I slept fairly well and was up at 6AM. That may seem early for you but it is not early for me. I relaxed, had breakfast, and packed up camp. My idea was to climb up the ridge to take a short cut over to Munson Meadow instead of going back the way I came down (which was very hard). I was not really sure how this route would be or if it would be too cliffy. It was a bit of a risk but I decided to go for it. I’m glad I did. It probably saved me 1.5 hours of hiking at least. And it was not cliffy at all.
However, once I got to Munson Meadow the day detiorated quickly. The trail through Munson Meadow is essentially non-existent. It is so faint you can hardly tell there is a trail. Only the bears use this trail now (I do not think that is inaccurate). I would find the trail and then 30 or 60 seconds later I would lose it again. There was also snow, which certainly did not help in trail finding. I thought that once I got over to the top of the ridge and began the big descent to the bottom of the canyon then the trail would be much easier to follow. Au contraire. It was just the opposite. The trail was far worse now. It was impossible to follow and I got off track many times. Since it was so much brushier down here, this made it very difficult. I was so frustrated. I thought about turning back many times but now I was well past the point of no return. I had to continue. I had to somehow make it down to the river and find some sort of campsite.
Finally I made it down to river level. I was so frustrated with the trail and so over tired. I found a spot to camp near the river and near the waterfall. There were no good camping sites along the river because it was so foresty and brushy but this one would have to do.
There were a ton of flies around my camp. They were very annoying so I spent most of the afternoon inside my tent. There were also mosquitoes. I did not think there would be many mosquitoes at this elevation. I was expecting to see much more at the higher elevations than down here. It was also supposed to be windy which should have kept them away. Neither was true and I had to put on bug spray to save myself.
In the evening I went up to see the waterfall. Wester Park Falls is massive, dropping a whopping 730 ft. in multiple segments. It is a spectacular sight to see from a distance. Unfortunately it is not possible to get up close to it because it is so incredibly brushy. The distant view was the best I could come up with but it was a very pleasant experience after the very frustrating hike.
I returned to camp and hopped into the tent quickly to escape the mosquitoes. Tomorrow I would have to climb out of this canyon. It would not be fun.
