Jeremys Run - May 26, 2012

The interesting but slippery pool

A long weekend was a good time for a long day of hiking, although many people had too many other things to do. Thus, only Brad Young and John Shannon met Michael Seth near Neighbor Mountain Trail to begin this 11-mile hike.

One of the crossings of Jeremys Run

Light cloud kept the temperature down most of the time, so we kept moving until we reached Jeremy’s Run trail and walked a little distance to a favorite pool for lunch. Two people were sitting by the water watching their dog swim, and we discovered that the rocks here are as slippery as they were 2 years ago when Lindsay Brown slipped and hit his head. When the dog tried to climb out of the pool on the side opposite to the humans, she slipped a couple of times and hit her head, and then would not return to her humans, despite their calling. Eventually the woman waded over and slipped also, hitting her hip. After further attempts to get the dog to move from the bank, the human and dog swam back across the pool, only to have an unfriendly meeting with some free-range dogs.

Jeremys Run

After eating cranberry-oatmeal cake, we continued up the trail to our first stream crossing. We all changed into our walk-in-water shoes, which we wore until the end of the hike. The route entailed 14 stream crossings, and though the water was not very deep, it was too deep for boots. None of the crossings had signs warning us “Slippery when wet,” which was true for many of the rocks in the stream.

The waterfall

Along the way we pulled a few of the towering garlic mustard plants and occasional bittersweet and followed the old advice of “Hang ’em high” to deter other invasive plants from growing there (and to prevent plants from rerooting). However, our efforts merely slowed the growth of invasives a little, because many of the bittersweet left roots in the ground, which may regrow, and there were so many garlic mustard that others nearby will supply seeds, even if the seeds of the pulled plants are too young to germinate.

At the top of the valley

 All sections of this riverside trail were lush, although sometimes from invasive plants, so tree cover kept us at a pleasant temperature. A waterfall was one of the many picturesque sights on the stream.

A final section of climbing seemed less steep than remembered. Because no one chose the option to walk 3.3 miles back to our starting point, we continued to Elkwallow Wayside for large servings of ice cream before heading home.