Return to Ramsey's Draft: May 10, 2012

Negotiating a stream crossing.

Back at Ramsey's Draft Wilderness Area (topo map) for the 4th time in the past several weeks this week, as the PATC's Southern Shenandoah Valley Chapter scheduled another trail maintenance trip - this time mid-week.  We all had seen a photo from a few weeks ago indicating a part of the trail to be in really tough shape due to blown down trees, though that part was so far from the trailhead that we pretty much knew we wouldn't make it there.  (Here is an account of one of those work trips:  http://patc-charlottesville.blogspot.com/2012/05/ramseys-draft-worktrip-april-21-2012.html.)

No matter!  The trip allowed me to give back a little more to the maintenance of an area devastated by an invasive insect species.  The trip also provided me with the opportunity to hike a portion of trail I'd never experienced before - the Ramsey's Draft Trail between the Jerry's Run Trail intersection and the point where the Left Prong and Right Prong of the Draft meet.  This is the same place as the topo shows the road ends.  But there hasn't been a road here since around 1985 when a big storm washed it all away.  (Part of the fun of walking this trail is figuring out where the road must have been, which is not always an easy thing to do.)

Some stiff obstructions on the trail.

It was a beautiful day to be out on the trail - a cold front had come through the night before, replacing seeming days of constant rain with blue skies.  But it made each stream crossing a treacherous adventure.  I have to face the truth - this time of year, it is just about impossible to make it too deep into this wilderness without experiencing wet feet.  I got them on the way out.

We opened up several areas to the original trail, each of which had grown a separate trail around the obstruction.

The end of the road - literally!
This campsite is at the point where the original road ended and trail began.
It was a 9.1 mile round trip to get to this point,
and there were at least 7 stream crossings each way.

The biggest disappointment of the day was seeing trash remaining in nearly every campsite fire pit along the trail.  This wilderness is such a beautiful and fragile place, but apparently many backpackers using the area don't care enough to clean up after themselves.  Shame on them!  Next time you are hiking back here, don't forget the plastic garbage bag to clean up after the jerks who camp here.

Thoughtless hikers leave tin cans in the fire pit.
Even more unbelievable is the half burned box
for a mosquito coil.  Ignorant hikers didn't even know
that mosquitos aren't out yet this time of year.

A pair of half melted cooking tongs left at this fire pit.

A plastic soda bottle, partially melted, adorns this fire pit.

Andrew Skurka Talk on Ultimate Hiking

Back in April I drove down to Lexington with my son and another adult scouter to see a talk by Andrew Skurka sponsored by Washington and Lee's Outing Club.

We have been working hard to encourage the Scouts to pack lighter on backpacking trips, believing that a lighter backpack creates a happier scout and increases the potential that a scout will take to the adventure.  (It doesn't always work - that hike in Ramsey's Draft a couple of weeks ago had one kid bring a stainless steel stock pot and frozen dumplings on a 3 day backpacking trip!)

Our bible as we have worked with the boys has been Andrew's book, called "The Ultimate Hiker's Gear Guide."  This book published only a few months ago, so the product recommendations he makes are current.  I bought it through Amazon, then gave away my Amazon copy when I paid for an autographed copy from Skurka.

I think this is the best backpacking equipment guide I have ever come across.    I love that he factors in price when considering things like warmth.  You won't see him recommending $27 titanium mugs because they are a few grams lighter.    I am not interested in swapping out my entire collection of camping gear; it would cost too much.  But knowing where to make surgical cuts is made easier by this book.

I also like the fact that Skurka has done some pretty spectacular stuff, like hiking this route in Alaska and the Yukon.

So many other outdoor writers especially A.T. authors, seem enamored by their own fame or out there to promote their own careers as motivational speakers.  I don't think that Skurka falls into this group.

There are a lot of book reviews out there, so I won't go into too many details.  But you can check out backpaking light's review. and this blog review.   Or this one, which is a good distillation of the book.

I found a version of his talk on backpacking gear on the web, and it even includes a brief face shot of my son, at 9:10, as Skurka used a photo I sent him of an early troop backpacking trip.  (A photo I use to motivate myself to keep trying to get through!)   If you have an hour to spare, there is a lot of good information here.

talk at Google.

High Bridge Trail State Park

Our family recently drove down to the little town of Farmville, Virginia to do some biking.  Farmville is currently well known for two things - Longwood University, and Green Front Furniture, which takes over much of downtown.  It will soon be known for the newly completed High Bridge Trail State Park.  High Bridge Trail is a bike, pedestrian and horse trail that uses an old railroad bed.  Virginia does not have a lot of rails-to-trails resources, unlike nearby West Virginia and Pennsylvania.

There are a couple of great trails in Southwest Virginia, and the W&OD in the Washington suburbs.  But the central part of the state is pretty empty of this type of trail.  Downtown Lynchburg has a really great urban system.  And there is a trail in Nelson County.  The High Bridge Trail is a great addition, and well worth the hour drive south from Charlottesville.

We have not biked the entire 30 mile trail, cherry picking the most spectacular portion.  We started out in downtown Farmville, then rode out to the bridge, which spans the Appomattox River.  Check out the attached Youtube video we made of the bike ride, then head down there to check it out for yourself!

Hiking Boots

For the past few months I have been hiking in a pair of pretty strange looking boots made by a manufacturer in France in a model that doesn't appear to be sold currently in the U.S.

HOKA Hiking Boots

I began wearing these boots after nearly a year of pain in my right foot, which I diagnosed as metatarsalgia.  Previously, I had purchased an expensive pair of Solomon hiking boots, 

but they didn't do the job.  I probably should have returned these to REI and tried out their unconditional guarantee, but I never felt right doing that after hiking many miles in them.

Before that, I had been wearing some Keen Targhees while training for and eventually scaling Half Dome in Yosemite National Park, but I think they might have been the cause of my foot problems.

The Hokas I now wear came from an online outlet called The Clymb.  The thick soles and light weight of these boots appealed to me, as I figured a soft sole might help me where the more rigid Solomons could not.   (I have also found them online from an outdooors store in Boulder, Colorado.)

These Hoka One Ones make me look like I am a short man trying to look taller.  But they are very lightweight and the thick sole absorbs shocks and cushions the feet.  And the major reason for recommending them is that my metatarsalis has gone away since I started hiking in these shoes.  It will be interesting to see how long they last, given the soft sole.  I have purchased 3 pairs, so I am hoping they will last me a couple of years.  And I seldom wear them except when hiking.  That thick sole takes some getting used to when hitting the accelerator pedal on the car's floor, however.

So, yeah, they look kind of ridiculous on me.  But I'll take the tradeoff if my feet feel better!

Virginia Topographic Maps

When I first moved to Virginia 20 years ago, I would head over to the Virginia Department of Forestry's building at the Fontaine Research Park by UVA to look at their collection of paper topo maps. Those maps would give me great information about trails I wanted to take, and I ended up buying a bunch of those maps, usually at the local camping store for $5 a pop.

It has gotten a lot easier in recent years to get good maps of the Virginia mountains.  The PATC maps have improved, the National Geographic Trails Illustrated maps have expanded their scope, and U.S.G.S. topo maps are available free online.

I still like to look at those topo maps, though now I go to a web page developed by one of the staff at UVA, who has scanned all the maps (and the index map) and put it all online. Check it out here.

The first listing, AAA.va.quad.ref.pdf, is the index map of all the topo maps. From there, you can choose the map you want.

I use a Windows based computer.  So I hit "control" and "Print Screen" to take a photo of my computer screen when I have the map section I want. Then I open up the "Paint" Program, crop the part of the map I am using, and print it out for the trail. Beats spending $9 to $12 for a map of an area I am only hiking once.

I know that the feds are developing a new mapping system called The National Map.  But I don't like it as much as the old school topos. I find the aerial photography to be distracting and the maps don't seem to have trails that are found on older versions.

Ramsey's Draft Wilderness

Just like earlier this year when I ended up hiking the Chimney Hollow Trail several times in the space of a couple of months, I have been on the Ramsey's Draft Trail three times in the past several weeks.  The Ramsey's Draft Trail is the primary trail within Ramsey's Draft Wilderness, the closest wilderness to the D.C. area and to Charlottesville.

I help clear a section of the Ramsey's Draft Trail.
Expand this photo to see how bad the debris is
behind me on the trail!

Ramsey's Draft is located about 25 miles west of Staunton, just north of U.S. 250. (Topo Map.) The area has a wonderfully complex history, both natural and man-made.  The U.S. Forest Service first purchased land in this area in 1913 for Shenandoah National Forest, the precursor to the present day George Washington National Forest. The Forest Service has managed the Ramsey’s Draft area essentially as a wilderness since 1935 as much of it had never been logged.  A road more than three miles upstream from U.S. 250 constructed by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s lasted until 1969, when rainwater from Hurricane Camille wiped out much of the road at the stream crossings. Another flood in November 1985 further eliminated the original road and changed the course of the stream in multiple areas, shortly after the area was officially designated a wilderness under the Virginia Wilderness Act of 1984.

Hiking that same section, several weeks later.

I have hiked this wilderness for many years, dating back to when I first moved to Charlottesville twenty years ago.  It was a vastly different place back then, as it was famous for its old growth hemlock trees that gave the draft valley a primeval, dark feeling.  An evil little bug called the woolly adelgid has killed off many of these magnificent trees, opening up much of the forest floor to sunlight, probably for the first time in hundreds of years.  For those of us who remember the way it was, it is still a bittersweet place to visit these days.  

Second trip for trail work on the Ramsey's Draft Trail,
this time with Dan and Iva of the Charlottesville
PATC Chapter.

It also requires a lot of work to keep the trails clear, as dead trees tend to fall down, blocking pathways. My first two (recent) hikes in the wilderness area were with the incredibly dedicated folks in the Southern Shenandoah Chapter of the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club.  Whenever I need to know something about the woods west of Staunton, these folks know the answer.  

Signing in at the trail register at Mountain House trailhead
before a 3 day backpacking trip.

Case in point: a friend told me he saw miles of string on the Shenandoah Mountain Trail in Ramsey's Draft, and told me one of his group had taken a photo of a bird that had died when it became tangled in the string and placed this photo on Facebook.  I emailed one of the SSVC members.  Not only did she know about the string, but she told me why it was there, that her group had already picked up miles of the stuff, complained to the Forest Service, and seen the same photo and emailed it as evidence that such string should never be used to determine trail mileage.  Wow.

Both work trips concentrated on the Ramsey's Draft Trail, which generally follows the path of the old road mentioned above, and crosses the stream known as Ramsey's Draft multiple times over the first 2.5 miles.  These trips went a long way towards making the trip on this trail much easier.  So much easier, in fact, that we met a mountain biker illegally using the trail.  Mountain bikes are not permitted in wilderness areas, and as a result the local mountain bike community has fought expansion of wilderness in Virginia.  This guy, though he claimed to be a Richmond environmental consultant, claimed ignorance of the wilderness boundaries, and even that bikes were prohibited in the wilderness.  

The true test of trail conditions, however, was in my third trip up the trail when I led a group of Boy Scouts on a 3 day backpacking trip in the wilderness.  We had been working for several weeks on obtaining lightweight backpacking skills, and this would be our test.  The boys had come to an earlier meeting with fully loaded packs, which we analyzed for further weight savings.  When we collected in Charlottesville to carpool to the trailhead, we weighed packs but did not dump each pack's contents.  Given the fact that the boys' packs weighed anywhere from 20 to 40 pounds, we probably should have checked a few loads.

We started out on Friday evening, and hiked as far up the Ramsey's Draft Trail as possible before total darkness forced us into a small campsite next to the stream.  I am pretty sure I ended up camping in a bit of poison ivy, but have suffered no effects.  There is quite a bit of poison ivy on this trail, which is seeing much more sunlight than it has in many years, thanks to the deaths of the hemlocks.  

The first of several stream crossings Saturday morning.

Saturday morning we were up at 7, fed and on the trail by 9:20.  It was slow going!  Stream crossings stopped us in our tracks, as boys carefully hopped from rock to rock, passed hiking poles back to those without, and switched from hiking boots to water shoes and back again.

We eventually made it to the intersection of our trail with the Jerry's Run Trail by 11:10, taking 1 hour, 50 minutes to travel about 1.5 miles.  We then took Jerry's Run uphill to our Saturday campsite, at the site of an old PATC cabin called the Sexton Cabin. Surprisingly, that distance was about the same, as was the time it took the group.  There were no major stream crossings here, but the hike climbed from about 2250 feet up to about 2720 feet.  

At the Sexton Cabin site we met a group of younger scouts from our troop, who hiked in on Shenandoah Mountain from the Confederate Breastworks Historic Site, on U.S. 250.  The Sexton Cabin site has its own interesting history, which I read that night to the scouts.  The history of this site comes from an article printed in October, 1937 in a newsletter printed by the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club.  It was written when the trail club was constructing the cabin on this site, and was based on a story by a man who had lived here 56 years before that, which takes us back to 1881.  That man’s name was George Armstrong.

He said that the original clearing here had been made probably about a hundred years before that.  Jerry Hodges had lived here, and his house was at the upper clearing, near some Lombardy Poplars that were dying back in 1937.  This is the Jerry that gave the name to the stream: Jerry’s Run.  Jerry planted the poplars, and also planted some apple trees around here.  He cleared land so that he could graze stock animals. 

The remains of Sexton Cabin in the foreground,
with the troop tents in the background.

Armstrong’s family had lived here for three years when he was young.  They built an old house and a barn in this area.  It must have been much less wooded then than it is now.  He said that back then, bears would take the family’s sheep right out of the field.  To protect the sheep, they would build a pen that would trap the bear if he went after the sheep.  Then the family could shoot the bear before it killed their sheep.

Armstrong’s father moved the family to this site because a lumber company owned all this land, but men would come up the mountain to steal the wood.  They would turn the White Pine into shingles, which they could easily take off of the mountain.  The family living here was enough to keep these “shingle men” off the mountain.  Eventually they gave up and the family moved back to the valley. 

Photo of Sexton Shelter from 1940's era PATC Newsletter.

The story of the cabin built here is almost as complicated.  In 1930, the PATC built a cabin in Shenandoah National Park using money donated by a Dr. Sexton.  It was the first cabin built for A.T. hikers south of New York.  In 1937, the Park Service decided to tear the cabin down.  The PATC wanted to rebuild the Sexton Cabin somewhere else and eventually decided to place it here. 

The cabin was built of chestnut logs.  That cabin burned down in 1967 from a fire that probably started by lightning.  The next year Ray Kisamore, who owned a lumber company in Churchville, hauled in materials the PATC used to build Sexton # 3 on the same spot on a sledge using Percheron draft horses.  More than nine tons of material had to be hauled in, and each sledge load weighed between 1,000 and 1,500 pounds. Hauling about 800 to 1,000 pounds at a time, it took a month to six weeks to bring everything here. 

Sunday morning: hiking up the Jerry's Run trail toward
the Shenandoah Mountain Trail.

Ray Kisamore had to build a special sledge to haul the logs on. He came in along the Shenandoah Mountain Trail.  When Ramsey’s Draft was declared a federal wilderness area in 1984, the Forest Service believed the law required tearing down any structures in federal wilderness areas.  They tore down the cabin here, though it was later determined that existing structures in wilderness areas could stay. Ray Kisamore was hired to haul out the logs, and reportedly at least one of the horses that hauled out the timbers had been used to haul the logs in here 17 years earlier.  Those timbers are used today, on the Mutton Top Cabin, which is over by Shenandoah National Park.

Hugging a tree and the trail along the Road Hollow Trail.

On Sunday morning, we were back on the trail beginning at 9:50, heading uphill on the Jerry's Run Trail to the Shenandoah Mountain Trail.  We took the SMT south out of the wilderness (where a wilderness boundary marker featured scratchings over the word "bicycles" - no doubt by some biker who illegally used the trails in the wilderness).  At the junction of the SMT and the Road Hollow Trail, the groups split, with the younger boys continuing back to their cars via the SMT and the older boys taking the Road Hollow Trail back to their trailhead.  It is interesting to me, and probably only to me, that we went from one of the oldest trails in this part of the National Forest, the SMT which was built in the 1930's by the CCC, to one of the newest, the Road Hollow Trail.  The Road Hollow Trail was built around 1990, 60 years later.

I was hiking "sweep," making sure that all boys stayed in front of me, when some mountain bikers came swiftly (and legally) down the Road Hollow Trail.  We slowed them down and warned them of boys ahead around the bend.  And the boys learned about sharing "single track" trail with other types of users.  

In all, we hiked 4.1 miles on Sunday, taking 2 hours and 40 minutes.  Hopefully, the boys learned some lessons that they will use when we take them on a longer trip through the Mt. Rogers area in June.  And I hope they developed an appreciation of this wonderful part of the mountains, only about an hour from Charlottesville.

AT in Shenandoah NP - April 12, 2012

Recording for posterity the views on my first visit
to Shenandoah National Park.  I'll be hiking
a long way in those mocs!  (I'm pretty sure
I bought those on the boardwalk in Atlantic City.)

When I was in 8th Grade, the family took a Summer trip, leaving the flat Midwest for D.C., Williamsburg, Monticello, and Shenandoah National Park.  I negotiated the last part of the itinerary, and when we camped at Big Meadows, I was excited that the legendary Appalachian Trail weaved around the campground.  I "hiked" it about a quarter mile from our campsite to a place on the map called David Spring and wondered how many thru hikers had used the spring through the years to re-hydrate.  (Probably none - they used faucets at Big Meadows.)  And I hiked the AT south from Big Meadows not much more than a mile to see Lewis Falls with my father.

It was exciting to think that I was hiking a tiny portion of this historic trail.  Even though hiking a microscopic section, I was linked with hikers from Georgia to Maine.  While visiting SNP, I bought my first PATC map of Shenandoah's Central District and returned home to spend hours dreaming of the trails I would someday explore.

Twenty years later, I moved to Virginia and started again my hikes in the Virginia mountains.  It is now twenty years after that.  I have hiked many trails in the Blue Ridge and Alleghenies.  The one trail I have generally avoided?  The Appalachian Trail through Shenandoah National Park. The reason?  It is boring.

Lewis Falls

Benton MacKaye and Myron Avery

There is really only one reason to hike the A.T. through Shenandoah if you are not a thru hiker: to say you have hiked it.  It does not pass any waterfalls, it stays too close to the Skyline Drive, there are few difficult climbs, and it misses many of the best parts of SNP. I hiked it through the Southern District of SNP years ago, but gave up as it entered the Central District, as there were too many other interesting trails to hike.  

Apparently, I am not the first to realize the downside of routing the A.T. near the Skyline Drive.  I've been reading some historical stuff from the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club indicating that Benton MacKaye, the original visionary behind the A.T., and Myron Avery, a close confidante and man behind the PATC, split over their disagreement about whether the Skyline Drive should go through Shenandoah National Park.  The A.T. preceded the Drive, and no doubt the latter's construction changed the A.T. experience dramatically through this part of Virginia.

On April 13th, I checked off a section of the A.T. that had I hadn't yet hiked.  When I completed several sections further south in Shenandoah National Park, I would stash a bike at one end, hike to it, and pedal back to my car.  I thought about doing this again, but the dog wished otherwise, so I hiked the A.T. between the South River Picnic Area and the Lewis Mountain Campground both northbound and southbound.

Best overlook on this section of trail.

This section started about 5 miles north of the U.S. 33 entrance at the South River Falls trailhead, and headed north to the Lewis Mountain Campground.  I stayed at this campground one weekend a couple of years ago with my own son.  It has an interesting history.  According to the Ken Burns series on the National Parks, Lewis Mountain was original conceived as a "separate but equal" camping facility for African Americans, and operated that way from 1932 through 1940, five years into the operation of the park.  Lewis Mountain wasn’t fully integrated until 1947, when the park reopened after World War II.

Lewis Mountain is the smallest campground in Shenandoah.  I thought it was a great place, and loved that it was tent only.  While there, my son and I hiked Bearfence Rocks to the north, and traveled there and back using the A.T.

This section of the A.T. south of Lewis Mountain reaffirmed my opinion about the dullness of the A.T. through Shenandoah National Park  Traversing over 5+ miles of trail, I came upon two B- level overlooks on the trail.  My heart never raced from the workout.  No waterfalls.  Nothing memorable.  Parts of it were within 20 yards of the Skyline Drive, with cars whizzing by.

So what is the point of hiking this trail?  And yet I saw a surprising number of hikers and backpackers on this section of the trail, including a family doing a test hike for a group of Northern Virginia Boy Scouts later in the month.  I can only guess that these folks share the same awe of the A.T. that I had when I was a kid from the Midwest.  Maybe I need to get some of that back.

I used to think that these concrete posts were along all the A.T.  It was only after moving East that I learned these are specific to Shenandoah National Park.

Hike Details
PATC Difficulty Factor 229.8
Total Altitude Gain 2452
Total Distance 10.8 miles
 Lowest point 2830 feet above sea level
 Highest Point 3613 feet above sea level
 Time 3 hours, 53 minutes 

Wild Oak Trail Loop, March 15, 2012

The Wild Oak Trail is a loop trail in the George Washington National Forest west of Churchville and Staunton.  The trail received a National Recreation Trail designation in 1979.  The present trail is a series of older trails cobbled together.  The trails date back to the 1930s, when the Civilian Conservation Corps built portions for forest fire control purposes. I have hiked much of it in the past - as part of six different day hikes - though I had never hiked the entire loop.  Because the loop is listed as being 25.6 miles long, it has always been a goal to do the entire loop in one day.

My friend Marit suggested we go for a hike as she prepares to hike the entire Pacific Crest Trail this Spring. I have hiked often with Marit in the past, and she is the toughest hiker I know.  When I suggested we try this hike before she leaves for the Sierras, she jumped at the opportunity.  Marit knows long distance hiking, as she completed the entire Appalachian Trail in 2009.

The dog and I left the house at 6:45 AM and met Marit at a McDonalds near Waynesboro at 7:30.  We left her car and drove the remaining miles together.  Marit didn't think we needed to drop a water cache (and she was right), so we were on the trail just after 8:30.  We hiked the loop in a counterclockwise motion, starting at a parking lot at about 2:00 on the loop below - near a Girl Scout camp named Camp May Flather.  It isn't easy to find your way here (and even tougher to get out), thanks to a series of farm roads that all look alike.

Wild Oak Trail - west of Churchville and north of U.S. 250.

We grabbed trail maps the Forest Service provides at the trailhead, and began our climb up to Little Bald Knob.  We started at 1689 feet elevation, but were soon climbing steeply, passing the Grooms Ridge Trail (which makes a nice, and much shorter loop hike) before the trail leveled out.  After almost a mile of fairly level hiking, we climbed again, reaching Little Bald Knob, the high point on our hike at 4,351 feet. We didn't get up there until 11:30, which was a little disconcerting (3 hours to go the first 7 miles is not a good sign when you are shooting for 25 miles in a day), but we stopped to eat lunch anyway.  Marit took the photo next from here, though it doesn't do justice to the view we had from the top of Little Bald Knob.

We then headed down the mountain at a steep rate, shown on the elevation profile below between 8 and 10 miles.  Along the way, it occurred to me that there was a geocache on this part of the trail.  I looked at my GPS and discovered we were 17 feet from the cache.  Unfortunately, we found the cache in several pieces.  

We stopped again, this time to enjoy the view of mountains to the north, which seemed to go on forever.  The trail was in really good shape through this section, with new saw cuts evident on trees next to the trail.

At the bottom of the mountain, 10 miles into our hike, we had the only stream crossing on the hike.  It was a little dicey, especially since the dog didn't want to cross, but we all made it over the stream, crossed FDR 95, and headed right back up the mountain.


Another steep climb took us to the edge of Ramsey's Draft Wilderness Area, and we hiked a section of trail the two of us had hiked back in 2010.  This section took us over Big Bald Knob, which ironically isn't as high as Little Bald Knob had been several miles earlier.  Then it was back down Dividing Ridge, steeply.

As we made our way to FDR 96, I felt great that, even though we still had over 10 miles left on the trail and it was nearly 4:30, we seemed in good shape.  There were still 3 hours of daylight left to do 10 miles.  We could do it if we moved fast.  Especially since the next mountain (Hankey Mountain) involved a climb that I remembered to be easier than the other climbs on this hike.

I remembered wrong.Hankey Mountain was a tough slog.  Maybe it is because we were already 0ver 15 miles into our hike.  Whatever the reason, it was a hard climb that seemed to go on forever.  The trail peaked 2.3 miles later on Hankey Mountain, at 3,407 feet, nearly 1,000 feet above FDR 96.

And then the trail kept going forever.  Until after the sun went down.  Venus and Jupiter came out.  Mars glowed red over near the Big Dipper.  Harrisonburg glowed brightly in the distance.  And we followed our headlamps slowly down the mountain, using my GPS to make sure we were staying on the trail.  (I love using map and compass, but the GPS was sure handy once it got dark out.)

We finally reached the car again at 9:30.  We hiked 27.4 miles according to the GPS, possibly higher than the published length of 25.6 miles due to going off trail to have lunch and retraced our steps when Marit lost part of her trekking pole.  I didn't get home until after 11, thanks to a few circular miles on the farm roads east of the mountains.

It is amazing to think that there is a trail running event every February that strives to run this trail four times in 24 hours.  I cannot imagine!  I now know that I can do a Grand Canyon rim to rim hike - which is on my lifetime list.

South Rim to North Rim via the South Kaibab Trail: 20 miles, 6000 foot elevation gain.
Wild Oak Trail: 27.4 miles, 8699 foot elevation gain.

Hike Details

PATC Difficulty Factor: 690.1 (a new record)
Distance: 27.4 miles (also a new record)

Total Altitude Gain: 8699 feet 

Lowest Point: 1688 feet (at the parking lot)

Highest Point: 4378 feet (at the crest of Little Calf Mountain)

Steepest elevation gain: 28% climbing Hanky Mountain.

Total hiking time: 12 hours, 49 minutes

Shenandoah NP Maps for the iPhone Reviewed

The PATC recently debuted its first electronic map for the iPhone, an app called PATC Shenandoah that features full content of Maps 9, 10, and 11, covering Shenandoah National Park.  I purchased this app and thought it would be useful to put together a review.  [Note: I am a member of the PATC Maps Committee, though I had no input on this product.]  At the same time that I purchased the PATC app I also bought the app from National Geographic's Trails Illustrated, entitled Park Maps.  Here is a comparison; it is not intended to be comprehensive.

The PATC's January 2012 newsletter announced the new product, stating it features the following:

• Full content of Maps 9, 10, and 11
• GPS tracking of your location, even without WiFi or cell reception
• Photos and descriptions for key locations throughout Shenandoah National Park
• Navigation tools including distance, bearing, compass and location
• Customized pins to record photos and locations along your hike

The app costs $4.99 and is currently only available for the iPhone - there is no Android version.

When purchasing the PATC Shenandoah app, I also came across and purchased National Geographic's Park Maps app, also listed at $4.99, though I was only charged $3.99.  Maybe it was on sale?  

PATC Shenandoah

Opening screen to PATC Shenandoah App

Signing onto the PATC Shenandoah app, the user is greeted by the same statement: "USE OF THIS APPLICATION IS AT THE USER'S OWN RISK."  In order to get into the map, you need to click that you agree.  Every time.  

Every time you reopen the app
you get this screen...

Really?  Does the PATC's lawyer require this in order to minimize PATC liability?  I don't have to acknowledge this when I unfold a paper map.  It is an irritant and serves no apparent purpose.  

Once I get past that, a screen shows the entire SNP, along with at least 50 pins dropped in it.    

The pins represent places of interest, where a photo can be accessed.  

In standard iPhone. iPad, iPod manner, the user zooms into the desired section of the map using his/her index finger and thumb.  

Eventually, a map looking like the NPS map given to Shenandoah visitors comes up. 

When you scroll in a bit further, the familiar PATC map comes up.  The PATC maps are actually updated more recently than the current versions of the print maps, as I noticed at least one trail (found within the Rapidan Wildlife Management Area adjoining the Park boundary) not on the latest edition of Map 10, covering the Central District.

I also placed this map on the family's first generation iPad.  At first the maps looked like they would be fuzzy - indicating an iPhone app that had not really been produced for the iPad, but it came in clear once the maps came up, and it is overall a very good resolution.

      

Above is a comparison of the two maps, showing the Thornton Gap area of Shenandoah National Park.  Note that there is a road to the Pass Mountain Hut that is only shown on the PATC map.  Overall, the PATC map has better detail.

The PATC map also has a nice feature called the Line Tool, which allows me to estimate the length of a trail using my finger.  And I love the option to locate where you are on a Shenandoah trail with the PATC app.

What the National Geographic app offers is more map.  For Shenandoah, the NG app offers nearly all of Massanutten Mountain - really nice if you want to check out the interesting rock formations in Veach Gap or try hiking to Strickler Knob.  But wait!  There's more!  NG includes not just Shenandoah, but maps of 20 National Parks, ranging from the really popular ones like Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Yosemite and Great Smoky Mountains, to less visited parks like Joshua Tree and Channel Islands.  Just the thing to pass the time while waiting in line for lunch.  The high def versions of these maps must be downloaded to the iPhone (no doubt so you don't use up all your memory), but I make due with a couple of well-used maps (Shenandoah and Grand Canyon) and a couple of others for dreaming, like Olympic.  And even if you don't download the high def version, you can look at the standard issue NPS version of each park's map.

You must install the high def maps in the
National Geographic app, but you get a
boatload to choose from.

The PATC app came out in mid-March with a new update, allowing for sharing of custom markers with others who have the app, a bug fix, and a "revolutionary new feature" called trail navigation.  This apparently determines the fastest route from the starting and ending locations that the user has defined.

Finally I should note that I have another app on my phone, called ATTrail 6.  Though #6 does not cover much of Shenandoah - starting south of Roanoke, this app covers about 150 miles of the AT through the Calf Mountain Shelter in Shenandoah's South District.  It is nice to have elevation profiles, which this app gives.  But the app costs $2.00 for every 100-200 miles, dividing the AT up into 16 parts.  And #6 has some bad data - although it lists the James River Foot Bridge, it does not show it on the map.  It instead shows the older route used before the Foot Bridge was completed in 2000.   A more recent AT reroute around Humpback Rock is also missing.  Not recommended.

So which app do I recommend?  If you are just hiking Shenandoah, there is no question that the PATC map is superior.  But I am happy I got both.  This way I can dream of returning to Glacier National Park.

Chimney Hollow Trail

How many times through the years have I driven west on U.S. 250, past Staunton, past Churchville, heading to some hike or another in the Allegheneys, or maybe out to West Virginia or Monterrey?  Several dozen times at least I have made this drive, and every time I have passed the trailhead sign saying "Chimney Hollow Trail" on 250 just before turnoffs for Braley Pond and Deerfield and wondered what the trail looked like.
I can't think of another trail in the national forest that so obvious to the the driver.  Other trails are in the area, but you need to know where to go to find the trailhead; you need to know which intersecting dirt road contains a parking area.  The Chimney Hollow Trail (CHT) is right out there with a big brown sign for everybody driving 250 to see.  And it had always been in my trail queue, but somehow never made it to the top of the list.
About a month ago I took my 11 year old son part way up this trail for the first time, and since have been on it three more times.  I feel like I know the trail now.

Chimney Hollow Trail from US 250 (at the top of the map) to the top of Crawford Mountain.
Note the phantom road crossing the trail about a third of the way down from the top.                                      

My first trip, with my son and dog, went after a geocache part way up the mountain and just off the trail.  The geocache was left by a guy who claims he was back in these woods looking for Bigfoot, as there have been sightings.  I have never heard of such sightings!  We followed the trail through a beautiful ravine after crossing a bridge constructed as an Eagle Scout project by a member of a Churchville troop.   The hike through the ravine was beautiful, with large, healthy hemlocks and lots of white pine. There are several minor stream crossings for the first mile before the trail begins a steady ascent up the mountain.  We came upon the ridge holding the geocache, then continued up the mountain until we reached a ridge that ends at a place called Coalpit Knob.  The trail follows a ridge here, and there are nice views to the north to Hankey Mountain, which complement the views we saw before reaching this point, southwest to Shenandoah Mountain, Walker Mountain, and the Deerfield Valley.
It was at this point that my son decided he had climbed enough, so we headed back down the mountain.  I was holding on to secret hopes of circling around to another one of the Bigfoot caches, but my GPS indicated that it was still several miles off and the distance wasn't changing very quickly.  Walking along these trails, who knows how far the geocache really is.
I found out how far a couple of weeks later.  This other geocache had not been found in over 3.5 years, though the owner had checked on it early last year and found it present.  The previous finder had claimed that there was virtually no chance of it being taken by non-cachers, as it is in such a remote location.  The possibility of obtaining a find that had been unclaimed for so long proved irresistable, so on the last day of December I decided to make this my last find of the year, a find which would make that month my biggest month for geo-finds in my history.

The problem was that this cache was not easily accessible from U.S. 250, even though it was only a quarter mile from the road.  The highway is lined with private properties here, except for a couple of gated access roads that I wasn't about to block with my parked car.
I finally decided the best access would be via the Chimney Hollow Trail.  One map (the latest edition of the National Geographic Trails Illustrated map #791 for Staunton, Shenandoah Mountain) even claimed that a dirt road intersected with the CHT that would take me to the cache area.  The same road shows up on the Garmin's Basecamp map.  I didn't remember a road, but I've missed bigger things when hiking, and the cache owner claimed the road existed in his description of his hide.
So I again drove the 60 miles out to the trailhead after using software to waypoint the location of the road intersection.  About a half mile up the trail, powerlines crossed the trail high overhead, but no road.  Since an older edition of the Trails Illustrated map indicated the road ended at the base of the transmission tower to the east, I bushwacked up to the next ridge to see if there was a road.  Here I found Forest Road 1761 at its western terminus.
FR 1761 turned into FR 1764, which wound around the transmission towers and eventually took me to the cache site after a long walk. After reaching the area, I noted right away that the previous cacher's comment that the cache "has virtually zero chance of being muggled" was wrong, as I found a makeshift hunting blind within 20 feet of the cache coordinates, along with several fresh looking Keystone Light beer cans, no doubt left by one of Augusta County’s finer citizens. I spent over 20 minutes looking around for this cache – I had come too far to give up easily on this find! But no luck. Bummer – it was a long walk back to the car!  I ended up spending five hours hiking over 14.7 miles and, though the views were nice, the return to the car was a little disappointing.

I returned again to the trailhead 10 days later, as the Southern Shenandoah Valley Chapter of the PATC was doing a midweek hike on the same trail.  They have been measuring all of the trails out in this area, in part to help provide content for a guidebook under development that would cover the nascent Great Eastern Trail. I had read about other mid-week hikes these folks had done, and they have a wheel they use to measure actual trail distances.  Since I was going to help lead a PATC-Charlottesville Chapter hike of the entire CHT that Saturday, I decided to tag along to see if I could learn anything about the route that I could tell the Saturday group.

Only three other hikers showed up - Jason and his father Richard, and old hiking friend Nancy - with whom I had hiked several times before.  It was a leisurely stroll to the top of the mountain.  We reached the end of the Chimney Hollow Trail in 2.5 hours, including 45 minutes of stopping time.  Though I would have preferred a faster pace, I felt this was a good indictor of the time the group on Saturday would require to get up the mountain.  On this day, Richard wanted to extend the hike, so we hiked to the Crawford Knob Trail and then east to Crawford Knob.  Through the trees on the way out to Crawford Knob we could see Elliot Knob to the north.  Elliot Knob is the highest point in the George Washington National Forest and has several transmission towers on top.  

Nancy and I discussed the hike I was leading on Saturday, and we agreed that if she was in town Saturday she would take the Crawford Knob Trail from its trailhead and meet our group on the top of the mountain.  We might consider turning Saturday's out and back hike into a shuttle hike. 

What we also discovered is that there isn't any great (or even good) place to sit for lunch.  This is a critical feature for group hikes!  There aren't any spots where you can sit and enjoy a view, and where we did stop was cold even though it was protected and temperatures that day were supposed to reach the 50s.  

On Saturday, we collected at 9AM in sub-freezing weather expecting to find maybe 5 or 6 hearty souls up for a cold hike.  Instead, there were 16 of us at the high school meetup spot.  I was amazed!  Iva, who was leading the hike with me (and has been pushing me to quit talking so much about great hikes and start leading a few), had brought a few folks from her Outdoor Social Club because she cheats and gets dual credit for leading one hike.  And Dan had brought one of his daughters, who is preparing for a marathon.  But there were still a ton of other folks joining us!

Also on the list was Nancy, due to meet us at the top of the mountain, and Bryce, who is one of the guys behind the website hikingupward.com.  I had emailed Bryce in the past about coordinates to a local plane crash, and absolutely love his website.  Bryce had asked about hikes out near Harrisonburg that would be new ones for him, and I was excited to have him join us and give me someone new to talk trails with.  

We stopped in Churchville so some folks could get provisions, then pulled into the parking lot at the exact time I told Bryce to meet us: 10:30.  After some quick introductions, we hit the trail.  I had been assigned lead and quickly found that the stream crossings that had been pretty minor the previous three times I was on the trail were more of a challenge on this day, thanks to rain thoughout the day on Thursday.  
About a mile into the hike, though, the trail leaves the ravine and starts up the mountain slope at an amazingly consistent rate of 16%.  We topped one ridge, walked along it, then traversed the western slope of the mountain until we reached Coalpit Knob and another ridge.  After leveling out for a while, we were back to the 16% grade until we reached the top of the mountain and the end of the trail.  The trail's consistent climb had to be by design, and the trail was very nicely built.  
It was well maintained, also.  There were very few blowdowns and there was evidence that some folks had taken saws to several large trees that once blocked the trail.  I wouldn't be surprised if it was a mountain biking group, as a Google search of "Crawford Mountain Virginia" turns up multiple tales of folks screaming down this trail on two wheels.   We were fortunate not to run into any of that (or, more importantly, have any of that run into us!)
At the top of the mountain we all settled in for lunch.  Bryce bid us farewell as he had to be back at JMU for his daughter's music performance, and not 5 minutes later we saw Nancy coming up the trail from the opposite side of the mountain.  We decided to go back the way we came rather than using Nancy's car for a shuttle, and headed back down the mountain with Nancy after promising her we would give her a lift back to her car.  Bryce later put several very nice photos of the hike on Hiking Upward's Facebook page for all to see.

This hike started out at an elevation of 1945 feet at the parking lot and rose to 3855 feet at our lunch spot. It lasted a hair over 4 hours including about an hour for stops, and was 7.5 miles long.  

So after more than 15 years of driving past this trailhead, I finally stopped and checked out the trail - 4 times in a month.  It is time to find a new trail.