I'm not sure where the summer went, but in no time, fall was upon us. With fall, came the next section of Appalachian Trail to be hiked. With mild temperatures in the forecast and the leaves at peak fall color, it was the perfect time to head to the Shenandoah Mountains.
The trip began early on Saturday morning, as I arrived at Kara's house at 3:00am. I quickly loaded my gear into her car, and we were off to pick up Misty and Chelsea. Once our foursome was complete, the trip officially began!
We arrived in Front Royal, Virginia, the northern finish of our trip, at 1:00pm, where we would be leaving Kara's car for the duration of the trip, and waited for our shuttle driver to arrive. Wayne, a local shuttling celebrity and pastor of a small church, and his wife Robin picked us up and we headed to Waynesboro, the southern end of the Shenandoah National Park. We were very excited to get back on the trail!
After a longer-than-expected drive, we arrived at our starting point. Wayne and Robin sent us off with well-wishes and requested that we get ahold of them when we were ready for our resupply at the halfway point. Because of the government shutdown, the park was open to visitors, but there were no entrance fees collected. We walked across a bridge, and we were in!
Once officially on the trail, we immediately started climbing up. Our packs were very full and heavy and the ascent was a slow one. We had nearly eight miles to hike before arriving at our campsite, and we'd need every ounce of daylight left.
As always, what goes up must come down, and there was a little relief when the trail made a quick and rocky dip down before sending us up even higher.
I had made some Rice Krispie Treats for this trip and strategically pulled one out on a particularly steep part of the climb.
The view at the top, though, was worth it. We had our first tiny glimpse of the beauty of the Shenandoahs.
And then the trail plunged us back down to McCormick Gap. We learned very quickly that the gaps were low points, generally crossing Skyline Drive, and then ascending steeply back up into higher elevations.
We crossed through a beautiful meadow, which was a welcomed change from the rockiness of most of the trail so far.
Then we were climbing again, summiting Little Calf Mountain and then Calf Mountain. On the way up, we got our first whiff of "bear scent", which had us a little on edge as the sun was setting.
We were now counting the distance we had to go and the amount of daylight we had left to get to camp. There was no messing around and we continued down the trail. Finally, the sign for Calf Mountain Shelter came into view. If we hurried, we could get our tents up before the last of the light left us.
When we got to camp, there were about six guys set up in the shelter, having dinner. There were four tent pads within sight of the shelter, but not very close together. And due to the rockiness, we couldn't set up our tents anywhere but the tent pads. Unfortunately, our Durston X-Mid 1 tents have a slightly larger footprint than the tent pad space, so we had to get creative, staking our tent corners outside of the pads. After a little finagling, all of our tents were up.
Kara and I headed to the shelter to visit with the guys and cook our dinner, while Misty and Chelsea had dinner in their tents. It was only 7:30pm, but it had been a long day, so we soon headed to our individual tents for some much-needed sleep. I think it took me about three whole minutes to pass out.
Total Daily Miles: 7.82
Total Calories Burned: 2,027
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