Jack's River Trail Adventures - Part II

The next morning I lay in my tent awake.  It was early, about 6:30 am.  I was listening for anything large moving around camp and I could only hear the rushing water of the Jack's river so I climbed out to take a look at our packs.   They were still there and it didn't look like anything had touched them.  Success!  By nine in the morning, we were packed up and ready to head to the falls.

The hike to the falls was two miles and just about halfway there we started seeing more warning posters about bears and additional signs that prohibited camping in the area.  In this same area we encountered three US Forest Service rangers on the trail.  They stopped and talked to us for a few minutes.  Asked us where we had camped and about our trip.  We told them how we had hung our bags and didn't have any problems with wildlife.  They told us that there is a mama bear and three cubs in the area and that she is getting very aggressive toward hikers.  The bear is learning that there is food in the packs and has even scared some hikers into dropping their packs and letting the bear have them.  I asked if the bears are more active during the day or night and was told that the bears are active at all times of day.  If they smell food, they are coming for it.   We also talked about some strategy if we encountered the bears.  Mostly you just want to look bigger and make a lot of noise.  In most cases this would work.   They didn't tell us what to do in the cases where that didn't work.  The rangers finished up by telling us about some other recent encounters between bears and campers.   That was enough to make us nervous.  At the next break we took our car keys and wallets and put them in our pockets.  The bears can have our packs, but not our cars.

Once we arrived at the falls we found a group of kids swimming and jumping into the water.  There were at least two tiers of swimming areas along the section of falls.  We watched for a while and decided to head down and swim at the lowest of the falls.   As we made our way down we stopped and talked to two other campers that were leaving.  They asked if we had seen the rangers.  We said that we had and asked if they also did.   The older man admitted that he had camped in a "no camping" area the previous night and the rangers fined him for it.  Then I asked if he had seen the bears.  He told us the bears were in his camp early in the morning.  They were sniffing around and eventually found where he had hung his food in a tree.  He said that he hadn't hung it very far from the trunk and the bear got the food without much effort.   Telling that story to the rangers earned him a second fine for "improper food storage".   He wasn't sure who was the bigger nuisance, the bears or the rangers.  All I know is that after losing his food, he had to pay a fine for losing his food, and then when he goes to the store to replace the food he'll be paying for it a third time.

 Swimming at the base of the falls was one of the highlights of the trip.   This is how backpacking should be!  Hike for a half a day and swim for a few hours at the base of a waterfall.  As we were swimming in the cold water I noticed some of the kids had come down and were climbing around on the rocks above this section of the falls.  I started to swim toward Rake when he shouted, "KID!  KID!"  I looked up and saw three kids on the rocks.  Rake started toward me quickly and then a boy's head popped up from the turbulent water.  He had fallen off the rock and went into the falls.  As he came up he looked stunned, but appeared okay.  He climbed over to the rocks and we asked him if he was okay.  He gave a thumbs up and went over to his group.  We didn't see him climbing or swimming the rest of the day.  I didn't the boy slip, but Rake did, and he says it's a sight he will not soon forget.

Our hike out included the final three river crossings before we hit the Penitentiary trail.  For several hours the trail continued uphill and was wearing me down quickly.

We reached our second campsite of the weekend at 3pm.  There were three miles of trail between us and the cars, we were tired, it was thundering and threatening to rain.  After a break and a discussion about sitting in a tent the rest of the day we decided to end our adventure and make our way to the cars.  For those of you still thinking about the bears I can tell you that the threat of bear attacks were not part of our decision to stay or not.  We felt like no bear would leave the easy pickings at the river and climb this rough trail just for a jar of peanut butter.  

While we saw no bears on our hike out we did encounter another scary beast of the forest.  At one point on the trail I heard a strange noise behind me.  A loud noise was coming from the trail we had just passed.  We turned and knew that it was a rattlesnake but we couldn't see it at first.  So we did the first thing that came to mind and each of us reached for our cameras.  Rake spotted the snake first and then I found it coiled up on the side of the trail.  It was pretty scary that I had walked so close to this large snake without seeing it.  I took a step closer as I videoed and the snake coiled tighter and rattled louder.  I knew it was time to get going.

We made the cars by five pm and loaded up.  It had been 24 river crossings, 16 miles, 2 hours of swimming, and some much needed fun but it was time to head home.