Well, first time on the Devil's Path and let me tell you, it lives up to it's name. We didn't get started until Friday night at about 9:30PM. Started on Overlook Trail, pretty easy climb as most of the beginning is a fire road. Came upon the abandoned hotel which was really cool, tooks some pics, and moved on. We finally got to camp, which was Echo Lake, at about 11:00. There was already a group in the shelter so we wandered the area a bit and found a good primitive site. Finally got set up and got a fire going at midnight. Not a bad first day/night.
On to the second day. Well, things took a bit of a turn. At about 6:30AM it started to rain. Since we got to bed so late and it was raining we figured we would sleep in a bit since we only had about 10 miles to do (mistake #1). We ate, packed up, and got underway about 11:00AM. We hiked out of Echo Lake and up the Overlook Spur Trail until it met the Devil's Path, pretty easy hiking. Once we got on the DP things got harder... much harder. Our 2-3mph pace quickly dropped to .75-1mph. I knew the climb up Indian Head was going to be tough but with the rain, wind, and 40* temp it was gnarly. We made it up and over Indian Head and waited in Jimmy Dolan Notch for two of our guys to catch up. Now we had a radio in the front and the back of the group (mistake #2) when we really should have had five radios. Guy number one catches up and at this point the three of us are starting to freeze. He tells us to get going and he'll wait for the fifth guy who was only a couple minutes behind. We take off (mistake #3) and guy 4 decides that he's hungry and starts to cook a meal. The last guy catches him, waits for a few minutes and takes off because he's starting to freeze too. My original group gets up and over Twin Mountain until we get to a sheer rock face climb down the mountain. This spot is about 5-10 mins from the bottom of the mountain and if you know the spot I'm talking about then you know that it's a pretty scary spot when you're wet, cold, and tired. Once we made it down we waited for the other two so we could help talk them down that spot. After about 30 minutes guy number 4 finally catches up and makes it down. He told us about the other guy and at this point we were getting scared. Two guys dropped their packs, took the radio, and climbed back up to look for him. Apparently he got turned around at the top of the mountain and started to head back the way he came. At this point it was getting late and colder We were able to make contact over the radio and we decided that he would cam pin Jimmy Dolan Notch while we would camp in the other notch over Twin Mountain. He had everything he needed and the next day he would hike out the path in the notch to the road and wait for us.
After a long night we packed up and headed out. We still had to get up and over sugarloaf mountain and back to the car. We could only hope that our other guy made it through ok and was making his way out to the road. We climbed Sugarloaf pretty uneventfully and the weather was starting to clear so we finally got to see some nice views instead of the grey abyss we saw yesterday. We finally made it down Mink Hollow and back to the car much later then we had expected to. Upon walking out my friend, who drive the second car, realized he left his keys in my car... 10 miles away! Thankfully my other friend, a runner, grabbed my keys and took off. About an hour later we were in our cars and going to pick up our lost man. We found him pacing on the side of the road and picked him up.
Without a doubt this is a trip we will remember, not only for all the mistakes we made, but for the trail itself.
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Originally Posted by Levi Tate
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