6 miles of hiking • 1500' elevation gain •
Went on a long bike ride Saturday, so I slept in a bit Sunday and got a late start. Went with a plan B and decided to head out from the King's Mountain trailhead. Lucked out at the busy parking lot and nabbed a spot just as someone else left.
Instead of going up to the summit of King, I set off on the Wilson River Trail towards Lester Creek, without a destination in mind. I just set a turnaround time of approximately 3 and trudged my tired legs up. It felt like spring, and as I sweated blue I was down to hiking in a t-shirt for the first time in months.
Trail was mostly clear, until we ran into a ton of blowdown as we neared the crossing of Lester Creek. (And the creek itself was full of fun debris to climb over.) We only ran into two other groups, lots of solitude on the trail. Around the bad blowdown a couple of mountain bikers abandoned their bikes and it looked like they were following an old roadbed on foot instead.
We stopped for lunch when we reached an overlook to the Lester Creek Pinnacles. With only one car we had to turn around come back the way we came. I would love to tackle the whole Wilson River Trail one of these days as a shuttle.
