Secondo - Hike Through Little Wilson Creek Wilderness

October 13, 2012

We broke camp about 10:20 (that seems to be our routine - Hawkeye can break camp very quickly but sleeps later than me. I use the time when he is sleeping to air out my sleeping bag, get some tea with honey down my gullet, and slowly pack my things for the day's hike). We were headed uphill on the Appalachian Trail from the Old Orchard Shelter to a place called The Scales, where they still herd cattle. It was 3.5 miles to get there, and as I said, mostly uphill.

We'll get right to the map and explain why I used two colors to mark the route.

Last spring, I bought a CabBat rechargeable battery for my DeLorme PN-60w GPS.  It holds a charge for about 13-17 hours of actual use in the field.  That was their claim, and so it was - this was my first multi-day trip with this battery, and it worked as advertised, giving me two full days of hiking.  But I was on a four day trip and knew that it wouldn't last that long.  So I had a back-up plan: four brand new lithium double-A's in an unopened package.  Friday night at camp, as the CabBat was dying, I opened the package and popped in two of double A's.  The GPS went dead in about 30 seconds!  I took the batteries out and put them back in again, with the same result.  One more time - same result.  And these were Energizers!  I am not a violent person but I wanted to smash that pink bunny's head through his bass drum!

I took the other two batteries out and put them in, and they seemed to work fine.  But with two more days of hiking, these needed to last, so I decided to use the GPS for spot checks only.  So the orange part of the route, drawn in by moi, has no data.  Just after Second Peak, we entered the Little Wilson Creek Wilderness and the trail markings vanished.  The trail was fairly obvious, and very muddy from horses, and eventually we reached the point where my orange marking turns north - because that is where we were headed.  There was a sign - the first we had seen in the wilderness - pointing left for First Peak.  On our map, and on the GPS, there was only one trail shown.  So that is the way we went.  Hawkeye said it didn't seem right, because we were going downhill when we should have been going up First Peak.  Eventually, I realized that he was right - we were heading north and away from First Peak.  I admitted this to Hawkeye, who was suffering from painful blisters and didn't enjoy the three-quarter mile detour.  We trudged back to the sign and did some scouting, and sure enough, there was a trail heading straight away from the sign and towards First Peak.  The one to the left that the sign pointed towards was not on the map.

So at that point, I left the GPS on, and that is where the red track picks up.  This is an actual track mapped by the GPS.  We used the GPS as a reference to where we were heading, and used its compass to check against the map for the direction we should be heading.  After less than a mile, we reached another trail junction for the Kabal trail - and several other unmapped trails.  We did some scouting, each picking a different trail, and this time I was totally convinced I had the right one.  It initially headed south and it was headed downhill, just like the one on the map.  This is the point where the red track on the map above takes a sharp jog to the right (south-southwest).  We kept continuously checking the map against the GPS, and eventually, reached this sweet camping spot (where the red track ends and the next day's lavender track begins) right on Little Wilson Creek with 45 minutes of daylight to spare!  We were both tired and glad to have such a great camping spot - and without any other campers, loud or not!

Here is the elevation profile of the last part of the hike, once I left the GPS on so we could make sure we reached the desired campsite before dusk.  It was mostly downhill from this point, but the first part of the hike was almost all uphill.

Here are some photos that document this interesting day, one in which I learned several lessons.

The Appalachian Trail was rugged and gained over a thousand feet in the first mile and a half or so.

As we gained elevation, more and more evergreens appeared.  I think these are hemlocks.

At the top of the climb, we crossed through a horse gate and into open country for a while.  These gates were common to keep wild horses out of sensitive areas.  With a pack, it was difficult enough to get through some of these.

Look!  It's the Griswald family Christmas tree!

The AT meandered through pleasant forests at this point at we headed for The Scales.

We left the AT and headed up towards Stone Mountain, with open views once again.

I am not sure what type of butterfly this is, but it was very pretty.

 Here is a view from Stone Mountain.


More open views from Stone Mountain:

 Shortly after this view, we have reached Third Peak, and are about to have lunch, which is....

... peanut butter, dried apricots, and chocolate squares wrapped in a tortilla - pretty good, if I say so.

Here is the view from Third Peak.

Blister repair!  This is why we carry first aid kits.  Hawkeye had big blisters on both little toes.  My feet were fine, and I am quite glad about that.

 Another pretty view from Third Peak...

In the saddle between Third Peak and Second Peak, we entered the Little Wilson Creek Wilderness.  At this point, there were no more trail blazes and only a couple of signs - one of which pointed us totally in the wrong direction, as I discussed before.

Hawkeye is up ahead as we walk through the wilderness area.

Second Peak is up ahead, the third of four mountains we will go over this day.

This pretty and open area was where the confusing trail sign was.

This is the final trail of the day, the Kabal Trail though Little Wilson Creek Wilderness.  We were wondering if we would get to where we wanted to camp by dark at this point.  Had we not, we would have found a place to pitch our tents, and eat trail mix for dinner.  But we both really wanted to get to Little Wilson Creek for the night....

... and we did!  What a pretty spot, and there was a huge grassy camping area just before the stream.  All the water we needed, a great area to camp, and peace and quiet!

Here is the campsite (photo taken the next morning).  There was lots of firewood and we got a great fire going.  And the next morning, there were enough coals left that I got a fire going without a match.  Of course, we doused the fire pit before we left Sunday.

Glad to be in camp and off his painful feet, Hawkeye sits on the ground and begins to prepare our last dinner - garlic mashed potatoes and a great freeze dried potato soup!  Man, was that delicious!

Primo - Hiking Through the Lewis Fork Wilderness

October 12.

Wow, it was a windy night camped out at 5,400 feet.  I had brought my lighter weight bag to save bulk, and it was just warm enough with the bag liner.  I would guess that it got down into the 30's, but above freezing - a far cry from 15 on the Priest two years ago and 18 last year near Furnace Mountain.  It took Hawkeye and me some time to get going in the morning.  For one thing we needed water, so I made the 0.2 mile trek (each way) to the spring.  Coming back up from the spring, climbing a fairly steep and rocky path with my arms full of water bottles, I tripped on a rock and went down like a ton of bricks.  I have never fallen while hiking that I can remember but I surely did on this day.  I was very lucky not to get hurt because I fell flat on my face.

Eventually we had breakfast and packed up, and hit the trail.  And a lovely and fairly easy trail it was!  We hiked on the Appalachian Trail for a while, going right past the turn-off for Mount Rogers that I did the previous evening.  Eventually, we turned on to the Mount Rogers Trail (that is the name of the trail - it does not climb the mountain) and then on to the Lewis Fork Trail, which goes through the Lewis Fork Wilderness.  The latter is not marked but still has some fading orange blazes from time to time.  Here's the route (in black, starting near the bottom of the map and curving left, then up, then right.)  Remember that the trail for the first day is in blue.  The summit of Mount Rogers is in the lower left of the map.  In the top right, you can see a short track heading west where we made a mistake by not checking our topo map to get the right trail:

 The elevation profile shows that this is predominantly a downhill hike on our second day, but we did gain 1,110 feet and lose 2,500 feet for a net drop of nearly 1,400 feet.

 Shortly after leaving our campsite near the Thomas Knob Shelter on the AT, we still had pretty open views.

 But after passing the junction to the trail to climb Mount Rogers, the AT entered a spruce - fir forest, with the lovely smell of evergreens.  It so reminded me of Maine!

 As we descended, the spruce and fir mixed with hardwoods, and rapidly changed to all hardwoods.

Most of the second day's walk was in forest, but we did come on one area with beautiful open views.

Here is a panorama of that open view:

Hawkeye descends through the forest, on the Mount Rogers Trail:

Beautiful Lewis Fork was our lunch spot.  We ate our sandwiches, relaxed, and watched a small brook trout in the cold stream:

Hawkeye looks back as we hike through the wilderness area.

Just before we joined the AT again near the Old Orchard Shelter, these horsewomen passed us by.  They were obviously enjoying the beautiful weather.

It was a Friday night and the whole area around the shelter was jam packed.  There were a lot of great open sites, but they were all spoken for, as was the shelter.  We searched for a good 45 minutes before we settled on this spot in the open woods near the shelter.  It was not ideal, but it would do.  People were continually arriving after we set up camp.  One group of four young men came in around 8:30 in pitch darkness, set up camp with a lot of commotion, and build a camp fire that would have consumed a log cabin.  That was fine, but they carried on loudly until well past 11:00.  I don't know about you, but I don't walk miles with a heavy pack to listen to a bunch of guys shout at the top of their lungs for three hours in the dark.  Strangling them seemed too extreme, so we gritted our teeth and tried to sleep.  They talked so loudly that I could barely hear a screech owl that started calling about 10:00.

There was a great campsite near these beautiful trees, and it was occupied by one man and two women, one of whom was on her first backpacking trip.  They also had three well-behaved dogs - better behaved than the humans between their site and ours.  This group was very friendly, and invited us to share their fire, which we gladly did for several hours.  We toasted marshmallows (which they provided) over the fire, looked at the amazing stars together, and chatted about our lives and hikes.  They even packed in a little oven and had made pizza!  Talk about an Italian feast, eh?  They were going to make cinnamon buns Sunday morning in it.  I gave some thought of following them but that seemed too much like stalking!  :^)

After the four loud guys finally shut the hell up, I slept fairly well.  It was not as cold, with low of maybe low 40's, because after all, we were about 1,400 feet lower in elevation that the first night on the trail.  And there was not wind to speak of, so it was quieter.  Despite the dozens of people camped nearby, only that one group was loud.

Zuppa - Hiking to the Top of Mount Rogers

October 11
In my four day backpacking trip in Mount Rogers National Recreation Area, patterned after an Italian feast, I guess I'd have to say my favorite "courses" were the "salad" (Hiking in Virginia's High Country with its incredible views) and the "soup" (this post, where I actually hiked to the top of Mount Rogers- 5,729 feet, - the highest point in Virginia).  It is also the highest point on the East Coast between the North Carolina mountains and the White Mountains in New Hampshire.

Originally, Hawkeye suggested that we hike to the summit just before sunset, catch the sunset, stay for the stars, and hike down in the dark back to camp.  But I convinced him that because there is, paradoxically, no view from the top of Mount Rogers, that it made more sense to hike up and back in daylight and catch the sunset and stars from camp.  By the time camp was all set up, it was about 5:15, and sunset was about an hour and a half away, or even a little less.  Hawkeye decided not to go to the summit, but I was determined to.  I hadn't stood on top of Mount Rogers since I was a graduate student, where I backpacked here once with two friends and we reached the top.  Also, I had come here a year after that with my ornithology class on a field trip.  I didn't feel that this hike would be complete without standing on top of this mountain once again.

So I stuffed some emergency supplies in my nearly empty pack and started hiking.  I didn't see any problem covering the hike, less than two miles, before dark, and it wasn't a problem.  Here is a three dimension topo representation of my 1.7 mile hike to the top and back, marked in yellow.

 Here is the elevation profile for the out and back from camp.  We were camped so high up at about 5,400 feet that it was a pretty easy hike to the top and back.

As I left camp, I had nice open views behind me, to the south.

 Gradually, I began to come on to and pass evergreen trees,

 until they became the dominant species of tree.  I am not sure of the exact species, but they had the needle structure and scent of spruce or fir - Fraser fir and red spruce, according to Wikipedia.

The trail abruptly left the open area and entered a dense spruce - fir forest.  The scent was intoxicating, and the views reminded me of parts of Maine - only about a thousand miles away.

Although it may not look impressive, this is the highest point in Virginia,

And this National Geological Survey disk proves it.  I wish I had put my camera on the rock and taken a picture of myself.

As I returned and re-entered open country, beautiful views became normal again,

including this panorama....

Back at camp, we ate dinner as the sun set, giving us beautiful views of the mountains at dusk.  Then, as the winds whipped by at 20 - 30 mph, we lay on the ground and watched an amazing star-lit sky.  With no light pollution, it was incredible.  The Milky Way looked like clouds, and we could see satellites go by overhead.  I stayed out until I got too cold, then slipped into my semi-warm sleeping bag, shivered for a while, and eventually slept a few hours as the wind buffeted my tent all night long.