Sheltowee Trace- Day 5

 Today we started at Clear Creek at 7:40 am. As you can maybe see, there is a tiny bit of water in it. At other times of the year there are lots of streams that need to be waded. At this time of year, I doubt you could backpack the trail without putting water caches out. The other issue is that most of the streams are very silty. Lots of pre-filtering might be required.

We started the day at 768 feet elevation, and our high point was 1538 feet. That's 770 feet of change with a lot of extra ups and downs too. But, again, most of the trail was well-graded and benched. A few places were 15-20%, but most was the standard 10% grade. Kudos to the trail builders!

The big fun of the day was ROCKS. I think this might be part of the Allegheny escarpment. If not, it looks very similar. At first we were just climbing beside them.

Then we were climbing between them. The trail wound up to the top and crossed the tops of the rocks.

Here's a big example of the webs those orb spiders make.

This is a plant first for me- finding Sullivantia in bloom. It grows only on damp limestone walls.

Once we got up pretty high, the trail joined an ATV trail. Sometimes that made the walking easier, and sometimes harder. But this was a very neat space. The sandstone was almost like flowstone. The trail went right up this!

We only did 8.7 miles today, and even with all the climbing (and then descending back to 831 feet) it was a fun day! Tomorrow will be easy- quite a lot of roadwalk.

Miles walked in 2026: 383.7
Miles on the Sheltowee Trace: 59.5

Clear Creek Campground to Beaver Creek Road. I don't think the hill we went over has a name. 8.7 miles.

See Sheltowee Trace- Day 4