We enjoyed the Black River State Forest so much last week we decided to go there two weeks in a row. There was a whole other half of the park that we had not explored. So, 8AM we were in the same parking lot as last week (although this time one other car beat us). This should be a lot less hills than last week as these trails were not rated as “difficult” (you know what kind of music is playing by now…).
This time we were going to tackle the Smrekar Trails. Only one of these was listed at “diffiult” — the Ridge Trail. So we took off from the parking lot intent on getting to that trail as quickly as possible and then coasting the rest of the morning. About half a mile off the parking lot we came to a big “crossroads” of two trails. Usually Mike knows exactly where we are going and where the trails intersect, but this one had him flummoxed. It was not on the map — to this day Mike still has no idea what the “other” trail was (or if it was a maintenance road), but he managed to keep us on the correct trail that led us to the Ridge Trail. On the way to that trail we encountered some pretty amazing scenery.
As soon as we turned onto the Ridge Trail we began to climb. We were definitely climbing to the top of the ridge and we were not stopping…the last 100 feet were seemingly straight up, some of the steepest trail we’ve climbed (outside of Wildcat Mountain where we climbed a hill that turned out not to be part of the trail).
When you are walking along that ridge, you feel every little bit of wind — and it was WINDY – our hats were almost blown off a couple of times. Thanks to quick hand grabs we kept them on. And, like last week, the views were amazing and simply breathtaking.
One thing we saw on these trails that we didn’t see last week was rocks. There were a lot of rocks.
We finally made our way down off the ridge and took a break at the Smrekar picnic area. The rest of the walk back to the car was much more level except for the last 1/4 mile before the lot. Tammy may have let a bad word slip on that one, but it was quiet and done under her breath.
We will definitely be back to the Black River State Forest!!!!
Splorin' Saturday 