First Hike and Hang this weekend
I'll be doing my first hike and hang this weekend at Fundy National park...2 nights. Night temps figure to be around 40 to 50 degrees F. My hiking buddy will be using a tent but I think I'll have him converted by the next trip. They're calling for plenty of rain but hopefully it won't be that bad. I'll try to write a trip report...never done one before. I just hope I've brought enough for warmtn...Dang extra quilts take alot of room in the backpack.
My hiking buddy is one heck of an artist...great at photography and with paint..Hopefully I'll be able to upload some cool shots...
First Hike and Hang.....it started out well....
Well it did start out well...Moe and I left Friday morning and the park is about 1 hrs drive away taking our time for taking some different pictures of various areas along the way... we get to the park as there's no-one camping except for some RV's near the entrance so we get a nice site farther in with a nice view and some privacy. The plan was that we'd car camp the 1st night and head out the next morning for a short 3-4 mile wilderness hike to a location that is simply perfect (we'd stayed there the previous year...first hike of the season we usually don't go too far).
We setup our gear...my hammock and his tent. Since they were calling for rain and I only had my stock HH...I had brought my rain fly from my Eureka Timberline 2 to see if to would work. Happily it proved to cover quite well and since there are 4 tie downs on either side you can really batten down for bad weather. I'll add longer shock cords for the next time I go out to allow more versatility. Since Friday night was calling for clear weather though I removed it and simply used the stock tarp.
After setup we took a slack pack hike to a nice river surrounded by small mountains....the water was clear (and cold according to Moe, as we were about to head back he slipped and fell butt first into the river...we both had a good laugh...well I did anyway) and the weather was sunny...a really awesome way to start the weekend...added to the fact that we had brought a couple of beers. I was nice to be back in the woods.
We hiked back and had a simple supper....since the temps dropped quickly after the sun went down, we decided to turn in for the night. I was a bit concerned about being cold that night as instead of using my usual sleeping bags, I'd brought some regular run-of-the-mill blankets. My fears were misplaced however as I was quite warm.
Here's where things went bad. I sleep with earplugs as I'm a light sleeper. after about an hour in the hammock, drifting in and out of sleep, I removed them and heard Moe moving around camp. I asked if everything was ok and he replied a bit suprised: "you didn't hear what happened?" No..what?
Apparently he heard voices and branches breaking...so he got out of his tent and surprised about 10 local youths creeping towards our campsite (there's a small town about half a mile away from where we were camping). They quickly backed away but then started screaming obsenities at him. Once he told me this I couldn't fall asleep right away so I went out to calm my nerves. About 20 minutes later a truck pulled up at the end of our site and stopped (remember we were the only ones camping that night). After about a minute checking our site out they noticed me in the darkness and drove away.
At this point neither one of us wanted to take a chance sleeping with the potential of local idiots sabotaging our gear or worse. I asked him what he thought we should do. Since there was no predicting what was going to happen next we opted on packing up and going back home. I agreed with him. He's got 2 little kids at home and there was no sense taking unnecessary risks.
Sorry folks...I was hoping for a better outcome...and a more pleasant read for you all:(
