Halloween Hike 2023

With plans in place to hike the Owl Creek Trail System, a 10-day forecast of freezing temperatures raised doubts. These doubts were quickly pushed aside because I had invited Chuck. Chuck encouraged me with the statements “You wimping out?” & “If you’re scared, don’t be. You’ll be with a Northern Warfare Expert.” So off we go. It is four and a half hours from home so we started early. We carried extra water because the William Bankhead National Forest had been in drought. Arriving in the area, we made a couple of caches for our water along the trail for retrieval later. The Brushy Trailhead was reached around 11:00. A light rain had been falling for nearly an hour and the temperature was hovering around 58 degrees. This 58 degrees was the high for the entire trip. The rain slacked off by noon and we started down the damp trail. Our first night was spent at the Owl Creek Horse Camp. This camp is a drive-in camp used by horseback riders. It has restroom facilities and running water. We passed a good evening and bedded down as it got cool and dark. Come morning, the Hunter's Moon was bright enough to get an early start encouraged by temperatures in the mid 30s. This day was to close the Key Mill Loop and the majority of the Brushy Creek Loop. We stashed water off of County Road 73 near the west side of the Brushy Creek Loop trail. Once we reached the junction of Brushy Creek and Pine Torch Loops, it became obvious that we had passed our cache. After consulting the map we decided to push on to the next cache, making it a 12 mile day on the trail. Well into the afternoon on the Pine Torch Loop, we discern that, once again, our cache has been passed. Out of water and with no option we backtrack a mile and a half to collect the water. This was the best three gallons of water ever! To beat sunset, we rushed through meal prep and camp. We crashed out footsore and tired. Sunrise brought clear skies and freezing temperatures. A quick pack up driven by the cold put us on the trail by 7:30. Our final stretch put us passing our first cache again. With much attention to the trail it becomes clear that in the distant past the trail had been rerouted away from the road and our water is sitting beside an abandoned trail. The trailhead was reached by 11:00 and a hearty burger a couple of hours later at Mugshots, Tuscaloosa finished off a great hike.