Now I Just Have To Get Back Down!

 

Unless your plan is to become a mountain-top hermit, an irrefutable fact about climbing a mountain is that once you're up there you have to get back down again, aching knees, bleeding toenails and all.

So I cinched up the laces on my boots to minimize the blood in my socks, made sure my hiking poles were latched tight (One of those collapses when you're climbing down a ledge and you might have a problem!), and started down.

But I think maybe I was cursed by a wizard at some point in the long distant past. Maybe it was when us boys poked our tiny little noses into that forbiden and haunted tower out in the woods behind my cousins' house. The reason I think I maybe cursed is because it's an all too frequent theme in my life that when it comes time to do the smart thing - - I don't.

Like hanging a right, when I reach the saddle, in order to take the direct way back down to the Pecan Grove camping area and trailhead.

I hang a left instead

and am faced almost immediately with another one of those vertical yellow footprint trail markers on the other side of the saddle where the trail, the Foshee Trail this time, climbs rather abruptly again.

So back up I go.

Not as far up as Old Baldy, but I'm  fully aware that every upward step means that many more downward steps in order to ultimately get me back to the trailhead.

This second climb puts me up on top of a ridgeline, and partway along that ridge

I start seeing the remnants of a stone fence,

and the farther I went the more prominent the ruins became. (The ruins run for about 3/4 of a mile)

This land was handed to the park system about a hundred years ago so this fence is older than that. Unfortunately, just who built it and why seems to be lost to history. 

Since this is goat country and goats use rock walls as playthings it's not likely that it was for controlling livestock, and as far as delineating a border between properties or grazing areas,  there's plenty of barbed-wire fences across the park and those were a lot simpler to build.

So, as happens all too often, once again this appears to be just one more of the countless bits of the past that we've let be lost behind us in our rush to tomorrow.

The ridge I was on, the one in the lower right above, intersects with an abstract colection of ridges that pretty much form the odd-shaped roof of the park, and at that intersection, along the ridge running to the southwest,

is the out-n-back Old CCC Trail which runs a half mile out to an overlook at the end of the ridge.

Mindful of the fact that everyime I go somewhere any more it may very well be the last time I'm there, even though it wasn't a destination high on my list of things to do, I resisted the "maybe next time" excuse, and made the detour.

It was underwhelming.

So underwhelming I didn't even bother taking a photo even though I had two cameras with me.

The trail kinda just petered out against one of the old fence lines with a narrow, partially obstructed view down one side of the ridge. In a place with several better viewpoints the CCC Overlook just doesn't cut it.

With nothing left to do I turned around and retraced my steps.

So - been there done that, certainly don't need to do it again.

One of those better viewpoints is a high spot on that complex of ridges from where you can look south and have a good view of Old Baldy from a different perspective.

That green line marks the saddle between Old Baldy and the ridge complex I'm standing on and at the low point of that saddle is where the Old Baldy trail drops down to the left, back to the camping area. 

That white line that looks like a trail is not. It's exposed and crumbly limestone (that's why it's white. It doesn't have enough time to weather to a faded grey before the surface sluffs off again, exposing fresh rock.), with unpredictable footing and a dangerous dropoff to the east. Not a route I'm  willing to try, but we humans aren't always the smartest creatures around and enough of us do try to use that route that the park service has posted warning signs at the top and bottom. (I think maybe it's time we stop trying to save the stupid! It just dilutes the gene-pool!)

From this same viewpoint you also have an almost aerial view of a section of the Frio River.

It hasn't been a good color year, the fall has been too warm for that, but this late in the season you can still trace the sweeping S-bend of the river by the rusty tops of the cottonwoods.

But now it's time to take the switchbacks down the hollow below Crystal Cave back to flatter terrain and the waiting Ranger,

and leave these slopes to the rightful, if sometimes rather demanding (when you're trying to have a peaceful snack out on the trail) inhabitants.