Silver Falls trail Saint John New Brunswick, 2022, the most treacherous trail of my entire trip

 

Halloween had just passed.  I headed out east to finally visit the Silver Falls trail.  

I had no info on the trail head.  The All Trails app wasn't a lot of help.  Someone had said that it was hard to find.  Good to know but nothing more was said.

I was a little wary of this trail.  When I was in middle school, a teenager had fallen off a cliff.  I heard his head had come off in the impact.  That was the one I remembered but I've been told it has claimed a few more lives over the decades.

I headed down the bank by the old Champlain Heights bridge.  It seemed the obvious starting point. False start.  There was no way to go from there except back.

Someone had tossed a bike over the bank.  I checked to make sure my own bike was where I'd left it after climbing out of there.

If anyone out there is reading this, those rocks mark the trailhead.  I hope that helps.

There is not much chance of getting lost now.  That is one clearly marked trail.

This is where the waterfalls end up. 

It looks rather calm.  On a warmer day, I might have considered swimming but Dad tells me a young girl had drowned there.  It seems hard to believe but maybe more is going on under the surface of this little lagoon.

From this point, a trail follows upstream for a better look at the falls.  It is much too narrow to be considered safe. 

I get the impression that people on the All Trails app just copy and paste things in their trail descriptions.  For every trail I visited, someone had written or copied and pasted "No one is likely to be around to bother you there."  Isolation is not always the ideal thing.  It could just as easily be said  that " No one is likely to be around to help you there if you run into trouble."  You should also keep in mind that when someone on the app describes a trail as difficult, they usually don't mean you can expect a strenuous workout.  Difficult is a euphemism for dangerous. 

At this point, with a narrow trail and nothing to hang on to, I foolishly pushed on a bit but I sent a Whatsapp update over my phone just to leave a digital trail in case I didn't make it back and people wondered what had ever become of me.

I am not comfortable with heights, especially when heavy water pounding over rocks waits below.  

With a trail as narrow as this over an abyss, my knees tend to lock up and I get dizzy.  This only reduces my dexterity when I need it the most. I took a deep breath and moved ahead.

At this point, if I had crab walked and managed to slide down and brace one foot on that rock on the bottom left, I might have caught an interesting view but I decided against it.  The price to pay for a misstep was just a bit too high.  Plus, I was already dreading parts of the return trip.

It was only 4 steps on the return trip I didn't care for but it took a full 5 minutes to cross them.  I would take one step, my legs would freeze and my head would start spinning and I would step right back to better prepare myself for the next attempt.  Night was coming soon and the situation was only going to get worse if I didn't get my act together.  There was zero chance of anyone else being around to bother/help me.

There I am, glad to be back on solid ground with plenty of room to move, stumble or hop on one foot as much as I want.  

Whoo.  Look at the time.