Sheltowee Trace- Day 9- Lawful Evil

  You've seen those matrices of character motivations, right? I think at today's beginning we were probably Lawful Evil-- at best Chaotic Good.

We got off to a great start crossing the Red River again- this time on a nice pedestrian bridge.

Started up a 450-foot climb past Balanced Rock.

Uh-oh. Most of the climb is supposed to be up a stairway that goes to the top of the rock cliffs. Actually, this sign was at the other end. The one on this end said "Closed to Thru-Hiking." Now what?

First we tried a volunteer pathway that went along the base of the cliff to the left. It continued for almost a half mile until it ended. There was some scrambling involved, but it seemed promising until it didn't. With the electronic maps we knew exactly where we were and thought if we could get to a saddle point where there was a break in the cliff we could get up to the trail we wanted. But the vegetation got thick and unwelcoming so we abandoned that idea and went all the way back to the stairway.

Then we went back down lower (a hiker never wants to give up elevation gained) and tried to bushwhack the other direction to find the red line on the FarOut map. Well, we got ourselves on the line, but there wasn't even a volunteer trail and it was just going to take us back along the same edge of the cliffs.

Bill read some of the comments in the FarOut app and they all said some variation of "just take the closed trail." So we became evil lawbreakers and went over the barrier. Needed to get up there somehow!

Well, nobody said it was going to be easy! We finally made it to the top. Only took us about 2 miles of hiking and an hour-and-a-half to cover this mile of trail!

But once we were at the top we joined the Sand Gap Trail- an easy ridge walk. This took us over the top of Whites Branch Arch. So we didn't see the arch, but this has to be the top of it, called The Narrows.

That became an ATV trail, but it wasn't all torn up so easy walking. Then we joined roads for the rest of the day and came down off the ridge. Road walks give you a chance to use your imagination. This looked like a horse coming out to meet us.

And we found a big stone frog staring at us with his front feet tucked under him.

One thing that surprised us was how high up in the hiils there was evidence of farming with fences and gates. These goats do seem like a better choice than cows might be.

Another fun find was this praying mantis. I don't think I've ever seen one quite this color, but apparently they can turn gray when molting.

Once we got up to the top of the bluff, the hiking for the rest of the day was easy. We especially liked the Sand Gap Trail part.

Miles walked in 2026: 423.6
Miles hiked on Sheltowee Trace: 96.9

Sheltowee Trace, KY. Natural Bridge TH to Combs Cemetery Rd, and some bushwhacking. 13.4 miles (about 1 mile not ST)

See Day Off- SkyBridge