A New Bird Species for Me

This morning, while doing my four mile walk along my favorite local training route, I heard a strange bird call while coming out of the woods. It sounded close by and up in a tree. I almost ignored it, but stopped and looked up. And there was a most beautiful bird, one that I have never seen before - a red headed woodpecker!

They are so striking, and it made a nice little extra-credit for getting up early and working out. It is not exactly like seeing a cougar or something quite that exotic, but I was still pretty thrilled. I get thrilled easily, I guess, by nature. I think most people would say "it's a bird" and walk away. Me, I watched that little guy for a minute or two until it flew off, and felt the richer for it.

Can We Bear It?

It would have been a nice, albeit hot, weekend for a hike, but I had other things I wanted to do, including resuming some basic working out. Another thing I wanted to do was some writing. I am unhappy in my job and would like to try to start selling some writing and see where that might lead. So I resolved that I would update both of my blogs today, plus start an article I hope to get published in Backpacker about my first real backpacking trip. That misadventure to Isle Royale in Lake Superior was generated by a triumvirate of an ex-girlfriend, a car magazine, and a football, so as you might guess it is a little whacky and will be fun to write about.

Updating “Racing for a Cure” is always easy, but what to write in a hiking blog when I haven’t done a hike since Sleeping Bear Dunes on July 15? I thought about some people I met on my hike to President Hoover’s Retreat a few weeks ago, and decided on the topic of bears. As a bonus, I’ll throw in a few photos at the end.

To me, seeing a black bear in the wild is a thrill. But I guess that to many people, it must be terrifying. On that hike in the Shenandoah, I didn’t see a bear. But I did hear a one horse open sleigh coming through the woods – at least that is what is sounded like. I could hear them for five minute before we passed – a couple hiking along, the woman festooned in large “bear bells.” I was tempted to break into a rousing chorus of “Jingle Bells” as we passed.

A few hours later, I heard an old sort of rhythmic chanting punctuated by what sounded like claps. Minutes later, we passed in opposite directions – three young men chanting in unison and clapping to the beat in order to scare away the bears.

Now I know that in grizzly country, this is a good idea – you don’t want to surprise a griz on the trail. I have made about 8 hikes in grizzly terrain when I went out west, and in each one, we were on full alert and constantly trying to make noise. Black bears can sometimes be aggressive but rarely attack humans. They can, if habituated to humans and having encountered people that will throw their food away to get a bear to leave them alone, sometime approach people assertively looking for food. But normally, from my experience, a black bear is going to run when you encounter them.

I’ve been lucky enough to encounter black bears on about a half dozen hikes in my life, and with one exception, the bears ran with a speed that would have made a world class sprinter weep, or climbed a tree with amazing dexterity. I once encountered two young cubs on a hike – one sprinted up the hill through the woods, and the other shot 40 feet straight up a tree literally in seconds. It was incredible to watch. I made sure that I wasn’t going to blunder into their mom, then left well enough alone and quietly hiked off.

The one exception to fleeing bears was in Grand Teton National Park in 2005. I was returning alone from a short hike into an area where the wildlife was supposed to be great. I had seen nothing on the mile and a half in, and other than an elk, nothing on the way back. Suddenly, less than ¼ mile from the trail head, there was a sow black bear and two cubs. They were 100 feet or less from the trail, calmly eating berries. Sensing that they knew I was not a danger, I stopped and watched them for about five minutes. I didn’t move towards them and just stood still. Of course, they very much knew that I was there, but they calmly kept eating. It was a thrill that I will always remember and expect rarely to see again.

So in black bear country, use common sense. Certainly don’t approach a bear. Don’t bring food into your tent, and hang your food at least 100 yards from camp in a bear-proof container if you are camping out. But if you are lucky enough to see a bear in the wild, enjoy the experience without fear. It is a privilege few people have.

Here are some photos of the mother bear and her cubs in the Tetons:

Pyramid Point on Lake Michigan

The sign at the trailhead said to be on the alert for cougars, which are on the prowl in Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore on Lake Michigan. But not to worry. There was no way we would be seeing a cougar on this hike. Or a deer. Or a raccoon or fox. Or a chipmunk. Not with the shrieks emanating from my two year old granddaughter, who was in the middle of a tempestuously terrible temper tantrum on the trail. She had been excited about going on a hike with her grandpa and her mom, but for some reason, once we started hiking, within seconds she pitched the mother of all tantrums. My daughter-in-law Sarah and I just looked at each other in frustration and wonder. The only solution seemed to be to carry her, which we ultimately did.

My granddaughter has a happy moment near the start of the hike while making a wish

The hike up went through beautiful northern forests, including these iconic trees of the north, white birches

Sarah told me that Pyramid Point is one of her favorite spots on earth, and she wanted to show it to me and to her daughter. Despite the tantrum, it is a beautiful spot with stunning views of Lake Michigan. We hiked about a kilometer uphill to the point, and decided – for obvious reasons – to not do the 2 mile loop.
The lake was 280 feet below us down a very steep sand cliff. Views were somewhat overcast, as weather was moving in, but we could still see North (pictured below in the distance) and South Manitou Islands.According to a Chippewa legend, a mother bear and her cubs leapt into Lake Michigan long ago to escape a raging forest fire in what we now call Wisconsin. They swam continually eastward, the twin cubs lagging behind until exhaustion overcame them and they drowned. The mother bear dragged herself on shore and climbed a bluff to wait in vain for her offspring. The spot where the mother bear waited was transformed into massive sand dunes and cliffs, and is called Sleeping Bear Dunes, and her cubs were turned into the two Manitou Islands. It is a strikingly beautiful place.

From Pyramid Point, we watched some kids clamber down to the lake, sliding and walking down the steep (close to 60 degrees) sand cliff. “They are nuts!” I said to Sarah. She said “I went down there when I was 18. You should do it! I’ll wait.” I looked at the lake so far below with its tiny beach, and thought, why not? How tough can it be? Hell, it will be a good way to remember my last day at my current age. So I stepped off the edge and was at the lake minutes later, snapping this shot just before reaching the beach.

I explored briefly on the small beach, grimaced as I stared back up the steep slope to where I had to go,
then started back up.

That is when I learned how tough it could be. I was on all fours coming back up, and with each step slid 6-12 inches back down the slope’s soft sand as I pushed off. It was literally two steps forward and one backwards. After 5 minutes, my legs felt like mush, and my lungs were heaving, so I stopped to rest. After that point, it was climb for 1 or 2 minutes, then stop and sit, lungs working like bellows, quads and calves burning, for 5 to 10 minutes. It took me a full 45 minutes to climb back up, and it was one of the most tiring things I ever did. When I got back Sarah said “I was worried you were going to have a heart attack the day before your birthday! I was wondering how I would explain that.” I told her, “Believe me, the thought occurred to me as well. My heart was beating so fast I am sure that it exceeded the maximum heart rate for my age. I can’t believe how tiring that was.”

Several kids who started back up after I did passed me on the climb. But there is no substitution for young legs, plus none of them weighed over 70-80 pounds so that is a lot less foot pounds of energy to burn. There were lots of adults at the top when I got back up, but I was the only one brave, or stupid, enough to go down to the lake. It was a great way to mark the last day of my 57th year! On the hike out, my granddaughter walked cheerfully and without shrieking, her tantrum in the dustbin of terrible-twos temper tantrums. But we still didn’t see a mountain lion, or any other wildlife.

Hiking to a Presidential Retreat

Today being the Fourth of July, I decided to combine nature, exercise, and American History by hiking to the presidential retreat in the mountains. Camp David? No, Camp Rapidan, also known as “Camp Hoover”.

When Herbert Hoover was president, he felt the need to get out of the city. His rest home had to be close enough to Washington, DC to make it possible to travel there for weekends. It had to be above 2,500 feet elevation to make it cooler in the summer and with fewer mosquitoes. And it had to be near a trout stream, as the president loved to fish. This beautiful spot, later donated to Shenandoah National Park by Herbert and Lou Hoover, fit the bill.

My hike was nearly nine miles, my first chance to test out my foot that was still hurting from the cortisone shot of the other day. It was a loop, comprised of sections of these trails: Appalachian (I didn’t run into SC Governor Sanford), Laurel Prong, Cat Knob, The Sag, Fork Mountain, Laurel Prong again, and Mill Prong. The magenta line on the map below shows the route, running counter clockwise from the start at the upper left of the image. The green arrow and magenta circle shows the location of Camp Hoover:

Most of the route was either uphill or downhill, gaining and losing about 1,800 - 2,000 feet. There were three major uphill sections, the first being right out of the gate from the parking lot to the top of Hazeltop Mountain along the Appalachian Trail. The next was a moderately steep but short hike up Cat Knob, and the last was the hike from the camp back to the parking lot along the Mill Prong Trail. During the hike up to Hazeltop, a group of about 50 Japanese hikers went by while I was looking at my map and getting a drink. It was the largest group I have ever seen hiking together.

Most of the buildings at Camp Hoover are now gone, but the president’s large cabin and an historic cabin where the Prime Minister of England once stayed during negotiations on a treaty to limit naval power are still there. One could barely imagine a prettier site for a cabin, surrounded by mountains and with a stream on each side of the site. The two streams, Mill Prong and Laurel Prong, converge just below the cabin to form the Rapidan River, which eventually flows to the Rappahannock River, and to the Chesapeake Bay.

There are not a lot of stunning mountain vistas on this hike. The beauty is in the southern Appalachian forests and the streams. I saw lots of chipmunks while hiking, and many birds. A large and varied group of woodpeckers were visible at the start of the hike, and partway along the Laurel Prong Trail, I ran into a group of tufted titmice and chickadees. At various times, I heard towhee, wood peewee, vireos, veeries, and oven birds calling.

The weather was perfect for summer hiking, with a nice breeze most of the time. It was warm but not oppressive, and the heavy forest cover for most of the route kept me cool most of the time. The rest of my post will show some photos from the day’s hike. It sure felt great to be back in the mountains!


The fabled Appalachian Trail is the first 2.4 miles of this loop hike.

A little seen but very common vertebrate in the mountains is the red-backed salamander.

Not sure what this berry is but something must enjoy eating it. It was quite common.

Hazeltop Mountain is the third highest mountain in Shenandoah National Park, but there is virtually no view from the summit in summertime.

This partial view of mountains along the Laurel Prong Trail was one of the few distant views on the entire hike. Most of the miles were in heavy timber.

This sign at Camp Rapidan shows the layout of the original site. Only the buildings keyed in yellow still remain. The site can be reached by an "out and back" hike of about 1.8 miles each way, but it is more fun to do the loop.

President and First Lady Hoover's cabin. I'd live here in the spring, summer, and fall!

The "Prime Minister's Cabin"

When the cabin was built, the deck was built around a large tree to avoid cutting it down. The tree has since died, but you can still see the stump protruding through the deck.

The camp sits at the source of the Rapidan River, and in the shadow of some really pretty mountains. It is a gorgeous site!

Big Rock Falls on the hike out along Mill Prong Trail.

I saw no major wildlife on the hike, but I did see a total of five fawns and two does while driving. This doe and her two fawns were near the visitor center.

"Iron Mike" is a statue at the Big Meadows Visitor Center that pays tribute to the Civilian Conservation Corps. I often wonder if the time is here to try something like this again in our country, but this time for young men and women.

Buttermilk Spring Trail

Sunday was a pleasant but warm summer day, but I didn't want to drive a huge distance to hike. But just miles away, right in city limits, is a nice and semi-wild riverside park, the James River Park. It encompasses some islands, and different chunks of land along the James. I hiked the Buttermilk Trail, which has a four mile loop. Some of it is so narrow that you can hear the traffic on Riverside Drive. Other stretches feel so remote that you feel like you could be 50 miles from a city. And many parts of the trail go along the river. It was a very pleasant way to get some exercise and see some nice scenary without spending a fortune in gasoline.

Here are some photos of my hike:


Lots of the trail was very narrow, going through dense woods and understory.

Other parts were wide and level, like this stretch going along a side channel of the river.


Leaves of three, leave it be! Plenty of this bad boy in spots, and in narrow trail passages, it seemed almost impossible not to brush up against it.

A birch along the river channel.

As I crossed over on rocks to the 42nd Street Island to explore for a bit, this skink allowed me to get fairly close. Note the blue tail.

These rocks are coming off the 42nd Street Island. The James River is about a half mile wide at this point, with lots of rapids and rocks. It is un-navigable by anything larger than a canoe or kayak.

The water moves quickly and with such a pleasant sound through channels around the island.

After two miles of hiking, I reached the Boulevard Bridge, with the Carilon in the distance in Byrd Park. Plenty of times with Team in Training over the past four years have been spent crossing this bridge on foot. At this point, the trail doubled back to the start, with most of the two miles back on a parallel foot path, some of it going through woods so thick and remote that I ended up going in a circle for a little while.

Trumpet vine is so pretty. I wish there had been some hummingbirds here.

Pretty wildflowers near the end of the hike.

Ticked Off in Amelia WMA!

It isn't often that I quit on a very doable hike, but that happened today in Amelia Wildlife Management Area, run by the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries. My original goal was to do a 6 mile loop. There are not maintained trails per se, just old woods roads and other such pathways going through woods and fields, often quite grown up with tall grass and brush. So it is a bit of a challenge to find one's way on this hike.

I got the idea of going here because the ODATC was going to do this hike yesterday, but cancelled it. My original intent was to go along with them, and after it was canceled, I decided to go by myself today, having never been there. There is a nice sized lake that the hike skirts the shore of, and the potential promise of seeing some wildlife. And I did see wildlife, tons of it, mostly with eight legs and in a very friendly mood. After going about a mile and picking at least two dozen ticks from my clothing, I decided to try this one in winter some time and turned around. I continued picking a few ticks off all the way back to the car, and even just before jumping in the shower at home!

I heard oven birds and cardinals calling, saw an unidentified yellowish warbler, and several interesting kinds of mushrooms. I also saw a wasp dragging a large wolf spider that she had paralyzed for her progency to get their start in life from. But the dominant wildlife were ticks - lots and lots of ticks!

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Here are some photos from my short, tick plagued hike:

Very cool yellowish-orange mushroom

There was no marked trail. Some of the track was fairly open like this;

Other parts of it were grassy and brushy, like this, with plenty of ticks to go around

Interesting tree

Not sure what type of flower this is, maybe some type of a black-eyed Susan

This mushroom was so pretty, and this little area of the forest floor almost looked like it was on fire from it

Muddy stream on the way to Amelia Lake, and from there to the nearby Appomattox River

Queen Anne's Lace (or similar)

Remembering my First Backpacking Trip

With Fathers’ Day approaching, I thought I would write, in part to remember my Dad, a very short story about my first backpacking trip. It was in August 1969 in the Adirondacks. Now technically, my first real backpacking trip, to mystical Isle Royale National Park in Lake Superior, would not occur for two more years after that point. My grand and unforgettable misadventure to Isle Royale was precipitated when three seemingly unrelated things - an ex-girlfriend, a car magazine, and a football - somehow came together and colluded to send me on my way to Lake Superior. But that is much too long of a story to tell here. So I will tell this one instead, and will include a “few trips down memory lane” at the very end.

So, then, my first “sort of backpacking” trip was this camping trip with one night of “backpacking” in the Adirondacks with my father. I say “backpacking” in quotes because my Dad had a real backpack and carried most of our gear – I should say his gear. His pack had an external frame and the big padded hip belt, and I had never seen such a thing before. It was an amazing piece of equipment! I had the old style canvas “Army – Navy” surplus rucksack, and carried my clothes and some personal gear. Who knows, maybe I had my heavy hatchet and knife along for that trip, too – something sure kept digging into my back despite the relatively light weight of my pack! At the time, I felt like a true outdoorsman when I carried those two objects around with me while camping out! Hey, cut me a little slack! I had turned 18 just weeks before, on the exact date that Apollo 11 lifted off for mankinds's giant leap to the lunar surface.

My parents were a few months away from finalizing a most bitter divorce, and I had the chance to spend a week with my Dad. When he asked me where I wanted to go with him, I immediately said that I wanted to camp in the mountains somewhere. My little brother, two years my junior, had picked the Woodstock Festival of Rock and Roll lore and legend, and I could have done that with them. But I wanted to camp out. So we headed out to the Adirondacks, a good drive from where my Dad lived in North-coastal Jersey, and an even longer trip from my home in Southeastern Pennsylvania.

I can’t remember a whole lot about the specifics about what we did each day of the trip, other than these four (1) we hiked up Mt. Marcy, the tallest mountain in New York; (2) we camped in campgrounds around the Adirondacks most of the time (3) one night we hiked up Mt. Whiteface and camped out on its side; and (4) it was the last time I ever went camping with my Dad. After that point, college, grad school, job, family, distance, and life always seemed to conspire to get in the way of a camping trip together. So I am really glad that I had this opportunity, and that I took it.

The “backpacking” part of the trip was the most memorable. We had hiked only a couple of miles up to a lean-to on Whiteface Mountain, where we cut some spruce branches and made a comfortable bed in the lean-to. From there, we had hiked another mile or so, sans packs, to the summit of Whiteface. An auto road allowed cars to drive up, and there was of course a decent restaurant, where my Dad bought us dinner. Such luxury! So there was no need to carry a stove or a lot of food on that trip, or eat deviled ham out of a can. The other nights in the Adirondacks were based on driving to a campground and setting up my dad’s 500 pound canvas umbrella tent. I’m exaggerating, of course – it only weighed 487 pounds – but my purpose is to show how clueless I was about backpacking in general and going light in particular. That lack of knowledge and skill came back to bite me in the butt many times when I encountered the triumvirate of the football, the car magazine, and the ex-girlfriend that propelled me on a truly serious backpacking trip in 1971!

Now cut me some more slack! I know that today, unless one was desperate and freezing, one would never make a bed of spruce branches high on a mountain. But we did then, 40 years ago this summer, and I still remember how good those boughs smelled as I was falling asleep that night. I remember the quiet and stillness of being alone, just the two of us, on the side of the mountain. The silvery crescent of the moon hung like a beautiful pendent of God's over the side of the mountain. Even though I have only managed to go backpacking perhaps a dozen times or so since then, it was at that moment that the difference between a noisy, car choked campground and being away from all that, carrying what you need with you, and exploring the outdoors on foot first truly crystallized as a concept in me. For that moment of revelation, and for this one last trip to the outdoors with my father, I am grateful.

Here are few old photos that I scanned in from the past...

Me at 18 in our lean-to on the side of Mt. Whiteface

My Dad on the summit of Mount Whiteface

Me on some rocks in the Adirondacks, two months out of high school and a month away from college

Craggy Gardens

I decided to visit my son in Asheville, North Carolina for the weekend, both to see him for his birthday and to help him out with some things. So I got in the car after work Friday, loaded the CD player with music to keep me going during the long drive, and headed south. I drove until I was tired, spent the night in Hickory, and got there in the morning. After visiting for a while, we took a drive on the Blue Ridge Parkway, and ended up doing a short (0.7 mile up and 0.7 mile down) hike to the top of Craggy Gardens.

This has gorgeous views for minimal effort. It felt great to be back in the mountains! Here are some photos from this short hike - towards the end, there is a picture of something I've never seen on a hike before.

Rhododendron in Team in Training colors! Very appropriate, since I would be meeting the TNT Virginia cycle team the next day and cheering them on in the 100 mile Fletcher Flyer race. The next three shots show views from the top:
Aren't the Blue Ridge Mountains gorgeous?

Here is a shot of me with my turtle hiking staff that my sister gave me for my birthday a couple of years ago.

Looking north up the Blue Ridge Parkway from the top, it looked like a storm coming in.

View of the mountains from the lower overlook.

Close up of rhododendron bloom - so pretty!

The trail at times resembled a tunnel

This twisted tree made a nice "picture frame" for a large rock in the background

On my hikes through the hills I’ve trekked many a mile
Seen lots of wonderful things, and this one made me smile
For I’d never before seen a pretty bride-yet-to-be
Dressed in her white gown sitting high in a tree

View of Craggy Dome (elevation 6,085) from the trailhead parking lot (elevation 5,640)