Kurt and Gail's Hikes: The Five-Year Mark

February 14, 2009. Apple Orchard Falls Trail to Appalachian Trail to Cornelius Creek Trail. 7.4 miles. (Fifth anniversary return to our first hike.)

On this day, the fifth anniversary of the beginning of our weekly Hikes Oddity, there was ample time and inclination to reflect on the walk on February 14, 2004 vs. the walk on February 14, 2009.

On that first day, while we had hats and gloves, we were nowhere near the gear nuts we've since become. The winter packs now carry not just a full change of upper layers (plus two or three extras), but also several intensities of gloves, ear-band style warmers as well as full hats, an extra pair of socks each; not to mention those little seven-hour hand warmers that The Day Hiker occasionally resorts to; and the fancy bladder full of ice water. But this day's weather was in stark contrast to that first day's, when several inches of iced-over snow covered the ground and for much of the walk, ours were the first human prints in the white. On this sunny day, temperatures moved to around 50, the breeze was light and there was nothing on the ground but last year's fallen leaves. Not much of a test for the gear at all.

On that first day, we ascended on the Cornelius Creek Trail, with its multiple stream crossings and its half-mile section of a significantly steep climb. On this day, as we have done most times since, we took the far-gentler Apple Orchard Falls Trail up. On that first day the falls were significantly fuller than they were on this day, when we could hear ourselves talk just fine.

On that first day, a walk of about seven and a half miles was a daunting thing - something that rendered us proud enough, when we were finished, to go out again the next week. And the next and the next and... The Greatest Day Hiker Of Them All has over the five years toughened us so thoroughly as hikers that the walk now feels more like a pleasant visit with an old friend than a challenge. In fact, with a late start and an early dinner reservation, we'd have been running awfully tight back then, and Gail would have worried. And not just about time, but about darkness and maybe bears. For years now, she has rooted for bears as hard as she roots for sunshine on winter days. And on this day, she talked about the time only when I brought it up, and had us out of the woods a half an hour before my projected time – on a day when she did not feel particularly well.

In that realm, it could be noted that over these 260 weeks, there was only one - of the 13 total we missed - that was because of The Day Hiker, and even that was only half her responsibility. Eleven were for a knee or achilles of mine; one was to move a son to Philadelphia; and one - just one - was a weekend when she felt badly enough on Saturday to vote to wait till Sunday and on Sunday I felt badly enough to vote that we should have gone on Saturday.

Total mileage for the five years is 2,425.5. Longest hike is 19.3 in Northern Virginia into Harpers Ferry. Shortest is 3.4 up and down the Star Trail here in Roanoke. Among the scores of points of true exhilaration over the five years, two stand out from the most recent year: walking to just under 10,000 feet on Oregon's Mount Hood and finishing the 546 miles of the Virginia Appalachian Trail last summer on a glorious day that included the Mount Rogers summit, friendly ponies and a perfect precipice for lunch.

May our luck and will and health continue to allow us to continue to spend a part of our weekends in the woods.

A Warm-Weather Trail Party

February 7, 2009. Appalachian Trail from Va. 311 north on the Appalachian Trail to McAfee Knob and back. 7.6 miles.

On the warmest day of the winter to date, pretty much everybody and his hiking buddy or honey squeezed into the lot where 311 reaches its highest reach on Catawba Mountain – to the point that more cars were parked along the side of the highway down toward Salem. And it makes for a different kind of hike when this many people are out – a sort of linear party full of greetings and exchanges on the weather, the trail, the summit and, in the case of one older couple, a deep lament at all the fair-weather walkers. "We were going to be out here ANYWAY – no matter the weather," the lady asserted. No, it wasn't Gail and me; we enjoyed all the company this day, including fellow Leisureite James Richerson, his wife and a few pals from middle school making their first trek up to the coolest overlook in the area.

The precipice was literally covered with people – nearly all twenty- and thirty-somethings with cameras and cliff-edge poses to go into them. We ate lunch on the far end of the formation, looking down onto Roanoke and across the valley to Brushy Mountain. The Greatest Day Hiker Of Them All spent a considerable amount of time asking about various puppies' ages, toward the day when little lab-mix Cookie – now up to 29 pounds from the 16 when she arrived with a month ago – will be able to climb mountains.

The way back down, as always, was easy and enjoyable, to the point that Gail talked about "the old days," when our sons were boys and this was kind of a long hike. On this day, she got good-naturedly impatient several times when she ran up on the back of hiking parties that were a little slow to move over and make way for somebody who... just... walks... fast. She drug us up the 1,200-foot climb in an hour and a half flat and down in 10 minutes less. A great walk to a great place on a great day.

Two Wintery Hikes

February 1, 2009. Cascades Trail to the Falls; Nature Conservancy Trail to Barney's Wall and back. 8.0 miles.

This old favorite makes a great winter hike, when there's ice along Little Stoney Creek, and especially at the falls, where the spray and splash freezes in white-and-light patterns.

This was a warm day – temps into the low 50s, and the parking lot was close to full when we pulled in at about 1 p.m. And on the way up to the falls, we passed lots of people, not a few of whom had relatively young puppies along, prompting the new-puppy-momma Day Hiker to lament that we'd left four-month-old Cookie behind. Beyond the falls (where it begins to become clear that this is too long a walk for a pup), we were mostly alone, and we had the precipice of Barney's Wall to ourselves for most of lunch, until a pair of young men carrying ropes stopped by. They hadn't been on the main wall, they said, because they didn't have enough rope; but they had scaled a smaller wall back along the mountainside. If there's any hike other than this one that has more of a distinct difference in going up and going down, I sure don't know what it is. It is pretty purely all-down all the way, and the rocky spots and steps and stream-side wet spots of the lower two miles are all avoided as the route back takes the high road – a smooth, pleasant, forest-road-wide pathway where people walk shoulder to shoulder, hand-in-hand, looking down at the stream far below.



January 25, 2009. Appalachian Trail from Black Horse Gap on the Blue Ridge to Wilson Creek Shelter and back. 5.0 miles.

A short, easy walk on a cold day, on a relatively unremarkable piece of the trail, most attractive for its relatively gentle descent from the ridge line, making for pretty easy walk back as well. But the primary lure was the shelter and its fire pit, where we even found a little stash of cut wood covered with plastic. We left that for someone who'd earned its use with a longer walk and maybe an overnight stay, and instead found plenty of breakable, burnable dry wood for a good and warming lunchtime fire, and made our way back. The Day Hiker, who'd voted for small and brief due to not feeling 100 percent, was both grateful for the short walk and feeling just the slightest bit wanting-for-more.