Back in 2012, I had a very strange experience on Haycock Mountain in Bucks County. I never thought much about it at the time. I was mostly just pissed and frustrated more than anything else, but looking back on it, it was the last time I hiked alone.
It was late August and it had been raining for a few days straight. Finally around noon on Sunday, the rain let up and I decided to try and get out for a short hike. I had been hiking frequently the last few years but had just moved to Bucks County. Since I had been preoccupied with the move, it had been a few months since I was out on a trail. Being new to the area, there wasn’t any time to properly research the trails. It was by accident that I had learned of the highest point in the county, Haycock Mountain. Now to anyone who grew up in the mountains of Northeastern Pennsylvania, this wasn’t so much of a mountain as it was a large hill. But math doesn’t lie and according to the numbers, this was the highest elevation within the borders of the county. So mountain it is.
I looked up the location on Google maps and was happy to see a parking area and it even showed a trail. I quickly put the coordinates into my GPS to create a track that was a simple out and back, or rather, up and down. The trail was short just over a mile and since I had been hiking for awhile, like a lot of hikers, I had also dabbled in Geocacheing. At some point the previous year I had loaded all the caches into my GPS that were within a hundred miles of Philadelphia. Adding these points of interest into the GPS meant that you could easily be notified if you walked within a quarter mile of cache. I could see in the mapping software that Haycock was home to a few caches and decided that I would stop and take a look to see if I could locate some of them on my walk.
By this point it was early afternoon, but according to Google it would only take about forty minutes to drive to the parking lot. I figured even if I wasted some time looking for the caches it still wouldn’t take more than a couple hours to complete the hike. Arriving at the parking lot, the trail-head was easy to find, though it was not marked. I was glad that I had taken the time to add the track into the GPS.
Everything was soaking wet, like still dripping wet. A slight breeze would ignite a downpour from the saturated leaves above. There were plenty of wet slippery rocks and I was happy to see that this was looking like it would be at least a moderate hike. It was around the halfway point on the trail that the first alarm beeped letting me know a cache was near. I spent some time poking around off trail trying to find it, but gave up after about twenty minutes. Returning to the trail, I continued walking up toward some larger rocks. Entering some bigger rock outcrops which turned out to be large boulders, another alarm sounded indicating a cache. I Maneuvered around the boulders over and in between them looking, but not finding anything. At one point, it became quite disorienting. The boulders were about six to eight feet high and walking between them you couldn’t see where you were going or from where you came. Kind of like a corn maze, but only out of dark sedimentary rock. After slipping between a few of them, I became aware that it would be pretty easy to slip and fall and become stuck. What’s worse, no one would be able to see you unless they were right on top of you. That is of course assuming anyone was there to find you. I hadn’t seen anyone on the trail, there were no cars in the lot, other than mine, and with the conditions being as wet as they were, it was unlikely anyone would come by that day.
I found my way back to the trail and continued on. I was nearing the top of the mountain. The terrain was pretty much just climbing over, around, and in-between boulders with still no trail markers, but at least there was some graffiti to use as reference. Emerging at the top I took note of where I was and the direction I came from, with no real indication of a trail, I knew from past hikes in unfamiliar places to pay attention to landmarks in case you get turned around. I checked my watch to see how long it took to ascend to the top. Even with spending a good while hunting for the Geocaches, it had only taken a little over an hour to get to the top.
Walking along the top of the mountain there really wasn’t much to see, at least not at this time of year. Between the lush greenery and with all the rain the past week; nature was exploding. It appeared more like a jungle than the Pennsylvania woods. I climbed to the top of a large flat rock, it looked like a table and was a little bigger than a twin bed. I explored the top and found some more graffiti and a couple Cairns.
Satisfied that I saw everything there was to see, I decided to find the trail and head back down the mountain. Looking at my watch I had spent about a half hour exploring the top. I returned to the area where I emerged from the trail, but was unable to find it.
This is where things start to get a little weird.
I was certain I was in the right spot where I came out of the thicker bush to the more open area at the top near the base of the table rock formation. However, I could not see anything that looked like a trail. There was no opening in the rocks where I came through just thirty minutes before. I doubled back along the top and retraced my steps and still everything pointed to where I thought it should be. Finally, I pulled out the GPS. My GPS provides a track from the time you turn it on. It can actually be a nuisance if you forget to reset it before starting on a new hike. Essentially, it is a bread crumb trail that shows the path you’ve taken and this is in a different color than the track you are following to reduce confusion. The GPS was on and working, but no track….
This never happened before. I’ve seen it do weird things when not acquiring a signal or drifting due to the imperfections of the technology. But the unit appeared to be working fine except for two things. First, it showed no activity, no bread crumb trail nor the initial track I had loaded on to it in preparation for the hike. There was an active track being recorded according to the log, it wasn’t deleted, it just wasn’t showing on the device. Even the trip timers were still counting time and recording distance. The second issue was the unit could not zero in on my position. On the screen, my position is depicted with an arrow pointing in the direction of travel. This arrow was bouncing all over the top of the mountain. The best way I can describe it was that it like using a car GPS off a main road such as in a parking lot of a shopping center. The mapping software does not always have the layout of the parking lot and as it tries to locate your position it tends to bounce around. Once you exit the lot and enter the roadway it settles down. Well my device wasn’t settling down. If just kept showing me moving erratically as if I was jumping two hundred feet to the west and then fifty feet south west. I watched it do this for nearly fifteen minutes. I tried standing still, I tried walking in a straight line, nothing.
Now I have a pretty good sense of direction and it’s not like I was out in the back country. And, I was on a hill for chrissake, all I really had to do was walk straight down. So I picked the direction I thought made the most sense, based on where I thought I exited the trail, and the position of the sun which hadn’t moved too much in the now forty or fifty minutes I had been at the top. I scrambled up a boulder that I swear was blocking the way that I came and all I saw was nothing but more boulders. Big, Smooth, and very wet boulders.
First step put me on my ass and I slid to the edge. I was able to stop before sliding off between two other large rocks. Now at this point, I wouldn’t say I was in a panic, but I’m not a hundred percent sure that if I had fallen between them I would’ve been able to climb out given how slick the surface was and how tall the rocks were. I pulled myself back up and onto my feet and carefully studied my next move. There wasn’t one, at least not a smart one. I had to jump across which wasn’t far, maybe five feet and down a foot, but having just nearly cracked my head open, I wasn’t feeling all Bear Grylls. Still, there really wasn’t an option. I couldn’t believe how many and how big these rocks were. They seemed quite larger looking down on them then they did when I was coming up. And the funny thing is there wasn’t any ground visible. Coming up I was walking around and in between these like a maze. Maybe I chose the wrong direction?
I decided to go for it and made it across sticking the landing with just a little wobble. This time I sat down and scooted to the edge of this rock only to find myself in the exact same position again, but now further down the hill. Going back was out of the question. This continued for what seemed like longer than it should have been. At one point, I looked up and saw the rock face that I had seen on my way up, now of course I knew that face was the vertical side of the table looking rock I had stood on. This meant the trail should be right here, this was the point where I entered the boulder field initially. But no trail, just more rocks.
Eventually, the rocks gave way to a leaf covered slope. I checked the GPS, it was working again! I could see both my original track and the breadcrumb track from my ascent. But they were showing as a half mile away, further down the mountain…. I bushwacked to rejoin the trail only to find I still had another half mile to go to the parking lot. I was so relieved I didn’t bother to question or add up miles and just hauled down the trail to the car.
Once I was at the car I scrolled through the GPS data. Somehow, even with circling around looking for the geocaches on the way up, it still showed just a little over a mile to the top. But the decent track showed nearly a two and a half mile track down….and what’s weirder is that looking at the track, the part of the track that went through the rocks showed as a straight line; a mile long. Once I finally got out of the rocks the track looked normal with all the little bumps and curves of the trail as you would expect, but not only does that not make sense, the lines crossed each other and tapered together near the top. This means I did choose the right direction and I somehow managed to cross right over the same trail I walked up the mountain on through the rocks. That trail wasn’t there when I was coming down, I know because not only did I not see anything resembling a trail, I didn’t see any graffiti either. I crossed over the same area, even if I somehow manged to miss the trail or any ground at all, how the hell did I not see any graffiti, it was everywhere on the way up.
There was something about that place that gave me a weird feeling, a feeling of dread or despair if that makes any sense. Not the whole time, it started once I entered the rocks on the way up and it never really left until I was able to rejoin the trail on the way down. At the time, I chalked it up to being upset at not being able to find my way or even a little panicked after realizing I could get hurt doing this. But that doesn’t explain why I felt like that before it even happened.
It occurred to me after writing this, that not only was this the last time I hiked alone, after hiking alone regularly for a few years, it would be my last hike at all for nearly eight years after. Maybe it was my subconscious, or maybe it’s just a coincidence that life got in the way at the same time I began to lose interest in hiking, but whatever it was, it’s b
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