We took a 3 hour night hike on October 31; Fred Bear, his dog, and me. We started out at the culvert on the cut-through from Long Point Rd to Hillfield Rd. It’s approximately 1/4 mile (500 meters?) from Long Point Rd, and the Weetock trail comes in on one side of the culvert and departs on the other side. We took the trail on the east side of the culvert that goes towards the sawdust pile.
We hiked mostly south along the beaver lake until the trail turned eastward along the swamps that border Hunters Creek. We walked past the sawdust pile without visiting it (that can be a great place to stop on starry nights, but it was overcast and we actually walked past the branch trail that would take us there by accident). We continued on the southside trail (south of Hillfield Rd.) until we got to the connector that would bring us out onto Hillfield Rd near the connecting road that would take us back to the culvert where we parked.
It was a pleasant hike. The temperature was dropping, slowly, but it only got down to 58F (14C) by the time we left, around 21:45 (9:45pm). We saw a lot of mysterious, reflective trail markers along parts of the trail. I never see anyone else hiking in the dark, so I often wonder who else is out there in the dark.
I really don’t have much to report. The only photo I took was a 15 second exposure of Fred, walking along the trail with his green headlamp. Our total time on the trail would have been about 3 hours 20 minutes (including our return walk on the forest road which was about 1 km or 0.6 miles).
