The Hike from Hell  

This weekend we went for a hike on the Cave Creek trail. This trail connects to the Pinhoti trail and makes a loop back around to the parking area. The first part of the hike went well. I wrote about it in my last post. The second half of the hike was AWFUL!

There is a switch back on the Cave Creek trail. You take it to the connector trail for the Pinhoti and then get on the actual Pinhoti trail and follow it back to the parking area. Well, we made it to where the connector trail was supposed to start and then everything went downhill from there.

We saw the first blaze marking the trail. (The first blaze of the whole day by the way; they aren’t good at marking the trails here for some reason.) We followed what we thought was the trail but it wasn’t.

We were never really lost because we had the GPS and compasses, but it sure felt like it. It took forever to find the trail again. There were no markings anywhere. We had to hike down the mountain after tromping around on the top for a few hours. I have arthritis and torn cartilage in my knees so this wasn’t fun at all. Every step I took was painful.

I had to take a break at one point to eat something because my sugar was dropping. My husband took this time to scout out the trail. He found it and then we all set off. We finally made it back to the car. I could hardly walk and my husband and son were very sore.

This was Sunday, today is Tuesday, and I’m still in pain. Hiking with fibromyalgia and diabetes is an acquired skill. When something goes wrong like this it’s not good. We ended up hiking 6.3 miles! I’m not ready for that yet. At least not up and down a mountain!

I survived though, so that’s good. And we will be back hiking somewhere this coming weekend. It will be a short one though!

If you'd like to see some pictures from the good part, you can go to my outdoor recreation blog. From there is a link to Our Hiking Pictures blog. It has lots of cool pics on it!