7 of us hiked the 19 mile Irish Wilderness loop in mark Twain national Forest this weekend. We met Friday morning and left the trail about 10am. The day was very hot and humid. We did 8.6 miles to Bliss Springs and set up camp on a ridge overlooking the Eleven Point river. The view there was nice!
Day two was the most adventurous. We all got split up and most of us either lost the trail or took a wrong turn somewhere along the way, or both! The trail had obviously not been maintained in quite some time, so it was badly overgrown in some areas, and blazes were few and far between. There were also many spur trails that were not on the map. All this made navigating the trail difficult at times.
Once we all finally got back together at Fiddler Springs where we were to camp for night two, we had some stories to tell about our day. Gideon's story was the most amazing. You might have to come on one of our hikes to hear it. A few hikers decided to hike on out to shorten the trip, but Gideon, Skygzr, and I stayed the night at Fiddler Springs. It was pretty chilly Saturday night, getting down to 50*F.
Day 3 was fairly non-eventful. The three of us hiked out together and made a quick pace. There were many blow-downs to maneuver around, but the trail was decently blazed in this area. The biggest annoyance on this trip had to be the little square stickers that kept attaching themselves to our legs. I think Skygzr got the worst of it. The weirdest part was finding two folding chairs along the trail. We packed those out along with a bag full of trash. It was another fun weekend in the woods with some great people. I'm glad to have the chance to hike with you all again and I hope we hang together some day soon!
Oh, and Gideon won the knife for best limerick! Enjoy the pics.
Disco
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