H̻͍͚̯̟͒͐͐ͩͣ͑̃͋͜E̅́͆̎͊͆͛҉̞͓

Well, I attempted to complete Difficult Run today, but I have a perfect reason why I didn’t: the trail is gone! Yes, gone. I don’t mean “washed out” or “muddy” or “covered with branches” or “blocked by a blowdown,” I mean that it’s gone. The rains of 1/30/13 were apparently very rough on Difficult Run, and a twenty-foot high, fifteen-foot wide chunk of a cliff that (up until now, anyway) supported the trail has been removed from the face of the earth, as if a divine ice cream scoop had materialized out of thin air and gouged out the rock and mud and replaced it with a roiling cauldron of floodwater. There are signs that tell you the trail ahead may be “narrow” or “rough” because of flood damage, but there’s nothing “narrow” or “rough” about it— it’s a sheer drop off the side of a cliff into a turbulent pool filled with jagged rocks! You can’t pass this gap on the right because that’s another sudden drop, and you can’t pass it on the left because that’s whatever is left of the hill that supported the trail— and that’s a steep hillside which may not be stable in the first place. Pictures will be forthcoming, but this is pretty severe damage that will probably see that section of the trail completely closed for months.