Explosion Mars Jericho Walls Backpacking Trip

“Arriving midday last Friday at the new Alabama Jericho Walls Wilderness Trailhead with perfect weather and a bounty of budding wildflowers gave an expectation that nothing could go wrong on this three day solo backpacking trip. Jericho Walls is a newly acquired state preserve on the northern border of Alabama that has long been known to the local inhabitants as a very scenic hiking and fishing location. An hour hike two miles down a well marked trail and a thousand foot drop in elevation brought me to Hurricane Creek where a flock of a dozen wild turkeys flew away from the creek bottom at my approach. Hurricane Creek was easily forded as it was less than knee deep. Across the creek and across a 100 yard small open field I took the northern most campsite, the largest and best of the three unoccupied campsites. As the sun set, I ate some venison fajitas while being serenaded by owls and treated to a sky full of stars.

The next morning I awoke to woodpeckers, cardinals and various songbirds under sunny skies. All around, the trout lilies and various wildflowers just started blooming, and trilliums were about to bloom. After breakfast with temperatures climbing into the 60’s, and I hiked the one mile up Turkey Creek, past a small waterfall to the spectacular Turkey Creek gushing out of a large cave in the canyon wall. Hiking further upstream over a bone dry creek bed 100 yards was another waterfall gushing into a hole in the ground. The creek between these points went completely underground for about a hundred yards at the head of this box canyon. Returning to the campsite, another group of family backpackers set up in the far southern of the three campsites, and later, two more groups of backpackers arrived consisting of 14 Boy Scouts and 7 adult Boy Scout leaders. I suggested to the two scout troops that they share the much larger campsite that I had original set up in, and they took me up on the offer.

After my dinner of chicken taquitos made with delicious wild onions picked from the adjoining field, I joined the adult Boy Scout leaders in conversations. Two of the Boy Scout adult leaders were lawyers, and one was a gynecologist, and as the Boy Scouts huddled around the campfire, the adults some twenty feet away discussed various wilderness trips and legal liabilites in a very tranquil nighttime setting. At 7:30 p.m. during these quiet conversations, suddenly there was a loud BOOOM, as loud as commercial firework going off on the 4th of July. The Boy Scout campfire had just blew up sending burning embers and a few burning logs flying in all directions. Instant pandemonium, as the Boy Scouts ran every which way, brushing burning embers off their clothes. One scout had enough embers on him that another scout yelled for him to “drop and roll”, but that turned out not to be necessary. What had happened is that an adult scout leader with decades of experience threw his trash bag in the campfire to burn the paper, forgetting he had placed a depleted propane canister in the bag, and the canister blew up. Immediately after all the embers were brushed from the scouts’ clothes and doused, the Scoutmasters rounded up all the scouts for a head count, and to check them for injuries. Unfortunately, one scout was injured with first degree sunburn like burns on his bare leg, and some first and second degree burns on the back of his arm, where it looked like he fell on one of the burning logs ejected from the campfire in the explosion. Well, his scoutmaster got the gynecologist to clean and bandage his burns, and the good doctor was all thumbs handling the bandages. I told the doctor to just imagine the bandages as Kotex and see if that helps. Well that suggestion got the doctor telling the group of all males some interesting work related vignettes that completely distracted the burned scout from his pain. The adult scouter that deposited the depleted propane canister by mistake in the campfire just felt terrible, and everyone went to bed for a quiet night sleep. The next morning, the burned scout was cheerful with no further pain or limitation in motion, and everyone learned from this experience. The hike up the canyon wall took 75 minutes back to the car.

If you are thinking of going to Jericho Walls, here are my trip photographs.
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/prosecutor104/album?.dir=7189&.src=ph&store=&prodid=&.done=http%3a//pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/prosecutor104/my_photos

Map of Jericho Walls:
www.briartech.com/walls.pdf

Two fishermen reported bass and red-eyes up to a foot long for a mile or two downstream from the trail crossing on Hurricane Creek that could be caught on earthworms of minnow imitation flies. The best photographic light of the waterfalls is in the hour or so before noon. This is an excellent backpacking location that should be on everyone’s week end list.”

“Holy Crap!!!!

Talk about a Burning Ring of Fire!”

“Great post. Thanks for the pics. Planning on going in April. Been trying to volunteer for some trailblazing, but Greg Lein at the AL Parks Dept won't return my call. Oh well.”

“Um, he who plays with fire always gets burned? Or in this case, someone else? Wow, that's just really bizarre. I'm glad it didn't end up worse; guess the canister wasn't as depleted as everyone thought...

Looks like a cool place though. I was actually thinking about heading down there this fall, possibly do something with the long Thanksgiving weekend, for a chance to perhaps tag Alabama.

Vee shall see...”

“Howdy Porsecutor!!
Sounds like a fun trip.
I prolly would have crapped my pants when that thing blew!!”

“Sounds like what happened on the Ithaca Trip last year.”

“Great report. The stars are amazing there when it's clear.”

“No time to crap in your pants. From my working in a truck stop days where we burned garbage on the premises, I could recognize the sound of a aerosol paint can exploding, and my first guess was that it was a canister. Even empty it will make a pop. Some scouts ran into the trees, and under the excitement, may not have realized they were injured. The tasks of getting the scouts together and checking them for injuries focused the adults attention to the important task at hand and calmed everyone down.”

“Must have been one of the lawyers.”

“and the moral of this story is that when you deplete a canister use your knife to stick a hole in it”

“Great report and pics, always nice to have somethin' out of the ordinary happen... as long as no one gets hurt too bad.”

“prosecutor, glad you had a good trip. Pics were great. Glad no one got seriously injured.

Sorry I couldn't make it down. I wanted to drive down for at least a dayhike but I had some other commitments for that evening.”

“looks crowded on Saturday Night. Great pics though. I try to convey one of the reasons I like to go hiking is for stories like that.
last edited: 3/15/05 11:24:05 AM”

“Imagine that....

A doctor hiking in the woods with three lawyers.....


I bet he was more nervous than a woman on the rag trying to swim through the shark exhibit at Sea Aquarium”

“Now that's funny.”

“A lawyer can swim through the shark exhibit at the Sea Aquarium with no trouble at all.





Professional courtesy.”

“Nice trip report! *BIG* excitement!
>8-O”

“"professional courtesy"... Thanks to chili and pros for the laughs.”

“Nice trip report and pics. Thanks, Planning a trip this Fall, Thanksgiving weekend.”