courtesy JInnes
courtesy JInnes
courtesy JInnes
We hung our packs up at the hut and made the short, unencumbered hike up to Galehead. There is one good lookout near the top of Galehead; apart from that, it is basically just in-the-trees hiking. The top is wooded and has a small cairn of rocks. Still, it was number 85 for me!
courtesy JInnes
courtesy JInnes
courtesy JInnes
On the way back from the summit of Galehead, we started to encounter the usual crowds (i.e. those that started at a reasonable hour and were just now reaching the high country). From here on, it would be people city!
We returned to the hut, retrieved our packs, and started back along for a short bit along the AT, the way we had come. Our descent route was the Gale River trail, a route which follows the next major drainage to the east of the one we'd come up. At the bottom, we'd complete a loop by hiking back on the Gale River road.
There isn't too much to say about the first part of our descent, except that it was constant, fairly steep, good trailwork, but .... WET. Everything so wet! We'd heard from two hikers near Galehead that there were two crossings of the Gale River along this trail, and that the river was quite high and the crossing difficult. They had chosen to forego the crossings and bushwacked along the western bank of the river between the two crossings. "Great advice", I said, and thanked them.
So, upon reaching the upper crossing of the Gale River, I decided to bushwack and not cross (figuring the two guys did it, so it wasn't likely to be a long or hard bushwack, or they would have said). This... turned... out... to be a..... mistake. It went on and on, though rather unpleasant brush at times, for what seemed like forever. On the other side of the river, I could see a pretty good path. Would the water crossing really have been that bad, I thought? Anyhow, no use crying over spilled milk. We were surely most of the way down the bushwack, and turning back would have just been prolonging the agony.
1.5km or so annoying kilometres later, we popped back onto the trail, where it recrosses the Gale River. Was it worth it? Was it "1.5 km worth of gross bushwacking" worth it? To tell you the truth, if I had to do it again, I'd probably just cross the damn river. It didn't look _that_ hard.
