Leon Turnbull Photography

After dark a girl came into the Lion Den, setting up her camp right next to me, IN MY SPACE. Why couldn’t she pick a different spot well away from everyone else? I would never set up camp right next to someone. It is just rude. Afterwards, she and the other guy (who borrowed my water filter) ended up chatting well into the night when I was trying to sleep. The guy was loud. So disrespectful. You don’t know how to boil water and you don’t know how to be quiet when someone is sleeping? Well maybe I am not going to feel bad about waking you when I get up super early and pack up my camp.

After all that I slept fairly well, actually. I was up at 5AM in the dark and packed up. I did try to be as quiet as possible but it is impossible to be completely quiet when you are packing up a tent and all your gear. I don’t know if the guy woke up but I am pretty sure the girl did. Well, she should not have set up her camp in my space.

My primary goal for this trip was to get down to Jewel Falls. It is a four mile hike from the campsite and it gets early sun so this is why I had to hike in the dark. Much of the hike is on a road. I did not even realize that it was possible to drive your vehicle on this road. I saw a few cars parked along the road including one exactly at the trail where I had to go down to the falls. They were blocking the trail. What am I supposed to do about this? I had no choice but to walk through their camp. They heard me in their tent so I said “just passing through”. The guy rudely said “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” I said, “going down to the waterfall”. On the way back they were up and the guy again was rude to me, saying “it’s not cool to walk through our camp, DUDE”. “Well DUDE, you are literally blocking the trail, what the H&*& am I supposed to do?”. I was really kinda ticked off with them, frankly. I tried to be nice and polite and received rudeness in return. If you are going block access to a hiking trail you need to expect someone is going to come through your campsite.

It did not help that my hike was an UTTER FAILURE and I was upset about that and feeling extremely disappointed. I know people have been down to Jewel Falls in the past but it was the distant past. Jewel Falls is LOST. The trail is now completely overgrown. Impassable. The brush was OVER MY HEAD. I tried going through it. I tried multiple routes to find a way through or around it. I tried my best. I could not do it. I retreated. At least there was no more poison oak.

On the way back I saw a guy parked along the road with his car hood up, looking into it. For the third time this trip I was nice again, asking if he needed help (though there was nothing really I could do to help him). He was polite though, at least, and said he was fine.

There were a lot of hikers on the way back down the Salmon Creek Falls trail. A lot of day hikers. Too many hikers. Some had dogs. Hopefully they escaped the ticks. One dog was barking at me, probably because the trail was narrow and he could not get by. The lady apologized but I told her I have a barking dog as well. Journey will bark her head off to protect her mama but if she is alone with me she will not bark at all. Funny girl. I decided to stop at Upper Salmon Creek Falls. It was about 11AM and still in shade. I was not planning to go down here again and I skipped it on the way up. However, since I failed at Jewel Falls I decided to go down to this waterfall. It was a small consolation. I did manage to get a different composition from the last time I was here so that is a plus. I got back to the car at about 1:30PM and made the long drive home. It was a rough two days in Ventana Wilderness.

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