THE ALLURE OF THE UNKNOWN
You know that sinking feeling. You start a trip with high hopes and promise, but then it dawns on you and your hopes deflate; this is not an adventure at all. Instead, it’s its opposite: a mis adventure. And it was that very feeling of deflation that filled us as we looked longingly back up at the ridgeline we’d just spent the last twenty minutes scrambling down.
Our legs were covered in scratches. Stinging nettles had ravaged our limbs. And every one of us had gone for at least one uncontrolled slide down the slick, muddy slope. And now we were down in this stream—again. We’d been lured here for a second time; the promise of easier going was hard to ignore. But it was a promise quickly broken. The stream became choked with trees, and on the slick and greasy rocks our footing became treacherous. Progress was nearly non-existent.
The idea for an exploratory mission to find an unnamed waterfall and its accompanying gorge on the Paterson River had germinated just over a week ago. While researching the area online, we had found an account of a hiking group who had come to the top of
