The four of us in the group were very excited to try this trail. The trail started easy enough for anyone. However, it turned south quickly when we started to follow the "red trail". As we marched on and on up the mountain, we started to really feel the burn in our legs. We started contemplating our life choices to determine if we should just die here and not have to proceed with the rest of the trail. Our perseverance prevailed and we kept going. It wasn't too much further after that, that the one girl in our group "Sarah", fell into one of the rocks and her ankle snapped. We wanted to help, but we realized that we would have to carry her all the way through the remainder of the trail. We decided to cut our losses and bid our farewell to Sarah and we kept going, yearning to finish this trail. About a half mile later, we finally made it to the overlook. What a beautiful site, I wish Sarah was there to see it. After our brief victory, we had two choices, go back the way we came, or move forward (well 3 choices, if we jumped off the cliff). Not wanting to see the remains of Sarah, we moved forward. This was a huge mistake. There were very tricky areas that required ropes to make sure you don't fall off. Sadly this safety role came to the demise of Jim. His foot slipped off of a mossy rock and his throat caught on one of the ropes. Instant goner. Two remaining. I pulled out my GPS, and saw that we only had 500 feet left to the car. We got so excited that we wanted to run the rest, but didn't want to face the same fate as Sarah and Jim. We eventually made our way up, and said a quick prayer for our fallen friends before we went and got pizza.
Would try again. read more