10 miles of hiking • 2750' elevation gain •
Exciting day spent with Don Nelsen and his son Paul exploring the cliffs of Table MT. Don also took us over to the Greenleaf slide, wow! Also Went up Greenleaf falls to his rope and got the GPS mark for it now, cool stuff. Don and Paul were a ton of fun! :)
Met at the Aldrich Butte TH at 9, also was supposed to meet up with Pablo but that didn't connect for some reason.
Hiked up Aldrich Butte access road until the Carpenter Lake split which turns into Two Chiefs some mile or so to where it intersects the PCT.
PCT work crew was out in force doing some nice trail maintenance, thanks Tim and Bus Driver John! :)
Cruised up a ways on Two Chiefs and Don showed us a neat short cut and he trimmed some tree branches off too, tons of poison oak which got me but I'm still showing no signs of anything and it's been at least 8 hours ago.
From Two Chiefs Don took us up one of the scree/talus slopes to get up into the North Western most area of the Table Cliffs. I should mention the main reason for this trip in the first place was to possibly locate the Kate Heuther memorial that may have been tossed over, but we did not find it so it's looking like either DNR removed it or someone else removed it entirely. Don took us up to a point right under where she fell off from above and he scrambled up to recon while Paul and I waited below on some steep edges. Paul shot some video and I tried to take some pictures of Don coming down. He got all the way up the chimney but he said it was dicey so he came back down, didn't want to separate him from us. Worst case scenario would be he would have had to hike down the rest of Heartbreak Ridge trail and Paul and I would have to hike back down the way we came and meet back at our cars. Don says he might put a rope at this chimney area from the top at some point so we can go back and get up this easier in the future, sounds good!! :))
Hiked over to his Greenleaf creek/falls rope just so I could see it and checked out the Greenlead slide that Jen discovered back in '08.
Super fun trip guys, and nice meeting you two! :)
Wanted to add that DN really, really knows his stuff! Was like outdoor school hiking, filled me up with way so much information that I probably half forgot already, super smart and informative. But most of you probably already knew this, just sayn'.
Another weird tid bit is towards the end of the hike we were all talking about Broadway musicals, and it turns out that Paul Nelsen and I played in the same orchestra pit back in '93 for a Grant High School production of The Music Man but I had to check my Pa's program to make sure, as we both didn't really totally remember each other from the thing, was nearly 20 years ago after all. Totally weird!
Knee- tried a new idea for my knee, wrapped ACE bandage with a knee sleeve over it and really had no problems, but this was a easy hike, well under 3000k' gain
