Do you ever explore the wilderness off-trail? I love ditching the trails to find secret waterfalls and caves and stuff.
lol no its am impenetrable thicket if they logged it (and they almost ALWAYS did) you are not getting through that you will make it 1000 ft and collapse from exhaustionDid you know JD Vance's family is actually from like 50 mi east of the Red River Gorge? I hope I get a chance to make it out to the Red or Cumberland Rivers before year's end. There's some trail where like you have to pay this guy 5 dollars or something to park and its on private land (near the Red River) but it's not as crazy-hard as some of the other hikes where you are just basically rock climbing.
>>2773919faggot hiker detectedBushwacking is common for the true outdoorsman aka hunters.
>>2773922Again, this wouldn't really be an issue in old growth forest - there you can just walk right through, but in logged high-elevation forest you are just going to get dense shrubs and have a bad time. This is a consequence of excessive clear-cut logging. There's no true or false outdoors - life isn't a race or a contest.
>>2773924>Walk right through old growthehhhh...uhhhhmmm.. I don't think you've ever actually seen old growth if you think that.
>>2773916I spend more time off-trail than on-trail these days. I've already done all of the hiking trails in my region and like checking out new areas.
>>2773959I was in Lilley Cornett woods just two months ago. The undergrowth was totally different from the super-logged scrub of nearby Pine Mountain. Old growth didn't have any nettles or rhododendron thickets. I've been through plenty of rhododendron thickets in super-logged wilderness areas. Not my favorite. Logging permanently alters the mycology and what kind of trees will grow and climate change just makes it worst.
>>2773916Lol yeah I grew up not using trails t. Kentucky
>>2773968Wear blue jeans and grow a pair
>>2773968That's an interesting take on rhododendron. I've never heard anyone attribute rhodos to logging and second growth. I suppose it could be true.
>>2773968>Logging permanently alters mycologyI apologize for my ignorance of your regional forests--you seem to be a noticer. I follow game trails, lots of dear near me do the heavy lifting of trail making.
>>2773916>Did you know JD Vance's family is actuallywhy the fuck should i care about Bagger vance or where his dumbfuck polchud family is from
>>2774172>I follow game trails, lots of dear near me do the heavy lifting of trail making.In Kentucky there are areas so dense with rhodos that it is absent of deer completely. The nice part is that it is usually absent of ticks as well.
>>2774176>Bagger Vancemy sides
>>2773916Sometimes. Got a bit uncomfortable one way when walking through a forest in Georgia and saw a "Trespassers will be shot" sign on the ground. It was a slope and the sign appeared to have migrated there with the leaf litter but I had no idea where it came from or where any property lines were. Having grown up in rural Alabama, I knew plenty of rednecks who weren't bluffing about their threats to shoot at people on their land. Probably wasn't really an issue but you never know and I headed back in the general direction of the trail.
>>2774266its a classic
>>2773919>Did you know JD Vance's family is actually from like 50 mi east of the Red River Gorge?red river? I thought they were from somewhere near the Ganges
>>2774408it flows into the kentucky riveranyways just got back from old growth forest todaylook how wide open the undercanopy istheres some plants in the understory but like its not just shrubs and kudzu when you get invasive vines and shrubs I think that's a consequence of not only logging but then after clearcut logging they would leave the sawdust and scraps behind and then THAT would set on fire easily and the resultant fires damaged the fungi underneathI guess I have to go to a rhodo-jungle soon to get a comparison shot - I mean yes this is coastal plain so its not an apples to apples comparison, but still Also, if you've got photos of old growth forests, post em here.
>>2773968GSMNP was completely stripped of timber pre-park status. It is also filled with rhodies.Just my annecdotal addition.
>>2774470Is that Lily Cornett woods?
>>2774777No, Brandywine Creek State Park. >>2774573GSMNP has *some* old growth iirc near the wilderness areas, I believe it has the tallest tree in the east, but there's probably not a lot of old growth.
>>2774789My main take away was that it was mostly second growth and also had a lot of rhodies.
>>2774470I found this cool hemlock/yellow birch old growth forest just on the outskirts of a small town last year, which was surprising.
>>2774975I love me some Hemlock. I'm shit at hiking with anything that takes a picture but next time I go up that part of the mountain I'll try to get some pics of some old growth Hemmi stands.
>>2775641Hemlock gets repetitive the trees all look the same and the leaves aren't nice. I prefer nice hardwoods like maple, hickory, oak, and especially black walnut. There's lots of softwood old growth in the US, hardwood old growth is much harder to find and tends to be tiny acreage-wise.
Is Kentucky the Vietnam of America
Yes, I am trained in land navigation and it is an important skill for navigating the backcountry without emitting any wireless signals.
>>2773916Sometimes.There's lots of poison ivy and ticks here, so I try to avoid it unless I have a specific reason to be bushwhacking through thick undergrowth. Deer help clear a path sometimes, but generally I do almost all my /out/ in the winter because the ticks are completely horrid where I live.>t. Wisconsin
>>2775788Hemlock used to be favored among outers in the early days of camping as the softest and most springy of bedding materials- I could never cut one down, they give a clean and open air to any rocky side of a mountain
>>2775788This says more about you than it does the deep forests I enjoy. I'm also pretty sure you've never been in an old growth hemlock stand--there aren't many left and most are hard to get to.
clifty wilderness kentuckyI grew up running through this shit off trail, always told myself trails were for pussies when I was a youngster, became agile as fuck
off trail I would run through this shit nearly as fast as I could run on flat terrain wish I was around during the times of Daniel Boone
>>2776032>>2776031wtf Kentucky looks like THAT?
Only if i know the trail and the surrounding area.
>>2775788There's something magic about hemlocks though. They're a good vibes tree. My favourite are Eastern white pine though, on account of how massive they get. The king of the forest. Hardwood forests are nice but they're super dreary in the colder months while the magic of confiers is only amplified by the snow.
>>2773972>Wear blue jeans>hikingfuck off retard
>>2776036Daniel Boone NF slaps fr. No cap the Red River Gorge area in general is great along with Clifty Wilderness. Both slap harder than your sister at 3am
>>2776165looks just like Breaks Interstate Park, is it not?
>>2776164pussy ass bitch
I kind of like finding old-ass game trails out here and seeing where they lead.
>>2774142It's like that here in western NC we're they logged extensively in the 40s-50s and earlier, alot of the "balds" as they're called now used to be conifer forests before the logging stripped the land. Now it's nothing but rhododendron, blue berry, and mountain laurel.
>>2776182I wonder if anyone has done any research into the fungal layer on balds and what it might have been pre-logging. Maybe the logging changed the underlying soil so the conifers couldn't grow anymore and balds of course happen on exposed, windy terrain where hardwoods are unlikely to grow either. But yeah, a lot of it was pure coniferous forest at the higher elevations, and mixed lower down. I guess my question is would it be possible to REMOVE the scrubby bushes and, obviously you can't get the old growth back but maybe you could add fungal supplements to the soil and get tall trees to grow again even on steep hillsides and normal understory plants that would have been there natively.
>>2776183Well we're I live specifically in western NC the local balds had a series of fires that burnt hot enough and long enough to completely strip away any nutrients the soils had before hand so I can only imagine the long lasting if not permanent damage they had on the local fungi
>>2776184People also don't really think about how when they logged they left a lot of scraps behind that would then set on fire. I assume much of the land that was logged burned at one point. I just wonder why there's no remediation efforts.
>>2776185>Why there is no remediation effortsloggers are corrupt as fuck and they don't teach anything about nature in schools.Grade school kids can't name any local trees or plants and have no idea how long a tree can even live.
>>2776120>Hardwood forests are nice but they're super dreary in the colder monthsI actually kind of like the gloomy, overcast, deadwoods look. Don't know how to explain it; it's alluring in a solemn, silent sense where snowy pines are alluring in a picturesque sense.
>>2776183>I guess my question is would it be possible to REMOVE the scrubby bushesHere in the upper midwest that's mostly a fool's errand. Nothing short of mechanical removal, followed by frequent, slow moving prescribed fire and maybe even herbicidal applications, will get rid of the rampant swathes of buckthorn, staghorn sumac, and black locust we have here choking out all the native undergrowth.I mean, at least stagmac looks pretty in the fall. Love the rusty orange leaves.
>>2776279Same. If the sky is always gray the Californians stay away.
in the alps it can get difficult to go off trails in many places because that would mean going on a 60 degree or more rocky slope that's impassable, but in other cases you can and it's cool, it's just that alot of places are on rails so to speak bc it's all either valleys, ridges, or mountain sides and the last 2 are often impassable, but you can do cool stuff like get to the end of a valley and climb to the top of the ridge after the trail ends.I think in less topographically rugged terrain if you're somewhere that has wilderness you can go around innawoods/tundra/desert/swamp/steppe etc and actually explore
>>2776464ir you can go perpendicular to the alley and go up to the ridge depending on where you are
>>2776168different feel and look really. There are some points of red river gorge where you can get views like breaks, but i think breaks is setup more in a way to get a bigger overall view of the entire canyon than red river gorge's trails
I am from here but I am very glad that I live out west nowIt's cool woods and they will for sure make you tough but the big boy woods are elsewhere
>>2773916What’s the point?If it’s worth seeing or doing, there is probably already a trail to it
>>2776613>but i think breaks is setup more in a way to get a bigger overall view of the entire canyon than red river gorge's trailsnot really because breaks is JUST where russell fork river breaks up pine mountainI feel like the gorge part of red river gorge is actually bigger and wider, but it has been a while since I have visitedthis is breaks in the pic, and a you can see its pretty similar lookingto>>2776031
>>2776859Don't get me wrong, I liked Red River Gorge, I just think the views in Breaks were more apparent and easier to get to.Pic related was from Red River Gorge at the top of one of the parts that did give a really nice overview.
>>2776916>I just think the views in Breaks were more apparent and easier to get to.The best view is the hardest to get to - the chimneys looking at the towers - it's 7.5 mi/1700 ft elevation gain and you have to park in this weird area that has an AWFUL dirt road to access itthey have been funded and supposed to build a footpath across the river, but that hasn't happened yetit's too bad they don't build it out more and add a bridge and steps up to the chimneys, but I think the issue there is CSX railroad owns parts of it and doesn't want thatI haven't tried hiking that view (chimneys looking at towers) yet, but I want to sometime.I assume your red river gorge is this one maybe:https://www.alltrails.com/trail/us/kentucky/pinch-em-tight-to-hansons-pointI wanted to do that, but its kinda long and it was 100 degrees when I was there so I did the easy overlook that's pseudo-paved and 1 mi rtoverlooks blocked by trees like that are the blurst, and I assume you can't get to the edge of that rock easily
>>2776916Halfmoon Arch?
>>2776917Yeah that was the trail for that view. It down poured the day I went, but by the time i got to the overlook at pinch-em it was cleared up. You can walk right out onto that ovelrook very easily actually. I don't think he's visible but there was a guy even further out on that rock beyond the few tree tops sitting out there too. You just have to be careful to not slip as you're fucked if you do. >>2776952see pic is what I did
