Midnight on the mountain

A treacherous night along the Foothills Trail

(Author’s note: The following is an updated and edited version of a story that originally appeared on my former WordPress site. It’s a true tale of a long night spent on the Foothills Trail during a through-hike in the summer of 2017).

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I knew we were in trouble when the light bar lit us up.

The pickup was an annoyance initially as it sat across the small gravel parking lot from our campsite, headlamps aimed ominously at our tents. It was near midnight and we were tired after a day of backpacking on the Foothills Trail, which runs for 77 miles along the western North and South Carolina border. “They’re Friday night hooligans,” I thought to myself, nothing more.

When they switched on the million-lumen light bar, annoyance evaporated into fear.

It was a horrible thing, the truck, idling in the shadows like a ravenous beast. It was an older full-size American truck of indeterminate make in the inky darkness. If Stephen King were a Southerner, this truck would be his Christine, except it would have been named “Bocephus” or “Delmar.”

The truck sported massive, knobby tires and one of those after-market muffler set-ups that made the engine roar at ear-piercing decibels. A tattered Confederate battle flag hung defiantly from an antenna on the right fender, the very embodiment of generational grievance. It was nightmare fuel. A redneck’s wet dream.

We sat in our tents paralyzed. “What the fuck are these guys up to?” I hissed to my wife, Melissa, as she tried in vain to get a signal on her cell. Chase, my sister’s boy, our 13-year-old nephew, was in his own tent a dozen feet away. We were the only campers around.

Our tormentors had driven down the mountain on a jeep road adjacent to our campsite. Seeing our tents, they’d decided to have a little fun at our expense.

The truck lurched forward from the corner of the parking lot, spinning out, doing figure eights and slinging gravel, the howling engine at full octave. I was on this mountain with my wife and my nephew with no cell signal. My mind raced with a hundred different scenarios, none good. I didn’t have a gun. Never imagined I would need one. It was nearly 1am now. I had never felt so vulnerable.

The truck idled in a low growl, menacing and aggrieved. It occurred to me that it was a Friday night, now Saturday morning, and they had been out partying. They were drunk at a minimum, but who knows what else they’d been up to. Meth is rampant in those parts. “They’ve got guns, no doubt,” I thought to myself, “No way they don’t have guns.”

What were they doing? Planning? Were they still just messing with us or had their whiskey-addled brains gone to a darker place? It seemed entirely possible that they could walk down into the campsite and… God knows what.

They paused the figure-eight gravel slinging and pulled adjacent to us at the edge of the campsite, gravel crunching under the weight of the truck as it slowed to a stop. Only thirty feet away now.

One of them exited the passenger side and walked to the bed of the truck, his movements fidgety, erratic. I could make out enough of him in the waning moonlight to determine that he was straight out of central casting - wiry and bedraggled with long, stringy hair and a cutoff t-shirt. Faint aromas of pine, burnt motor oil, and spilt beer on ancient upholstery wafted toward us. The voice of Darius Rucker crooned from the truck radio in a tinny echo, a jaunty tune about holding hands that seemed a perverse joke in the moment.

The gaunt figure reached for something in the bed of the pickup, and I could hear the metallic scraping of implements against the truck bed. The back of my tongue tasted like copper and fear. My heart pounded so hard I was sure they could hear it. I could hear muffled conversation, something like an argument, but couldn’t make anything out.

If they came down into the campsite, I would have to get out of the tent. I would need to address them, try my diplomatic skills and attempt to diffuse the situation. But I knew that if they walked down there, things would turn ugly quickly.

I prayed they wouldn’t, and I cursed myself for choosing this campsite, next to a trail access parking lot. It was only a few tenths-of-a-mile from the highway and easily accessible, beyond the safe harbor of the deep woods. What had begun as such an excellent day on the trail and at camp had become a nightmare unfolding by the minute.

I felt at that moment that we were on the verge of something violent and terrible.

Perhaps death. Or worse.

It felt real and close and almost scripted, as if there were no other way for it to end.

To my immense relief, the ruffian gave up on finding whatever it was he had been searching for and climbed back into the cab after what seemed an eternity.

They spun more figure-eights, the monstrous engine roaring, enraged. And then, just as quickly as they arrived, they were gone. We heard them tear down the gravel access road, turning south onto Highway 178 a half-mile down the mountain, the roar of the engine trailing off as they lumbered into the dark night.

We’d received a reprieve, but we knew there would be no return to sleep. Our minds raced to process what had happened and what might lay ahead. What if they were plotting a return?

Completely vulnerable at our camp, there was only one thing to do. I called out to Chase to grab his shoes and headlamp. We had to get back to the trail and there was no time to pack. It was more urgent than that. We needed to find a safe place now.

We accessed the trail at the northwest corner of the Laurel Valley parking lot, climbing a couple dozen steps away from the lot and onto the trail proper. We sat there at the top of the steps for a few minutes, listening, still trying to comprehend the surreal turn of events. The surge in adrenaline left my legs rubbery. My lungs burned. I struggled to control my breathing.

We whispered to each other and this was reassuring. Just being back among the trees and away from view felt marginally safer. After a few minutes it occurred to me that the trail paralleled the jeep road for quite a way, perhaps a mile back west. If they did come back, we would be vulnerable in our current position. Having accepted the reality that there would be no return to camp until daylight, we began walking back in the direction we had come that day, westward into the deep night.

The trail looked and felt different in the dark, and an intermittent cloud cover partially obscured a waning gibbus moon. We set our headlamps to tactical red, casting shaky beams of muted light that illuminated our next few steps but not much beyond. There was an electric sense of urgency as we walked through the corridor of hemlock and pine. We listened in nervous anticipation of the truck’s return, and sensed that they were not quite done with us.

After about a mile, we came to a spot where the trail intersected with the jeep road at a dogleg bend. We descended a few steps down to the crossing - cautious, slow, headlamps off - listening for any movement. We crossed the jeep road and quickly climbed back onto the trail, ascending a hundred feet or so westward until we were safely enveloped by the trees again.

We sat one in front of the other on some steps carved into a steep spot on the trail. Chase, in front and below, Melissa in the middle, then me. We could make out the jeep road below us, a faint moonlight reflecting off the gravel surface through a thin veil of pine branches. We continued to try 911 intermittently with no success. Accepting that we were stuck for the night, we sat uncomfortably, knowing there would be no sleep.

It was just after 2am.

Suddenly there were headlamps below and to our right, and we heard the ominous crunch of tires on trail grit. Before we could comprehend what was happening an SUV rolled into view directly below us. We realized with alarm that we were much closer to the road than we’d thought. We sat frozen. The SUV stopped and someone inside began searching the hillside with a spotlight. I hissed “get down!” We found ourselves in a surreal position, on our stomachs, faces in the dirt in the middle of the trail, another set of hooligans below us.

These weren’t our tormentors from earlier but who were they? Did they know we were here? Had they seen us? The searchlight switched off and the SUV began to pull forward, away from us and down the road. We were up in a flash, scrambling as swiftly as we could along the dark and uneven trail.

We walked another half mile or so until coming to another set of steps that seemed sufficiently far back from the jeep road. I knew the road was still close by, but it was out of view, which was marginally comforting. We sat down in the same arrangement as before, front to back. We speculated about what might be happening back at our camp and what it might look like when we returned at sun-up. We assumed it would be ransacked.

We settled in the best we could, alternately leaning on one another and shifting frequently. Our headlamps off to preserve battery, the faint moonlight cast a muted glow, the dark nothingness of before suddenly textured. The temperature was in the low 60’s by then, uncomfortably cool as we sat there in t-shirts. Melissa, always the planner, was the only one who’d thought to bring water, but her bottle was less than a quarter full. The subsiding adrenaline left us all parched, so we rationed our sips carefully. In muted whispers, we debriefed the events of the night. We tried the cell occasionally with no more success despite being higher on the mountain.

We marked time and tried to nap, shivering and battling an ironic sense of boredom. I realized that I’d left my hiking pole at the other set of steps when we had to scramble away. We sat there in the middle of the Foothills Trail, enveloped by darkness, completely unafraid of bears or snakes. Wild animals were not our concern. Only people.

Painstakingly the hours slipped by and just before 6am a faint early light filtered through the trees. We cautiously started our way back toward camp. Despite lingering trepidation, we were invigorated to be up and moving again. Making good time, we gained confidence in proportion to the gathering light as we walked. We were eager to see what condition our camp might be in, to pack and be on our way. We were simultaneously exhausted and energized.

At the steps leading down to the parking lot I motioned for Melissa and Chase to stop and I made my way down slowly, the parking lot and campsite revealing themselves by degree with each step. It was perfectly still. The gravel under my feet and early-morning birdsong the only sounds. When camp came fully into view, I motioned for them to come on down.

Walking across the parking lot, the crazed tire tracks were obvious in deep figure-eight scars across the surface dirt and gravel. It was evidence that last night had been real, not some shared horror dream. We crossed the parking lot to the campsite, and everything was intact. Relieved, we quickly set about breaking down tents and filling packs. Within ten minutes we were loaded and walking.

We walked down to the two-lane road to pump water from Estatoe Creek under the Highway 178 bridge, then down a worn footpath to the swift-moving stream. I sat on a boulder pumping water from a swirling eddy through a handheld filter. The occasional car whooshed by overhead with an audible kathunk, kathunk, as tires rolled over seams in the bridge pavement. I splashed some water on my face and arms and soaked a bandanna to wrap around my neck, the bracing cold cathartic and refreshing.

It always felt good to complete those little chores, the careful breaking down of camp, the meticulous reorganizing of the pack, the gathering of water. Mindless manual rituals that bring structure to excursions in the wild, the small ways one exerts control in an inherently uncontrollable environment. Like making one’s bed at home, each little task provides a small sense of accomplishment and orderliness at the start of a new day - always reassuring, evermore so after the chaos of the night before. I was thankful for small tasks and the day ahead.

After a few minutes, the six Nalgene bottles between us filled, we scrambled back up the bank and recrossed the highway. We boiled water for coffee and freeze dried camp breakfasts just off the road at the edge of a private drive. Grey clouds hung low like soiled gauze, the June humidity quickly muscling out the morning cool. Cars flew by intermittently, drivers oblivious to us just yards away.

It was novel to be on foot as the world continued on with its harried workaday routines, even in this rural corner of Pickens County. In just three days we would be back to those routines ourselves - back to commutes and computer screens and the daily minutiae of work and school, despite how far away those things seemed at the moment.

After nearly a week of backpacking, we felt somehow more akin to forest animals than those people we were and would be again. We’d grown noticeably leaner, stronger, and more nimble than we’d been six days before. Hiking ten-to-twelve miles a day in rugged territory with a heavy pack has that effect. We were a little grubby, sure, perhaps borderline feral, but it was satisfying to know we were capable of taking on such a thing.

After a while we were on the move again and picked up the trail east of the highway.

Within a mile of walking we passed a gorgeous campsite on high ground, safely ensconced in the trees, the highway not even audible from that distance. I ruminated on my poor judgment and cursed myself as we walked for the choice of campsite the night before.

We hiked a full fourteen miles to the car at Table Rock State Park despite plans for one more night of camping along the trail. We’d seen two black bears on the hike that day, which was thrilling, but also solidified our resolve to push on. After the drama of the previous night, camping in an area with multiple bear sightings was not appealing.

We were eager to get to the car, to a hotel in Greenville; to have a shower and to sleep in a comfortable bed. We were emotionally and physically spent.

We arrived at Table Rock around 5pm and found the car where we had left it a week before. After seven days and seventy-seven miles spent walking the entirety of the Foothills Trail, I learned that in our part of the world where there are no Grizzlies, bears are nothing to be overly concerned about.

People are a different story.

We stopped at a market in Greenville and picked up dinner to go and a decent bottle of Cabernet, then drove to a hotel where we’d managed to secure reservations for the night. We settled in after much-needed showers. Chase was asleep before he could even eat. Melissa and I sipped wine from flimsy plastic cups and mindlessly watched television while occasionally debriefing the events of the past twenty-four hours. The security and relative luxury of the hotel room gave the prior night a dreamlike quality, and we wondered aloud if those things could have actually happened.

I learned some time later that Chase had recurring nightmares about that evening on the mountain. In it, the hooligans did walk down into the camp, shooting and killing Melissa and me. They hogtied him and loaded him into the God-forsaken pickup truck. It would always end there, the rest too horrible even for nightmares.

Sometimes, randomly during a work call or while reading at night my thoughts will wander back to that night, to certain moments when we seemed sure to encounter violence. My pulse quickens, my palms and feet sweat, my jaw tightens, the metallic taste of fear and adrenaline come rushing back.

It happens less frequently now as the years have accumulated. But when it does, the intensity is always the same, cast in the glow of a muted, blood-red light. I think about the vagaries of chance, of the muddled, erratic decisions of hostile strangers, of how it could have turned out differently, and if there is some alternate universe where it did.

And I know that for some part of me, it will always be midnight on the mountain.

Thursday, June 1, 2017: Unsuspecting what would come, Chase and Melissa at our cabin located on Lake Jocassee in Devils Fork State Park, the night before our misadventure