Stir-Crazy!

I'm starting to get a bit antsy because I haven't been out hiking in a while; so I thought I'd list the hikes I've done through the years. A lot of these were while I was a student at BYU, but some have been before and since.

• The teensy slot "canyon' at Pioneer Park in St. George, UT. It's really just a narrow crack in the rock somewhere between 1/2 and 1 mile long. At points it's so narrow you have to turn sideways to get through. Not for claustrophobes.

• Zion National Park: Scout Lookout. Actually an attempt at Angel's Landing, we would have made it if a blizzard hadn't hit while we were going up Walter's Wiggles. By the time we reached the chains, snow was sticking to the slickrock, and the better part of sanity told us not to go. Not for acrophobes.
  
  
• Mount Timpanogos summit, from the Timpooneke trailhead. Both times, this was done as a night hike, with summiting to coincide with the sunrise. The first time, I hyperventilated just a touch as I crossed over the saddle at 11,000 feet, probably because I was jogging. (No surprise, huh?) The second time I was in better shape, surprisingly, and had no problems. In fact, my group fell asleep in the basin just below emerald lake on the way down. When we woke up, we thought we had lost a half-hour and everyone was ahead of us, so we jogged down the rest of the mountain, beating the rest of our party by at least an hour, possibly two.

• Loafer Mountain/Santaquin Peak: Tracy and I hiked this July 4th, 2003. We really enjoyed the hike, except it was blisteringly hot, even for Utah, and at the summit, there were bugs all over the place. I'm not sure we ever truly got to the Santaquin peak summit, but I know we hit the Loafer Mountain summit, which is taller, but has a poorer view. We had a great view of the valley from the south end to contrast with the view from Timp

• Squaw Peak: I did the "real" hike for this, starting out in Rock Canyon Park and going up, not the wimpy "hey, let's just drive almost to the top and then hike up!" variant.

• Calf Creek Falls, Escalante. We went to Escalante for Memorial Day and visited Amy, one of Tracy's friends while she was doing her archeological dig there. We hiked this, along with about 2000 other people that day. The weather was great. My advice: do this any weekend besides Memorial Day weekend. Also, don't drive from Provo to Escalante at night, because the road is freaky! You see a sign that says "No Shoulders", and all you see is the headlights on the road and the reflective strips on the edges and centerline. Seriously, nothing past it. The road curves, and you see nothing because there isn't anything but air! Freaky

• Solider Hollow, via snowshoe. Thanks to wearing snowshoes instead of skis, we were able to go places in Soldier Hollow that most visitors (read skiers) won't see. Our goal was the first real summit above the hollow. A mother moose deprived us of that particular treat, but we still had a spectacular experience.
  

• Stewart's Falls, aka Stewarts cascades. This one was odd because we had to park practically in Sundance. Not the ski area, the "artists' village." Really, the vacation spot. Anyway, we hiked up there and saw the falls, then hiked back. Fun trip.

• Manassas National Battlefield Park: The entire thing. I'm serious; I've hiked every trail in the park, and I believe I've hiked every portion of all of them, except one.
  

• Appalachian Trail. We've hiked a few of the Virginia sections of this trail. We started out 2006 with a New Year's Day hike near Bear's Den (a hiker hostel in NoVA). We hiked the part of the trail that goes through Sky Meadows State Park, and we've hiked it in Shenandoah National Park. More on those later. I would like to take a week and just hike the AT through Shenandoah sometime.
  

• Sky Meadows State Park: We hiked about 4 miles with the dog, om a Memorial Day. It was HOT, and the dog was panting like crazy. It had about 1000 of elevation gain in a little over a mile, which is unfortunately typical for trails here.
  

• Great Falls National Park: Trails follow the Potomac both through the placid waters upstream of the falls above the low-head dam into the nearby regional park and downstream to the observation points over the falls, following the river through Mather's Gorge, and down to Difficult Run's merger with the Potomac.

• Shenandoah National Park: I've hiked portions of the AT, the Elkwallow loop, the Hot-Short Mountain trail, the Nichols Hollow Trail, well, let's just say I've hiked a few trails. Oh yeah, we also hiked Old Rag Mountain. The great thing about Shenandoah is there's always more trails you haven't reached yet.

• The Tuscarora Trail. I've hiked about a third of the Tuscarora Trail, which stretches from Shenandoah, through West Virginia, up to the AT again, in Pennsylvania. It was originally designed as an alternate western route for the AT to take around the messy development known as Northern Virginia and Maryland.
  

I'm hoping this winter I'll able to do a a lot more hiking in Shenandoah. I like winter hiking. Although you have to be prepared for unexpected conditions, you get views from places you can never see from during the rest of the year because of the leaves. In Shenandoah, in particular, you can never be certain what the weather will be. Since it's two to four thousand feet higher than everything else, a rainstorm here can be ice or snow there.

Weedeaters on the Appalachian Trail.

Ah, the irony of it. Back in July, after my many, many activities, I got a reminder from my trail supervisor that the section of the AT that I maintain was, to put it bluntly, not being maintained. Yep, the last time I had been there, the trail was buried under snow. So, after I hurriedly shot an apologetic reply back, I planned to head to Shenandoah N.P. and weed my section of trail.

Now for the irony: The Appalachian Trail is generally considered a "Wilderness Experience". Much of the trail is designated wilderness, and as such, motorized vehicles and power tools are strictly forbidden (except in cases such as wildfires). Not so my section. My 1.1 miles are mostly flat, straight, and Not at all Wilderness. . . (well, not designated as such, that is)

So, four days later, Saturday morning (July 14th) at about 8:30, I'm at the Big Meadows tool shed, checking out the biggest, heaviest-duty weed eater the Club has stocked. (I believe it's a Stihl 110 or 130 [a 36cc engine])Yep. I'm going to weed-whack the Appalachian Trail.

I packed an entire extra container of gas and extra string, grabbed the trimmer, and the harness, and threw it all in the back of the Matrix and headed to the trailhead. I waited until a Ranger-led hike got underway and out of sight, then I really fired it up and went to town-- running a weed eater on the AT.


7 hours later, the section, just over a mile long, was cleared to a point where I was satisfied with it. My safety glasses, face, arms, clothes, shirt, pants and boots were covered in bits of grass, ferns, and various bits of ground cover, my ears were ringing from the motor revving, my hands were tingling, my arms were tired, and my allergies were on full alert. I cleaned the gear, returned it to the shed, and went home, a tired, but satisfied man.

I'm sure that by now, a month later, it's grown back to cover a lot of what I've trimmed. I need to get back out soon. Maybe this time, I can actually hike instead of just weed.

Old Rag Mountain

Memorial Day Saturday we hiked Old Rag Mountain. Along with us came every youth from our church who wanted to come, and a few who were probably just pressured into it by their peers.



It was a hot, hazy day, typical of Virginia summers. The good side was no worries about needing to bring a jacket in case of rain or cold, the downside was the sweat. I brought a gallon of water in the form of two nalgene bottles and a 2 liter hydration system in my pack, which also included the first aid kit, (which we thankfully didn't need, except for a blister), lunch, and some snacks ( another nalgene of gorp, some jerky, red vines [red licorice], and a box of Good and Plenty). When we reached the summit, I had half a nalgene of water left. (I had given almost a liter out to others who didn't bring enough, like Tracy.)

The signature part of Old Rag is the fact that the summit is mainly bare rocks. The trail goes around, between, over, and underneath boulders and slabs. Most of the other mountains out here have limited views because they're just the top of a tree. Old Rag doesn't do that; it pumps out huge views the entire last mile before the summit. The payment for that, however, is the work getting over the rocks. The pictures won't show the hardest parts because, well, we needed both hands to get through them.