New Trail: Dripping Rock (BRP) to Rockfish Gap

Date: June 21, 2011 (my first retirement hike)

Where: near Waynesboro, VA and Humpback Rocks

Weather: Mostly sunny, 60s to start, breezy, hot in the afternoon

Length: 14.4 m

Elevation change: Dripping Rock - 2940,  Humpback Mtn. - 3900, Rockfish Gap - 1900

Duration: 6.5 h including 0.5 h stop for lunch

Gear Test: REI Ventura 30 backpack, Jet Boil Stove, Salomon XA Comp 5 Trail Runners.

This is not Hank, but Bill from NY. Dropped my truck at a bombed-out filling station at Afton, walked up to the parkway and waited about 20 minutes for Bill to show. His brother just had open-heart surgery at UVA and he was taking a spin south on the parkway. Took me all the way to Dripping Rock. Angels abound! On the trail about 8:30am.

Cool start to the day but heat forecast. This is a fairly boring part of the trail with regard to views and other points of interest. Hiked under cover most of the time with filtered sunlight. Good mixture of up and down. I loaded up my smaller backpack with gear I plan to take on a longer hike as part of my training. Pack weight around 15# with stove, water filtration, food, light, 2.5 liter hydration system and an extra liter of water. I may be able to use it for an overnight trek with some ingenious packing and strapping.  Pack was comfortable, balanced, and easy to load and unload.

I plan to use my old external frame pack (somewhat passé in light of internal frame design)  for longer overnights loaded at or below 30# with the addition of tent, sleeping pad and bag and more food. It suits me.

Encountered one opportunity for views looking from east side of ridge back toward Wintergreen. Otherwise, the view was very local. I was accompanied by squirrels, chipmunks, and some other small rodent like species, as well as birds, and all varieties of flying and crawling insects. Note to self: add insect repellant to gear list. A variety of scat presented itself and I need some scat identification study to see who has been on the trail before me. Prolific and prodigious ferns.

Around 8 miles into the trip I could tell I was past Humpback Rocks since I had passed the side trail to the parking lot (access for northbound hikers), so I chose a small rock outcropping with no views for lunch. Chili Mac by Mountain House from REI. Not bad and the smaller portion (4.0 oz) was plenty. Jet Boil had water roiling in under 2 minutes. 

Up until this point I had no human contact, but I heard some gravel noise and a beckoning voice so I turned around to see a rather large hiker, basically, block out the sun and the entire mountain side. He ended up being a big teddy bear, but he could stop a bar fight before it started by just standing up. We chatted for a bit and I asked him if he were on a short or long hike. He responded: O kinda short; I'm hiking from Damascus to Harper's Ferry. Short hike? Heck, that's all of the trail in VA which is about 1/4th of the whole AT. No  puddin' hike in my book.

After that encounter I made my way over to Afton Mtn. and along the way came upon a few day hikers and some trail maintainers working on the Paul C. Wolfe Shelter. Humpback Rocks were not on my intinerary for today. I took a right at the second trail to the parking lot (access for southbound hikers) and until I came up from the east side and below the last ridge to the parkway there was not much to see. My chariot was waiting. The trail runners surpassed expectations: cool feel, lightweight, good traction, NO BLISTERS like last time with my leather Vasques. 

What's next? Maybe next week: a three-day, two-nighter north of Rockfish Gap in the SNP from Swift Run Gap back to Afton Mtn. Forty-four point eight miles with all my long distance, ultralight gear, but only if the temperature is conducive. When I came out from under cover along the parkway on Tuesday in full sun, Whew! Must have been well over 90 degrees.