Waterfalls: Little Devils Staircase

It has been a while. I'm going to try to post a bit more. We'll see how it goes. Injuries and various other life events reduced the amount of time I was able to spend on trail, sucked up mental energy, and generally kept me more indoors than I would have liked. I was able to train for a bike tour last year, but my fitness still wasn't where I wanted it to be. Last fall, I hired a personal trainer and last weekend, I got out on the trail where I first started hiking in the mid-Atlantic: Little Devils Staircase. This is going to be a rebuilding year.

Sunday was relatively warm for January and the stream was running high from heavy rain Friday night. 

 Cascades on Little Devils Staircase

 Looking down canyon in the sunshine

 One of the larger falls we passed

 The trail leading up and away from the stream.

 Rattlesnake Plantain (an orchid)

 Looking east from a spot along the Keyser Run Fire Road.

 Maidenhair Ferns

Hiking down the fire road.

Little Devil's Staircase in a Cold Snap

Little Devils Staircase was the very first hike I did in Shenandoah National Park way back in 2005. It seemed like a pretty big, steep hike at the time, even though we only did the shorter loop that day. I've hiked it several times since then, but oddly, not since 2010. We snowshoed it that year after snowmaggedon. It is a great hike up a narrow canyon filled with little waterfalls. We figured that, since we haven't warmed up to even freezing in the last two weeks, that all of those waterfalls would have nice ice formations.

Today, it was 10 degrees when we arrived at the trailhead. Fortunately, there wasn't any wind. One nice thing about starting at the bottom of the mountain at those temperatures is you get warmed up fairly quickly from the work of hiking uphill immediately.

 Leaves trapped in the ice on the frozen creek.

 One of the first waterfalls

 Ice near one of many places where the trail crosses the creek. A couple of the crossings involved shuffling across very slippery ice (The creek is generally not very deep).

 Ribbons of ice across a rock. These look a bit like snakeskins to me.

 Ice at the bottom of a waterfall.

 Fungi on a tree.

 The Little Devils Staircase trail ends at the Keyser Run Fire Road. We decided to hike up the fire road to Skyline Drive.

 Once at the drive, we walked a short distance down to the Mount Marshall Overlook and had a great view to the east. That is The Peak on the left side of the photo.

Looking up at the trees near the Bolen Cemetery on Keyser Run Fire Road.

It was a lovely hike. After not doing much hiking beyond volunteering on Old Rag in 2017, it felt really good to be out. We saw a grand total of three people on the trails. By the time we reached the car, it was a balmy 25 degrees.

Avoiding the Crowds: Little Devils Staircase

We were not planning to go hiking this weekend.  After all of the travel, we were a bit tired and the apartment needed to be cleaned.  The forecast for Sunday made us reconsider.  How many more 75 degree days are we going to get this year?  We made good progress on the cleaning front on Saturday, so on Sunday, we got up early and headed to Little Devils Staircase in Shenandoah National Park.  Our goal was to avoid the crowds of people who would be clubbing each other for parking spaces at certain trailheads. 

We arrived at the parking lot to find just four other vehicles there.  Talk about a good start.  The leaves in the valleys haven't reached peak color yet, so the trail was lined with a mix of yellow and green.  We leap-frogged with a group of five briefly before leaving them behind as we began the steep climb up into the canyon.  The higher we climbed, the better the leaves got, with bright yellows and the occasional bright red filling the narrow valley.

The climb up the staircase is steep, but short and soon, we were at the Keyser Run Fire Road.  We stopped for lunch at a campsite near the junction.  While we were sitting there, we listened to several woodpeckers "calling" back and forth by loudly hammering trees.  After lunch, we continued on the Pole Bridge Link Trail and then the Sugarloaf Mountain Trail.  The latter took us up to the Appalachian Trail (AT) and Skyline Drive.  As we got near the drive, we saw a few more people, but mostly we just heard the traffic.  We stopped at one of the overlooks and were impressed (not in a good way) with the amount of traffic on the drive.  Walking was definitely the better way to get up there.  The view to the west from the overlook was worth it, though.

From there, we continued south on the AT, crossing Skyline Drive twice and passing the trail down to Overall Run Falls.  It was amazing what a difference a few feet made:  The leaves were completely off the trees and the grass completely dormant on the highest points along the AT.  Just a few feet down, the grass was still green and the leaves were still on the trees.  A few more feet down and asters were still blooming. 

We quickly reached the junction with the Piney Branch Trail and headed back down towards the valley below.  Soon the traffic noise died away, except for the occasional motorcycle and even their noise faded eventually.  We hiked for several miles without seeing another person.  At the waterfall a mile or so above the junction with the Hull School Trail, we stopped to take a few pictures.  We climbed the hill on the Hull School Trail, connected with the Keyser Run Fire Road, and made our way back to the car. 

The leaves were spectacular on the hike, and apart from the two overlooks on Skyline Drive that we passed, we probably saw 20 other people over almost 12 miles.  Most of them were on Little Devils Staircase and Sugarloaf Mountain Trails.  That is more people than one would usually see on those trails, but it was also the busiest weekend of the year in the park.

Pictures (click to enlarge):

 Lower Little Devils Staircase Trail.

 Orange tree on Little Devils Staircase.

 More pretty trees on Little Devils Staircase

Ageratina altissima (White Snakeroot).  Eupatorium rotundifolium (?) (Round Leaved Boneset).  I am not certain I've identified this correctly, so if anyone has any other ideas, I'm open to them.

 Maple leaves.

 Pole Bridge Link Trail.

 Cars at an overlook on Skyline Drive.  It was a bit cloudy when we were up near the drive.

 Looking east from Skyline Drive.

 Looking northeast from Skyline Drive.

 The waterfall on Piney Branch Trail.

Keyser Run Fire Road near the cemetery.

Little Devil's Staircase - Sometimes Slow is Good

We didn't set any land speed records today.  It took us almost four hours to hike the 2.3 mile Little Devil's Staircase Trail.  It took us two more hours to descend 3.3 miles on Keyser Run Fire Road.  Sometimes slow is good, though.  We introduced a friend to snowshoeing and saw all kinds of wonders in the snow. 

We started out just after ten this morning.  The trail was covered in deep snow and it was bright and sunny - perfect winter snowshoeing.  Right away, we saw Shenandoah Mountain Guide's ski tracks from a few days ago.  After hiking for half an hour or so, we came across a deer carcass.  It was an amazing scene:  the bones were mostly clean, but spread over a large area.  Clearly, based on the number and variety of tracks in the area, this deer provided food for many animals including a number of birds, raccoons, and mice.  We had no way to tell if it was killed by something or simply died there.

Soon, we started up the staircase.  The creek was running full, but fortunately, not too full to cross.  A foot of snow covered most of the rocks above the water.  This was where we really slowed down.  There were so many things to look at and photograph.  One of the special things about this hike is the canyon that you hike up into.  If you hike in the summer, after the leaves are on the trees, the canyon walls are almost hard to see, but in the winter, it is possible to see how narrow and steep it is.  The walls shoot straight up out of the creek for 100 feet on the north side of it.  Today, some of those walls were covered in beautiful blue-gray ice formations.  There are a couple of places that are pretty steep when the ground is dry.  The snow made each of those spots extra challenging. 

After the last creek crossing, we made our way up the switchbacks towards the Keyser Run Fire Road.  Along the way, we crossed many rabbit, mice, and bird tracks.  Just before the road, we saw a set of tracks that just might be a bobcat.  It is hard to be sure if we are that lucky, but the tracks are consistent with what I've looked up.  I'd be interested to know what people think of the picture below.

The only tracks on the fire road were Shenandoah Mountain Guide's.  We realized that he had actually not only skied down the staircase, but had skied up the 3.3.mile fire road.  He was not, as far as we could tell, using cross-country skis.  We were all pretty impressed by that.  We made better time on the fire road, pausing at an overlook that is usually blocked by leaves and undergrowth and then again at the cemetery at the junction with the Hull School Trail. The snow on the fire road below the junction was soft, making a little bit of glissading possible.

Lots of photos below the jump (click on the pictures to enlarge):