiking in the darkness was really exiting. I could hear some owls and I got lost twice.
The first time was not a big deal. The second time made the last 5 minutes of the trail
became 40 minutes. In both cases I resorted to my GPS to go back to the last yellow
mark and track my path. If it were not for that little piece of technology I would have
been utterly lost and would have to abandon the idea of going on.
Finally at 10:40 PM, I was beside my car. The hike was over and my body was over too! The next
day I could barely walk, everything hurt. When I was back in my apartment I stayed in
bed the whole day. Two days later I'm feeling better.
The whole adventure felt like the old times, hiking in the volcanoes of Guatemala.
But this time I learned that there are limits which should not be passed.
Enrique Pazos
Last modified: Mon Jan 1 15:11:00 CST 2007
