Hey guys. Fish <>< and myself did the 2nd annual Guam Group Hang last night (I think we can call it that even though there are only 2 of us).
Much like the title says it was a little shaky. We planned to go for 2 nights, but had to cut it short due to a rain storm of spiders, excessive heat, a sketchy water source, and pick up trucks full of locals wielding assault rifles (Guam group hangs are not for the faint of heart)
Fish managed to get himself a liberty pass from work and we hit the road headed for Inarajan Falls in Friday around 4:30 p.m. Its a beautiful little waterfall that spans the southern mountain region of Guam that, unbeknown to us, has very few trees. It is beautiful rolling mountains of grass lands and a few small creeks that run in some of the valleys. The grasslands also have large areas of red dirt that looks like you are standing on Mars.
We arrived a little before dark on Friday night and started walking. We found ourselves at a creek and a small shed where it looks like some people do cookouts from time to time. As we made our plan to continue walking instead of setting up for the night, we were approached by a 4x4 truck with a bunch of kids in the back that were carrying what looked like AR-15s. We told ourselves "they must be hunting". While not convinced that this is what they were doing, we accepted this event as what is was (unknown) and continued walking…quickly…
It got dark really quickly and before long we were just following the trail. We searched for trees and a good place to setup shop, but found nothing. We must have walked for a good hour before we crested a mountain and found a small section of jungle. It was thick with underbrush and spiderwebs, but it was manageable with a little machete and hand saw work, we had a campsite in about 30 minutes. After killing a spider that was the size of a human hand, setup went fairly quickly. We built our fire and got dinner cooked up and settled down for the evening. While sitting at the hammocks, all at once, the mosquitos hit! A virtual blood bath banquet for the skeeters ensued. As we started to retreat to the hammocks we both noticed what looked like little flies buzzing around under the tarps. A closer inspection revealed that they were these little tick sized spiders. it looked like they had spun a web and let the breeze carry the web with them attached to it. It was literally raining spiders!! At this point we were a little more than freaked out, so we decided to hide in our hammocks.
The night was filled with mosquitos buzzing around. At one point one of the little buggers ended up in my hammock fan (Splat!). My fan got a nice little blood paint job, but i had one less mosquito in the hammock with me.
Come morning I was out of water and out of patience. We decided to end the hang a little early. I had to get water out of small stream and after reading the Guam guide book that says "do not drink water from springs" I ran it through a sawyer mini and gulped it down. (I am currently under my wife's surveillance)
We broke camp and hiked out. We couldn't believe how much cool stuff we blazed by the night before on our way in. It was really a beautiful spot. I'm going to include a lot of pictures that we got on the way back. I was going to shoot a video but at one point a mosquito and a spider teamed up on me and took my camera, so i couldn't shoot any video until we got ready to leave.
In all seriousness, we had a good time, and will definitely go back again.
Enjoy the pics and if your interested, we are looking for more members to join the Guam Group Hangs in the future. I think we are going to go back to our standard camping area that is NOT in the middle of the Guam jungles.
The site of the incident that is known as "spider hill":
My mosquito killing fan!
The hike out
A look back at spider hill
various views on the way out
Fish walking on Mars!
caraboa that didn't like us!
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I like it! I hope your hangs go better in the future...
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