The Last and Longest Section of the Upper Wolf

3/15/12  Day 1
Black Jack (Three Bridges ) Road to HWY 72
This is the final trip in the Wolf River head water series. Four of us (Richard, Mike, John Henry and Ray) left from Black Jack Road, which the locals call Three Bridges Road. It is so named because the bridge over the Wolf is broken into three sections with partial causeways separating them. The name Black Jack appears on many maps, but the local do not acknowledge it. This is the longest bridge to bridge sections on the river, and we decided that it would take longer than a day. So, we planned to camp out at a midway point where gas pipe line number 5 crossed the river. Luckily, John Henry had made a contact with a local man who agreed to take most of our gear to pipe line 5 by four wheeler.
Dale dropped us off at the bridge. Here, the river appeared as a stereotypical swamp with long pools of murky water separated by clumps of thick grasses and shrubs. There wasn’t a current, but we headed west since that was the downstream direction. The river was broken into many different channels, and we attempted to follow the flow of water. We gradually drifted to the right side of the river valley only to end up in a small pond next to a farm. It looked like a great place to fish after a hard days work in the fields. However to us, it was a dead end. We backtracked laterally across the marsh without finding a passage. John Henry wanted to follow the flow of water through a thick lattice work of bushes, reeds and tree limbs. We tried to move through it, but it was impossible. The bushes with the small cone like seed pods that we had encountered above Black Jack were present, but now they were joined by trees with limbs that shot out in all directions like spider webs. Mike and Richard referred to their paper maps and decided that it would be better to leave to river bed and pull the boats through a meadow to a possible channel on the left. John Henry and I chose to go forward to follow the water flow. John Henry gave Mike a walker talkie before we split up. The reception was terrible, but we could hear them to the left. It became apparent that they had found a channel while we were trapped in an impenetrable labyrinth of swamp flora. John walked to where the others were to see what they had found. I soon followed John’s foot steps and noticed a water moccasin a couple of feet from his boot print. The snake was hard to spot and anyone who comes here must be aware that these poisonous snakes are present and active in this entire river bed.
We pulled our boats over a small piece of land to join the others in the left channel. On the way, I spotted a small salamander with a copper back. I stopped to take video. We followed the channel but had to deal with the repeated problem of having to cross a beaver dam and then finding a channel again. Sometimes crossing over the dams was easy and fun because of the small rapid created by the beavers. However, other times the dam broke the river into a hundred trickles and it was up to anyone’s guess as to which stream would lead to a channel.
At last, we reached a point where the channels came together to form an actual river. John, who was the only one to have completed this section, exclaimed that he was relieved because the worst part was now behind us. We would only have to worry about log crossings and no more “buck brush”. We were all happy to here this. When enduring hard travel, it is good to have a moral boost occasionally. A short time later we reached the  confluence of  Tubby Creek and the Wolf. It was near an old bridge crossing at Shelly Road. The old bridge supports still protruded from the water. Because of the heat, I decided to switch from waders to aqua socks and river shoes. The waders are good when it is cold. However, when the temperature rises, they are a hindrance. When the temps reach 80, waders are too hot wear. Any high boots may also be a hindrance. To complicate matters, snakes are also likely to be encountered at arm/face level. I'm not telling anyone not to wear high boots, but remember that you are not fully protected. You have to be very careful about where you put your hands even when you are exhausted.
     For the remainder of the day, the only obstacles were log crossings and beaver dams. We passed a small bluff where John had said he had found a wild azalea bush seven years ago. We crossed the first two pipeline crossings and after six hours, reach our camp at pipeline five. The bank was low and swampy, and we found it necessary to walk up the grassy pipeline strip to the top of a hill where we could camp.
John went down stream to explore the rock bluff, and the rest of us stayed to make camp and wait on our supplies. While we waited a couple of young men rode up on four wheelers. We talked for a while. One of them said that he had grown up in Frayser, but his family had moved to escape the crime. About 30 minutes after they left, our supplies arrived. A local man with his nephew and wife drove up on a four wheeler pulling a trailer. Our campsite is only accessible by four wheeler and now canoe. We had thought that they could have dropped of John’s truck, but that seems impossible. We talked with the family for some time. They told us stories of home made boat and snakes. They left about ten minutes before John returned.
That night, we cooked and looked at the stars. It seemed as if we could see every star in the sky. There was no light pollution at our camp, a rarity for all of us. We also saw a couple of satellites. It had been years since I had seen one.