Famous last words! One of the Endless Cavern's camp employees recommended that we hike up to the Endless Cavern's sign. He said it was a leisurely hike and many people go up at dusk to watch the sunset then hike down using a flashlight.
Wrong! First, the trail is strewn with loose rocks. Second, it's fall, so the leaves have dropped covering the loose rocks making walking treacherous to the unsuspecting. And lastly, in certain sections, the the path goes almost straight down then straight up the other side.
Fortunately, we started our climb in the afternoon. Made it to the top and managed to get some great pictures. When the sun was just starting to sink below the horizon, we decided that the trail was too dangerous to hike in the dark and began our decent. As we made our first turn, we literally stopped in our tracks when we saw a break in the trail. All you could see from our position was the steep ascent of the far off trail, with a large gaping maw in the middle. The trail practically went straight down then straight up. It was almost laughable. We couldn't believe they encourage campers (many who are in far worse physical shape than us) to hike this trail AND do it at night!!
We turned around and hiked the trail down the same way we came up (the devil known...). All in all, the hike took us about two hours. The next day when I told the employee of our experience he replied, "Yeah, it can be kinda tricky at times." I think he was just hoping to pick through our pockets once our carcasses were discovered!
According to my Healthmate App we walked 6,540 steps today. Bringing our total to 4.7 miles since leaving Delaware