Black Creek Trail Trip Report

“Well, it took me 13 1/2 hours to drive from near Chicago to Janice, Mississippi, but I got a campsite set up on the river Thursday, March 18, 2004 before dark. Slack got in at midnight, and set up about a quarter mile away in a nearby campground. On Friday, Slack was on time for the meet, and the two of us started the trail at Farley Bridge at the southern end. 6 1/2 hours later, we camped the first night in the Black Creek Wilderness on a small bluff above Black Creek within a quarter mile of Beaverdam Creek. The campsite was wide and flat, with a view towards the Creek, and a small spring gushing water from a softball sized hole in the ground near the creek.

On Saturday, we hiked 7 hours and 25 minutes and camped on a low dune of pure white sand opposite Moody's Landing. A pile of flood wood from the creek provided ample firewood just an arm's reach from the campfire that night.

Sunday morning, an owl hooted loudly from the tree over the campsite just before dawn, and we got an early start. Slack spotted and photographed the rare gopher tortise along the way. Five hours of hiking put us at the car at the end of the 43 mile trail. The weather held bright and sunny the whole time, with a low for the three days of 54 degrees, and highs of 75, 87, 70 degrees. About once an hour, we passed clear flowing streams where one could purify with Aqua Mira. There were the typical number of deadfalls which were not a problem, and only one 100 yard section of trail was flooded requiring a 30 yard detour to the right. Most of the trail was flat, well marked, and the few hills were easy. With his GPS, Slack logged in all the spots suitable for camping and will make them available to all those who ask. When his pictures are developed, he will post them on Webshots.

This is a trip that really should have had female participants. Real men don't ask for directions. Unfortunately, the $6.00 trail map shows most of the roads with three diget numbers, and the actual road signs have names. For instance, road 316 on the map is "Old Highway 49" on a sign. That when you can find a sign. The map showed the road for shuttling cars to be the "Brooklyn-McLain Road". In the 10.3 miles along that road, there is only ONE sign, it was three inches high, and read, "Brooklyn to Janice Road". If you go on this trip, a woman would have asked for direction and you would not have toured the Mississippi countryside in a car bearing plates from Illinois.

Oh, by the way TT ladies, Slack just broke up with his girlfriend. Where else are you going to find a good looking, smart, athletic, 6'4" single man in his late 20's with a good job.”

“I get this thing started and then can't go.

Odds are I am not going to get much hiking done other than the April trip to TX.

Too much to do at work and stress is at an all time high all the time.”

“Chili, you might have been stressed out as a passenger in my car refusing to stop and ask for directions, saying, hey, "I can find the way." But we missed you, man. I trained for your 20 mile trip, and Slack talked me into doing the whole 43 miles. I got sore the last 4 miles, and slowed his tall stride down. But I have to admit, Slack showed patients with this old backpacker. Those southern gentlemen are great backpacking partners.”

“Hey! I've come here to this site just to partake in your knowledge of places and great trip reports. It's been a few weeks and I thought I'd log on here and say hi! btw....made your Isle Royale Salmon, I have to say, it's about the best trail fare I've ever had in my 20+ yrs on the trail! Thank you. look for me here on the boards, cheers!”

“Welcome to the site. I just emailed you some better recipes in a cookbook form. Expect a 86K attachment.

While the other site has a huge corporation behind it, this site has a better trip page, better sense of humor, a higher percentage of posters who backpack, faster response to questions, and superior leadership.”

“Nice report, I was surprised to see it posted so early. I can't wait for you guys to publish the pictures. Glad you had a good time. Slack, it seems you made an impression on Prosecutor since he's petitioning the TT ladies for you.”

“Thursday, 3pm: I came up with this ingenious idea to leave work early: a customer in Corinth (my town) was shipped a DSL modem without any line filters. I took it upon myself to suggest to my boss that I could personally deliver them myself. He agreed and I was off. I arrived at the guy's office, installed the filters, turned on his modem expecting it to work, and nothing happened. Around 5pm I was getting a little anxious to go so I called BellSouth and arranged for a line technician to come and check his line in the morning. I was off by 5:15pm.

After lots of driving and talk radio, I arrived at the place where I expected to meet Prosecutor, but all I found was a gigantic house tent in a car camping lot. I looked at the tag on the house tent owner's car anyway and was relieved to see that it didn't say "Illinois" on it. I put up my hammock and went to sleep.

Friday, 10:02am: I was 2 minutes late to our meeting at the Janice trailhead. We left my car there and drove to the Fairly Bridge Trailhead in his car and hit the trail. Right off the bat we ran into some of the many boardwalks across the more sludgy parts of the wilderness, and I was thankful for those. We had several road crossings to make before we actually made it to the wilderness area around lunchtime. There at the wilderness border we dropped our packs and ate some food. I had some pepperoni and pineapple and some really disappointing "honey-roasted soy nuts" and Prosecutor had a homemade energy bar which was like a big oatmeal cookie. I ate some of it and it was good.

Before leaving, we saw that it was illegal to remove the gopher tortoise from the wilderness. We made note of that and pressed on, volleying back and forth legal stories / computer stories til we came to a reasonably good campsite near a stream. I had been marking all of the campsites we saw on my GPS and I went to mark this one too, but my GPS was gone. After some digging in my pack to no avail, Prosecutor said he'd take a nap while I tracked back to the wilderness boundary to find it. It was on the ground about 20 feet from where we'd started off after lunch; I guess I didn't put it back in its holster properly. On the way back I saw an armadillo in the woods making a hell of a lot of noise and I took a few pictures of the trail in repentance for holding us up. Sure enough, when I got back, Prosecutor was asleep and he said that he had slept 30 of the 32 minutes I was gone. I didn't believe him then.

After more walking and marking campsites, we came to a really good one right on Black Creek with a small spring bubbling out of the bluff. Right as I was really starting to appreciate the place, the bugs came out in two flanks: the usual mosquitoes and another kind of bug impervious to insect repellent. They just fell straight down and started crawling around. I got to excercise my swearing skills quite a bit until after sundown. For dinner I had some red beans and rice with tuna in HOI's ziploc bag cozy that I found on StoveStomper's website. Prosecutor put me to shame: he had some pasta shells, dried scallops, as well as a phalanx of other dried goodies that he turned into an amazing meal. I ate a big bite of it and lo, I saw that it was good. Later on I found that Prosecutor wasn't kidding when he said he slept 30 of the 32 minutes I was gone earlier: I was talking about something and he started snoring, even though he had been talking about the same sentence only 30 or so seconds before. I wish I could go to sleep like that.

The next morning we got up and took care of the water for the day. My water filter decided to take a dump all over itself and wouldn't filter worth it's weight in %@#$. I scrubbed the element and tried again; no go. I scrubbed again, no go. Then I attacked the damn thing and scrubbed off way more ceramic sludge than could possibly be reasonably necessary, but the filter was still belching water out the intake hose. Prosecutor let me use his PUR Hiker and it filled my 3.x L bag in just a few minutes. He let me use that for the remainder of the trip.

We got back to my car and I emptied out all the stuff it didn't look like I'd be using and we retrieved his car from the starting point and hopscotched up to the CCC campsite parking area and returned to Janice. This part of the hike was relatively flat and good for talking, but on this part I saw what I think was my favorite sight on the whole trip. It was only a big, flat stand of trees but there was hardly any underbrush at all. It was obvious that it had been burned out, but the land had recovered and there weren't many black marks to speak of on what was left. It just looked pretty. After some more hiking we came to a long, wide stretch of mud next to a forested spot but made it through that ok with no snake bites to speak of. From there on it was easy walking to the campsite across from Moody's Landing where there were even more bugs and more swearing coming from me.

We both got up pretty early the next morning with the intention of finishing the whole trail instead of just taking off from the CCC parking lot. The worst-case scenario was that if we reached the car later than noon, we'd ditch the rest of the hike and go home. I think we got there before 9:30am and had re-shuffled the cars around and were ready to go by 10:45am. Not bad. We both ditched our big packs and carried daypacks for the remainder of the hike, which was good. I quit smoking cigarettes only a week before we started this hike and this was where the ups & downs started, so I was thankful to have less torture on my lungs. On the way we saw a couple of turkey hunters that weren't doing much turkey hunting other than asking us if we'd seen any turkeys. Later on at a breakpoint, there was another turkey hunter across some tall grass who said something I couldn't understand; it may have been "Are you guys turkeys?" Regardless of what he said, Prosecutor called out that we weren't turkeys and the guy walked off. I guess he was bummed that we weren't turkeys.

From there on we just pressed on to the end. On the way we saw a school crossing that had a curious patch of electrical tape across the "girl" part of the sign. It wasn't vulgar or anything like that, it just made it look like she had a really long and creepy arm holding her bookbag. We made it to my car at the northwest end of the trail at about 1:30pm and went back to the CCC camp and said our goodbyes.

This was my second TT trip and I really enjoyed it. Prosecutor is an excellent guy and I wouldn't hesitate to hike with him again. The Black Creek wilderness really has a lot going for it as well. The trails were always well marked, pretty clean except for what the creek deposits there after a flood, and there weren't many blowdowns to speak of. It's not crowded either: we only saw two other guys with backpacks on the entire length of trail. That said, I don't think that I'd want to go there next weekend or the next because the mosquitoes have come out now and there will only be more in the coming months until Mother Nature is kind enough to freeze them all to death. I recommend it for early spring definitely, and I think it would make a nice winter hike as well.

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I took a few pictures with a disposable camera that is being developed right now. When I get the prints back, I'll just write my own gallery to upload them to and show them there. I'm not going to bother anybody with popup windows and flashing doodads.

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And ladies, that's right! I'm a great guy.”