Mountains in the Snow

I caught up my two January backpacking tales, so wanted to add this day hike from last week. 

A few guys were hiking in the mountains last Thursday, and asked if I wanted to join them.  "Sure," said I.  As we assumed, the Skyline Drive was closed, but we parked at Swift Run Gap and started the hike up the Appalachian Trail to the top of Hightop Mountain.  It is about three miles each way, and climbs nearly 1,100 feet.  To make it more challenging, there was significant snow up there.  People had broken trail, so it was only a few inches deep on the trail, but every step required extra effort to push through the snow.

The weather was gorgeous.  Temperatures were in the low 30's (F), and the sky was crystal-clear, one of the clearest days I have ever seen in the mountains here.  I'm displaying some photos from this very fun hike.  It felt great to be out in the snow!

You can see the trail with the packed down snow.

On the hike up to Hightop.

Pat in the snow.

Snowy rocks...

The trail goes continually uphill, graining about 950 feet in the last 1.6 miles of the hike.

Views from Hightop...

Just a few hundred meters from the summit is a nice spring, a rarity for mountains ridges here.  You could actually camp up here and have plenty of water.

There is something beautiful about the woods in the snow.

I brought along a thermos of tea, which stayed hot all day.

Once we got back to the Skyline Drive, we cheated by walking back to the car on the road, rather than repeating the snowy walk along the AT.

Snow in the mountains?  No problem!  This was a very fun hike.

Final 2020 Shenandoah Hikes

 I thought I'd share a little about a few mountain hikes to wrap up the year.  The first of these I had already written a little about with my journal entry about the "Lazarus Woodpeckers."  This hike was on November 21 at the Corbin Cabin Loop in the Central Part of Shenandoah National Park, which is only about 4 miles but with over 1,200 feet of elevation descent and ascent.  It goes down steeply from the Skyline Drive to the Hughes River.  You cross the river, go by the cabin, and then ascend continually back to the Skyline Drive.  The last little bit back to the car is along the Appalachian Trail.

With COVID pandemic, people are flocking to the outdoors.  This hike is not even that popular, yet look at the trailhead parking.  I had tried to do this as a last minute group hike, but no one else wanted to go.  Good thing, because I was challenged to find a spot for just my car.  With the pandemic, we no longer car pool on hikes.

It was at this spot that I saw the "dead" woodpeckers that I had posted about.  The cabin had a couple camping out there, and they had a smoky fire going.  It would be fun to do sometime with a group, post-pandemic.

This is a view up the Hughes River as I was crossing it.

On the hike back up, I had a decent view of Stony Man, where I have hiked to a couple of times, mostly with the Road Scholar hiking groups that I led in 2019.

Life in incredible.  This lichen, a combination of at least three living things that can only survive together, just lives its life and survives in all weather conditions, oblivious to all of humankind's political strife and so forth.

My next two hikes were on December 2.  The first of these was with a group, and we hiked a pretty new trail, the Blue Ridge Tunnel Trail.  This trail goes along a former railway line through a nearly mile long tunnel built in the mid-19th century by impoverished Irish immigrants who were fleeing the Potato Famine.  Many of them died doing this difficult, backbreaking, and dangerous work.  The hike is an out and back, and totals about 4.5 miles.  It's mostly flat, with one long climb at the end before turning around and repeating it.

Here is the approach to the tunnel.  There is an active railway line to the left, so a high fence keeps people away from it.

Nearing the tunnel entrance:

In the tunnel.  It's almost pitch black inside, but I was able to mostly walk without a light because the floor is (mostly) level and rut-free.

The light at the end of the tunnel.

 There are several interpretive signs along this hike with interesting information about the history of the tunnel and its construction.  A nearby town, Crozet, is named after the engineer who designed it.

Near an entrance, water cascades down the rocks.

Here is a shot of returning to the tunnel entrance where we started.

After leaving the group at the conclusion to this hike, I drove into nearby Shenandoah National Park, drove to Beagles Gap, and hiked the Bear Den Fire Road.  I had hiked most of it a couple of years ago, but had a final four tenths of a mile to hike.  It was cold and windy with some ice patches along the way.  I took a tumble and landed on my butt when I slipped on one of them near the start of the hike. The hike is about 1.8 miles long with 950 feet of descent.  It goes through rugged mountain terrain.

The reason that I hadn't finished this trail when I hiked it before was because of two stream crossings.  I had not wanted to soak my boots.  This time, I brought my river shoes, although the cold water in December was miserable as I crossed the stream twice going down and twice coming back.

At the end of the trail, one reaches the park boundary and turns back for the 1.8 mile, 950 foot climb back to Beagle Gap.

After crossing the cold streams, I dried my feet with my fleece, put my boots on, and hiked back along the fire road.

Here is a view of the Shenandoah Valley from Beagles Gap.  It was cold and windy.  I ate my peanut butter sandwich in the car and starting drinking my piping hot mug of tea before heading for home after getting in two great hikes.

I did hike in the mountains one last time in 2020 after these hikes.  But this post is long enough, so I will write separately about that fun hike past the Black Rocks.

Back in Shenandoah

 It's taken me nearly six months to get past my gall bladder issues, but I finally got my gallbladder out the end of September and started doing some easy and short hikes a couple of weeks later.  About 10 days ago, I felt like I could handle a basic hike in Shenandoah, so I hiked about five miles, most of it on the Gasline Fire Road.  This was a new trail to me, and so it counts towards my SNP 500 quest which got rudely suspended last March after I had coronary stents placed.

I don't think that I will post every hike here, at least not the very short ones, but I will try to keep my blog going now that I am back on the trails.  I've only hiked about 65 miles this entire year!

When I got to the park, it was pouring.  My radar app had showed a band of rain that looked like my hiking area would be on the border of it, but the rain area moved westward just enough to give a soaking and steady rain.  So, I hung out in my car and relaxed for about an hour waiting to the rain to pass, which it did.  Here are some photos from the Gasline hike:

This being an old fire road, the going was pretty easy.  I lost and gained about 700 feet over about 2.3 miles each way.

There was some kind of a weather station party way down the hike.

Now and again, I had some partial views, but most of the hike was through forest.

More nice, easy walking ahead of me, although the fall foliage was about a week past peak.

Near my turn around point, I had to wade across this stream.  There was nothing to cross on, but I was prepared and had brought my water shoes.

The water is cold in November, but I only had to hike another 500 feet or so to the park boundary, then I got to turn around, cross back over, and put my boots back on.

On the hike back up, the skies were beginning to clear up.

Sassafras leaves are so pretty in the fall.

One doesn't see many flowers in November, but this common self heal was blooming.

After getting back to my car, I ate lunch, and then drove a mile or so to my next hike, the Bucks Elbow Fire Road.  This is a very short hike, about 0.3 miles out and back.  It's a pleasant fire road with maybe 100 feet of elevation gain from the parking lot.

Shenandoah National Park boundary, my second of the day.

It feels good to be hiking again!  What a year!

Nature Journal - Junco

 Since posting the other day about my nature journal, I added a page for some dark-eyed junco observations that I made last summer while leading June and July Road Scholar hikes.  Juncos live year round in Shenandoah, but are only found here in the winter.  I like these cheerful little "snowbirds," and am always happy to encounter them.  Finding the nest while leading the hike was a big thrill - everyone enjoyed getting a look at a bird nest with eggs.  Here is what I wrote yesterday and today in my journal about the Shenandoah juncos.

Updating my Nature Journal

 Nearly four years ago, a friend of mine with Virginia Master Naturalists gave a short "class" on keeping a nature journal.  The class gave us a journal with about 60 or so pages, and a set of 12 watercolor pencils.  I started writing in it, and although I'd not drawn anything since elementary school art class (just after the Civil War), I tried a few sketches of birds and plants.  These were mediocre at best, dreadful at worst, and I kind of put the journal aside, more or less for three years.  I did, however, make written observations from time to time.

With the pandemic and my forced quarantine for health reasons, my friend said "why don't you try again?"  She brought me some more stuff, and I finally got to the point in July where I wasn't feeling sick and in pain pretty much constantly, so I opened up the journal and started adding drawings.  My first sketch was a blackberry plant in my backyard that the catbirds and robins loved to eat from, and it turned out pretty good (well, my opinion.)  It's the first thing I tried to draw in three years, plus I did it on my birthday!

I went back to my Shenandoah experiences and did a few sketches of things I encountered while hiking.  And I also added many entries and sketches of things I see in my backyard.  Bottom line - in just about a month, I had filled the final 1/3 of the journal (it had taken me 3.5 years to do the first two thirds), and I've started a second nature journal, one that is not only larger with 100 pages to fill, but each page is nearly twice the size as those in my first one.

So I thought I'd share a few of the sketches I made of things I saw while hiking, mostly in Shenandoah National Park.

Here is a fungus (Heartrot fungus) that I saw on a rotten log in the park while leading Road Scholar hikes last July.

While leading Road Scholar hikes in July and October, I saw various insects on milkweed plants, and sketched them in late July.

I also had enjoyed finding a monarch caterpillar in October on one of the hikes, and had seen a monarch on a milkweed flower in the July hikes, so I decided to sketch the life cycle of the monarch butterfly.

During the October hikes, I was delighted to find not only some small American chestnut trees, but also some chestnuts.  This tree was once the most common tree in the southern Appalachians until the Chinese blight wiped them out.  One in three trees was once a chestnut.  I also saw a bumblebee getting a late nectar snack from a thistle.  So I added these to my nature journal.

Finally, for now from Shenandoah, a couple of springs ago, I was hiking in the park with very few signs of spring at higher elevations, but at the lower elevations, I saw a dwarf iris in bloom with a wintergreen just next to it.  So I added these to the journal where I had written about that hike.

Several years ago, I took my granddaughter backpacking in Michigan.  I'd made a few sketches of the forest and lake in the field, but decided to add this sketch last month of some painted turtles on a log near our campsite.