Seventh Annual Hike Off the Pie: Camp Ridge, Shenandoah National Park

Last year, for Hike off the Pie, we had intended to bushwhack up to a mountain called Pinnacle Peak, descend the west side of it and then hike up to Skyline Drive and descend back down to the car via Camp Ridge and the Nicholson Hollow Trail. It didn't quite work out that way, so this year, we decided to do the Camp Ridge portion of that hike. Also, different than last year: this year's Hike Off the Pie was held on Saturday, which meant that Michael got to come along!

We arrived in the Old Rag parking lot at 9 a.m. and it was already nearly full. There were people everywhere, including a group of what must have been 30 people. We packed up, showed the rangers our park pass and made our way to the Nicholson Hollow trailhead. As soon as we turned off of the road, we left all of the crowds behind. We saw a couple of fishermen and one family in the first mile and they were the last people we saw until we were within a quarter mile of Skyline Drive. The hike up went smoothly. We had lunch near some ruins at the junction of the Nicholson Hollow Trail and the Corbin Cutoff trail. We took the latter up Skyline Drive and the walked on the drive for about a third of a mile to the spot where the Camp Ridge Trail once intersected Skyline Drive.

We think we found a few blazes, which got us started the right direction, or at least it was a happy coincidence. There was initially a footpath, but quickly lost it in a thicket of mountain laurel, so we generally made our way out to Camp Ridge using the map. As we were making our way along, Michael spotted the path again and this time, we were able to follow it all the way out to the end of the ridge. It wasn't an easy walk: the mountain laurel put up a good fight. I don't know when the Camp Ridge Trail was last maintained, but it is pretty grown over now. We had a snack at the summit of the little ridge. Then we started down the south side of the ridge, slowly making our way down the steep slope to the Hughes River. For the record, bushwhacking down a steep hill is much worse than going up it. We got very lucky and met the Hughes river at a spot without steep banks, so we didn't have to bushwhack downstream to cross. At that spot, the Nicholson Hollow Trail was right next to the river as well, so we didn't have to slog uphill to find it. On our way down, we were plotting our next bushwhacking adventure on a nearby ridge.

We made it to the road just as the last light faded and back to the car just after dark. It was a great day and the weather was amazing for November.

The ruin of an old cabin on Corbin Cutoff trail. Logs have been removed and this is mostly the second story.

 The wall of the cabin.

 A butterfly on a log. Like I said, it was incredible weather. Even at 2500 feet, it was probably close to 60 degrees.

 An old stone wall on the Corbin Cutoff Trail. If you look closely, you can see a tree growing on top of it near the center of the picture.

 Old Rag from Skyline Drive

 Michael on the old Camp Ridge Trail. This was some of the less dense mountain laurel that we had to push through. I have a love-hate relationship with mountain laurel. In May and June, when it blooms, it is beautiful. The rest of the year, I feel as though it is trying to kill me.

 Oak leaves.

 Fungus growing on a tree.

 The old trail through the mountain laurel

 Puttyroot orchid leaves. These little guys are interesting. They bloom in the summer, but they only put up leaves in the winter, when there isn't any tree canopy to block the light.

 I grabbed this branch for blance when we were descending off of the ridge. It turned out to be covered with tiny prickly things. I have no idea what the branch is or if the prickly spikes are thorns or some kind of parasite.

The final descent to the Hughes River. 

Odds and Ends: Old Rag, A Perfect Day, and the National Arboretum

I'm catching up on the last few weeks:

We volunteered on Old Rag two weeks ago on a lovely (weather-wise) Saturday. It was absolute madness. We arrived at 9 a.m. and the parking lot was already full. There was a line of 12 or so cars waiting to turn into the parking lot. The neighbor was already charging people to park in her pasture and she had opened up a second pasture so even more people could give her cash hike Old Rag.  We spent an hour in the lot talking to people about the hike and handing out flyers to recruit for Old Rag Mountain Stewards. When we turned on the radios at 10 a.m., we found an incident had just started. We headed up the mountain, pushing past lines of people and spent the morning assisting a hiker who had taken an unfortunate fall. It was about as smooth of an evacuation as we could have asked for and we spent most of the rest of the day on the summit, talking to people as they passed through. In my haste in the morning, I forgot my camera, so all of these are taken with Michael's camera, which is a point and shoot.

The helicopter approaching.

 I already talked about the crowding. That was before we had to close the trail for almost an hour while we worked to evacuate the patient. If you click to enlarge, you'll see the crowd backed up just after we re-opened the trail.

 The spot near the summit where I always take a picture.

 Changing leaves in the valley.

 Looking south from the summit.

The following week, we were contacted by NPS staff about helicopter hoist training on that Friday. Did we want to attend? Of course! It wound up being an amazing day.

To make it to Big Meadows in Shenandoah National Park by the training start time, we left the house at 5:15 in the morning and picked up another volunteer at the metro at 5:45 a.m. There was much grumbling all around, but then we got to see this nice sunrise:

 Looking east from Skyline Drive

 Old Rag on the right from Pinnacles Overlook on Skyline Drive

 Everyone taking pictures!

When we were almost to Big Meadows, we saw a mother bear and two cubs hunting for food near the road. This cub was nice enough to pose for us.

All three of the bears. The bears and the sunrise made us forget our unhappiness at having gotten up so early.

Then there was the training:

We spent most of the morning practicing attaching a litter to the hoist on the helicopter. Everyone had to wear fire-resistant clothing for the training.

Then, we got the chance to be hoisted up onto the helicopter while it was in the air, which was amazing. I am the person on the left in this picture. It wasn't actually all that high, but it was still pretty darn cool. Many thanks to the US Park Police and Shenandoah National Park staff for including us in the training.

Last weekend, the weather was kind of gross, so we went down to the National Arboretum.

 The bonsai exhibit is always fun to walk through. This time, there was a special exhibit of deciduous bonsai trees in the process of changing colors for fall.

 The old Capitol columns.

 The path in the native plants area.

Blue Bottle Gentian (Gentian andrewsii) - the last of the season's flowers.