On Sunday, Bob, Laura, Christy, Sauconey, and I did an 11 mile dayhike in the Mountain Bridge wilderness in South Carolina. After a cool but cheerful evening at Davidson River campground, we drove to the Caesar's Head State Park visitor's center. We hit the trail by 10AM and soon found ourselves winding our way down into the gorge. We picked up the Rim of the Gap trail, which started with an easy rock hop right at the brink of a waterfall. From there, the trail clung to the wall of the gorge, with steep drop offs below and sheer rock walls above. It was slow going on this trail, as we climbed up and over (and occasionally through) boulders. In several areas, ladders and cables had been installed. Our slow pace wasn't improved when we missed a switchback and hiked a trail of our own making for 15 minutes.
Eventually we reached the rim of the gorge. There was an impressive view down into the gorge, where the fall color was at its peak. We stopped for lunch there, after 2 1/2 hours of hiking. There was a trail sign at a junction nearby. It indicated that we had come only 2 1/2 miles! We still had almost 9 miles to go! At our current pace, we'd finish about an hour or two after dark.
We debated our options. Although everyone had loved the morning's trail, no one was in any hurry to revisit it. We decided to press on. We made up some serious time as we hiked the 2 1/2 miles to the river in less than an hour. From there, we hiked upstream, stopping once at a slide and pool for a snack. We ended the hike with a serious climb from the river up the Bill Kimball trail past another impressive rock face. The climb slowed us down again, but we still made it out by 5:15.
That left us plenty of time to check out the view from the Caesar's Head overlook. The views were impressive to the west, although we were looking right into the sun. Everyone seemed to enjoy the hike, though it left several people tired and sore. There are a lot of other trails in the area, so we'll plan some more hikes there in the future.
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