My Sipsey Wilderness 2-night loop

The short version: hiked, waded and bushwacked 2 days on the Sipsey and Little Ugly Creeks seeing all the sights I could until heat, chafing, and a overgrown trail sent me home a day early.

Longer version:

Arrived at the Sipsey Rec Area, Wednesday about 3:30 pm. The parking lot had only 3 other cars there, so I changed into hiking clothes in the toilet, grabbed my backpack and poles and crossed the Sipsey to the west bank and started hiking north. There wasn't much of a trail on this side, but the plan was to bushwack up then down Turket Foot (to the falls), then to Little Ugly Creek and find a place to camp, before exploring further upstream the next day. I arrived at Turkey foot creek and seeing its tall steep banks and no trail there decided to forego it, and crossed it, proceeding upstream along the Sipsey.

The trail from this point disappear and I was purely bushwacking thru holly, briars, shrubs and over lots of blow-downs. Even using poles, I fell 3 times in nearly 10 minutes, tangling in vines, slipping off logs and sliding down muddy banks. After what seemed like 30 minutes I was still in sight of the Sipsey Bridge, I was muddy, sweaty and breathless. There I decided to cross over to TR 200 and corss back over at the Little Ugly Creek Junction. Sonn after going across I met Janice Barrett coming down the trail with her husband, Mark? (I'm honestly awful w/ names). They'd been out conducting a plant survey, and were returning. We chatted a few minutes about the next day's Fresh Air Family hike and then part ways. I soon crossed over shin-deep Borden creek and continued north. About 20 minutes later I arrived at Fall Creek Falls. I thought I'd been to this falls beofre in Sept '07 and had found it dry. I'd been mistaken and hadn't quite gone up the trail far enough and had only found a minor shelter. Holy crap, its big. 100s of gallons of flow, loud as a interstate overpass. How the heck do people camp here? Since there were atleast a couple of hours of daylight left, in addition to the noise of the falls, I decided to keep going. Around 6:30 and having not seen the junction w/ LUC from the trail I found a campsite near the Sipsey and setup camp. I used my Tarptent Rainshadow 2 for the first time, it very spacious and well ventilated, perfect for this kinda trip especially w/ bugs out. So I set up my tent took a quickie bandana bath, changed clothes, ate dinner (Knorr Sides+ Alfredo nooodles w/ a can of chicken breast (not the whole chicken, blech)). Then read some and sacked out on top of my sleeping bag. This was my first time ever all alone in the wild and my first night was sort of unnerving. Twice I was awoken to something large outside my tent. The first I thought was a raccoon, I yelled at it to get it far away and spare my foodbag from its curiousity. I figured out the next night that it was most likely a armodillo, especially since my tent was next to a large burrow hole. At 3am a herd of feral pigs came thru, again I yelled and they quickly ran off also.

The next morning I estimated my position was at the bend just south of the FT202 junction, and I'd missed LUC by a half mile. I planned to cross Sipsey at the 200-202 junction and bushwack to LUC on the west bank. After crosing sipsey I found a small unmapped waterfall just 1/10 south of 202. It was a decent flo and around 50 ft tall there was also a campsite just downstream of the falls there. I continued on downstream bushwacking, the cooler morning temps seemed to be a great help over the day before and I was fairing much better footing wise as well. I arrived at LUC after bushwacking for about an hour. The trip up LUC was an adventure as well. On the banks the trail was sporadic to nonexistant. Many times I abandoned the banks and waded upstream in the cool water w/ my trail runners on. (They seemed to dry fairly quickly and didn't blister when wet).  I finally found Hemlock Creek and just a short hike up was Hemlock Falls. It seemed lile a great place to stop for lunch and relax a bit. 

(to be continued)