My wife and I drove over to ANF and met up my buddy from Long Island, its about half way for both of us.
John and I had hiked at Minister Creek back in July and since there was a high probability that we would be hiking in the dark we chose to stay at a place we had stayed at back in July.
We didn't get on the trail til 4:30pm so it wasn't long before it was dark, and we were bushwhacking to boot! But we found the site we were looking for and got ourselves squared away, got a fire going and made dinner.

Saturday we I got up early and went scouting for wood, lots of down wood but much of it pretty freshly down or rotten. Found some reasonably straight pieces and made a tripod and some pot hooks etc. Inspired by this video, I thought I could use a carabiner to hold the tripod together and turns out this guy beet me to it so I felt pretty confident it could be done, and it was in fact quite easy.



After that we mostly hung out and enjoyed the outdoors and the company. We went for a short day hike, we could hear the odd shot or two from deer hunters but never saw any in the area we were in. I think they may have been a ridge or two on either side of us.




It got down into the low 30's at night but was easily in the mid 50's during the day. Tried the warm water bottle trick the second night and that was a real treat.



We hiked out sunday am and beat the rain, which was nice. There are some really impressive rock outcroppings along the trail, which took longer than bushwhacking along the river but was worth the effort.