Irish Wilderness

Whites Creek Trail completed – now just to hike the short spur trail back to the parking lot.

The final crossing of Whites Creek.

Fiddler Spring – I took a quick detour to checkout the spring and top up my water. +1

Hello li’l buddy – It’s probably as fast on the trail as I am.

Looking back along Whites Creek Trail – This is fairly typical of the trail conditions I encountered. Note the recently cut deadfalls. At this point, it started to rain, and it carried on raining for the next four hours.

Looking into Whites Creek Cave – No I didn’t go in. I took this picture through the grill using my headlamp at full brightness to light up the cave. Had I been thinking, I would have set the camera on my mini tripod and gone for a longer exposure and some light painting. There’s nothing to give the picture any feeling of scale. Let’s just say, “Pretty big.”

Whites Creek Cave. +1

Heading up towards Whites Creek Cave – the trail is narrow and the drop-off steep. It appears that most people miss where the trail turns left up the hill to the cave.

Back on the Whites Creek Trail – Whites Creek Float Camp spur trail (branching right in the foreground). Time to head back to the trailhead, seven and-a-half miles of hiking and lots of rain in my future.

‘eek Float Camp – signs that there has not been a lot of trail maintenance for a while.

Crossing Whites Creek – You have to cross Whites Creek to get back to the main Whites Creek Trail. It’s not very obvious in this picture (or in reality), but the trail climbs up the bank just to the right of the tree on the left side of the frame.

Change of Plan (And an unloved wilderness registration point) – My original plan for today was to hike part of the southern loop of the Whites Creek Trail and stop for the night near one of the big pools that form on Whites Creek. Instead I’m heading home. One-minute read

Time for a nice cup of hot chocolate – Cadbury’s Hot Chocolate, of course. +1

I have a picnic table and a grill – When I found this empty float campsite with a picnic table I knew I’d found my spot for the night. +1

Path from the put-in to the float camp.

Whites Creek at the Whites Creek Float Camp – Whites Creek Float Camp looks to be abandoned, but I’m guessing it is just showing a lack of TLC brought on by a year of neglect because of COVID-19. +2

Caves on Whites Creek.

This is not the trail you are looking for… You would think (and I and apparently, many, many others have), that the trail goes straight on here. Not so. Look carefully and there’s the trail, two feet in front of the sign on the left going up the hill. +1

Campsite by the Eleven Point River. I followed the trail, that I thought was the Whites Creek Trail to this campsite. I took a couple of pictures and then went back to Bliss Spring to work out where I went wrong.

Old homestead chimney

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