JustJoe Hiking: Little Wildcat 9/4/2011

After a couple of long hikes on Friday and Saturday I was looking for something a little shorter for Sunday. With 4 of the 5.5 miles on trail I picked a bushwhack to Little Wildcat. The baby of the Wildcats. I started on NBT around 8:00am. under cloudy skies and in fog.

I was not on trail long before I came to the first of many damaged sections of the NBT from Irene. I'm not sure how they will deal with all the washed out sections of trail.

With Nineteen Mile brook still flowing heavy, I had to spend some time doing the water photo thing. :-)

I spent a good half hour going down to different spots along the brook to take some shots. The sun was coming out now making the brook particularly beautiful.

When I got to the bridge that crossed the brook I found it only half intact with a make-shift repair. The rest of the bridge was down stream.

The further in I got on NBT the more damage I was seeing. Completely washed out sections of trail.

At the junction of NBT and Carter Dome Tr. I started that bushwhack for Little Wildcat. Right off the bat I found beautiful, open woods.

It was steep but the woods were so open it made for pretty easy going. I did manage to find one small view towards the Carters.

Nearing the summit I had a few small blow downs to deal with but nothing that hard as to just go over them.

The worst thing I had to deal with on this entire whack as for as woods goes (tons of black flies on the descent :-( ), was this 20 foot section of pencil woods at the summit.

I made the summit about 45 minute after stating the bushwhack.

I didn't stay too long on the summit as a couple minutes after arriving I heard a loud crack close by. Definitely larger than a bread box. Not having seen any moose sign really I decided I didn't want a possible close encounter with a bear and headed down.