Cumberland Lake Falls Weekend Hike

Hike organized by Sierra Club. On Friday evening we drove to the camp site close to Cumberland Falls State Resort Park where we started 14 miles trail the next morning. It poured rain Friday night making it sleepless for many.

Saturday was also rainy but all 12 of us, full of energy and good humors, were following the river for around 7 miles to finally end on a make-up shelter quite tired from rain and difficult terrain. 6 of us slept in the shelter (simple wooden construction with a roof and one wall open, nothing more than that) The rest of us got into our own tents and John, Michael, Laurence and I found a nice dry camp 100 yards to the left of the shelter. We made a fire and cooked our dinners. There was plenty of water near by and the owners of water filters were very, very popular.

It stopped raining Saturday evening. It did not rain much at all on Sunday. Rain or not, makes little difference on this trail. It is so humid that after 15 minutes everyone is wet anyway. On Sunday, after breakfast and coffee, Jessie (14) who came on the trip with his Grandfather (>60) from North Carolina, together with our co-leader Shelly, got us going again. They started fast pace . We could barely keep up. Shelly runs her own little hobby-company climbing trees with earth joy.com

Soon the group decided to split and let the younger group (~40,50) go up front and get the car that was going take the drivers back to the beginning sooner than the entire group. The terrain was getting even more difficult and we had another 7 miles to go. So Jessie, Shelly, I(37), John (>50), Laurence (>50) and Jessie's Grandfather got to the 'end' of our hike about 15 minutes earlier than the older group. I was impressed by the older group with many of them in their 60's and Larry 71 doing extremely well considering the terrain. There were also two ladies Karen and Diane, both great hikers.

So once the header group got to the dam (trail followed the river) Laurence and I hiked additional 2 miles or so to get to his car that we parked Friday night. Once we got there after an hour or so, we drove back to the dam, picked up 3 drivers and drove back to the State Park where we picked all cars and drove back to the dam. We were all done around 4.30 pm on Sunday afternoon.

We had a great time. You get to know people, you share the ups and downs, laughs, falls, poison ivy and iron plan (FYI, as I am sure you are curious, it is called "Pokrzywa" in Polish :-)) Poison ivy can hurt you later (depends if you're allergic), iron plant hurts you right when you walk through it and there is no way around them.

You have lots of time when you keep on walking. You get to know people, and you want to walk at least a few feet apart on Sunday ... there ain't any showers on the way unless you do not mind rather cold water dropping 50, 60 feet from the cliffs all the way down, almost directly on your head ...

It is beautiful and green all the way around, you can hear the water all the time and you can feel it on every inch of your body (which obviously sometimes you wish you wouldn't) We saw two turtles and some kind of wild bird.

Till the next time folks. I need to do this more often ...

Pointers for hike
1) pack light
2) use polyester or nylon everything, no cotton
3) use wool socks and good hiking shoes but also bring light sandals for evenings
4) if you do not have stove and hope for fire, bring some fire starting thing and lighter (matches do not work well specially in rainy conditions)
5) ... more you get to know when you do this, if I tell you everything, it would be no fun to laugh at the novice :-)

Shamick P. Gaworski