Jillian Hikes The North East: December 29, 2014 Wildcat A & Wildcat D. Peaks # 6-7

The best laid plans go to waste. Jillian and I had planed on hiking Wildcat A and all three of the Carters today, but nature had other plans for us.

With colder temps in the forecast, we were on Nineteen Mile Brook Trail at 8:30 AM.

We made short work of the trail and were at the intersection with Carter Dome Trail.

After a while we were at the turn for Wildcat Ridge Trail. We had seen some blow downs and cleared a few but did not think much of it.

Shortly after the picture above was taken we ran into a lot of blow downs. They were so bad that we had a hard time staying on the trail and our pace was quite slow. In retrospect, I wish I had taken some photos of the blow downs, but at the time I was more interested in keeping us from getting lost.

Wildcat A Summit

The decision was made to change plans and go for Wildcat D, double back, and call it a day. I do not think this is something that people should do often. We generally stick to our plan, but seeing how we hike with a Spot PLB that is tracking us, and the Wife/Mom is familiar with the area and able to recognize what we were doing, we felt it was worth the risk.