Backpacking #5 - St. Mary's Wilderness

Not again...

...

...

I feel like I'm just repeating myself. Can we get three solid, good days of weather please? Mother Nature are you listening?!?!?! It's interesting how every time we want to go camping (backpacking or car camping) some kind of weather issue arises and usually at the last minute. It's either gale force winds, driving ice and snow, buckets of rain or unexplained heat waves. This time we were planning on 3 days and 2 nights in St. Mary's Wilderness. None of us had been there before so we weren't sure what to expect... except rain. The forecast was showing at least a 50% chance of thunderstorms for 2 out of our 3 days. Intrepid outdoorsmen (and women, sorry Heather) that we are, we decided to go for it anyway and hope for the best.

We got to the trailhead and it was gorgeous out. Surprisingly there were quite a few other cars in the parking lot which made me nervous that we'd be tripping over dirty hippies all along the way. No offense to the dirty hippies that are probably not reading this right now... do dirty hippies even have internet?... and why are they always dirty?... Ok, back to what I was saying... Wait, hold on... why do I keep typing "..." today? I'm going ellipsis crazy! Kids, this is what happens when you don't get enough sleep and you start guzzling caffeine to stay awake.

Ok seriously. As you can see from the pictures below we were obviously hiking on the forest moon of Endor; which has been a backpackers mecca ever since it was made popular by the hit movie Star Wars: Return of the Jedi. If you look closely you can see two Ewoks hiding in the ferns behind Joe and Heather.

Right after I took this picture we were attacked by little furry guys with spears.

The trails in St. Mary's were easy enough to follow, if not exactly well maintained. After squatting and duck waddling under the 12th tree that had fallen across the path I started utilizing Joe's hang and swing method which worked great.

After about 3.5 miles we found a large cleared area with a bunch of fire rings and plenty of space for a whole commune of dirty hippies to inhabit with a tent city, drum circles and the obligatory jam band. Also, Heather and Joe apparently began channeling spirits when we sat down to relax and luckily I had the wherewithal to document said channeling.

Heather channeling Paris Hilton, a pirate and the Marlboro Man all at once.

I have no idea what was going on here, but it scared me.

Just outside the "field of freaky spirits" we found a cool little camp site. The greatest feature of this spot was a nice large patch of mossy ground, big enough to handle both our tents. Also, a lot of old rusted mining equipment was strewn about; a deteriorating reminder of the hard labor that once went into making a life out of the Appalachian Mountains... Damn you ellipsis!

I never heard banjo music but if I had I would have squealed like a piggy and run.

There was plenty of Mountain Laurel and Rhododendron in bloom as well as a few other flowers I'm not familiar with. I figured my mom would like these pictures - hey mom!

After we set up camp we immediately left all our gear in plain sight of the trail where undoubtedly droves of dirty hippies would later be walking by. As we didn't have anything tie-died or made out of hemp laying around I felt our stuff would be reasonably safe.

Right here the river and trail sort of merged for a bit.

The trail just kept getting better and better as we walked. The river widened and deepened, swimming holes presented themselves around every turn and we got to get our feet wet quite a few times!

Wait wait, is that Vanna White behind Joe?

Heather got right in, and immediately right out of this pool.

We found these "rock-cliners" near the trail.

St. Mary's falls was awesome.

It had to be at least 10 feet deep right there.

After frolicking around the waterfall for a while we headed back up the trail, over the river and through the woods... all the way to grandmother's house, or back to our camp site anyway. I must say our dinners are getting better and better. Heather and Joe had chicken breast with pasta and green beans and I had cranberry chicken with rice and veggies. Heather actually ate 8.67 pounds of food that night and then suffered a tremendous food coma. She sat by the fire with a thin string of drool hanging from her chin for about an hour. No no no, that's not true... entirely.

Well we all slept well and woke up in the mor... - No, actually Heather and Joe slept well and I learned why it's a bad idea to chug a cup of coffee right before bed. Who knew that was a bad idea? Anyway, upon waking up Heather was able to pull up the weather forecast and it didn't look good. Thunderstorms were definitely on their way and we didn't like the idea of being stuck in a downpour for the second weekend in a row. So we decided to go with plan B - my parent's mountain house about an hour away. By the time we ate breakfast, waited for Joe to leave his dinner in a hole by a tree and hiked back out to the trailhead it had started to drizzle. Perfect timing! We even chuckled that we'd made the right decision to just get out of there while all the dirty hippies were going to finally get that shower they've needed for so long.

Clouds sitting low in the Blue Ridge mountains.

The now-traditional after shot.

Except it didn't really work out like that. As we drove up I-81 the drizzle slowed and then stopped, the clouds began to thin and it became a great day for hiking... one might even say perfect. Blast it all!!! I'm going to have words with the weatherman. Regardless, we had a good time in Harrisonburg and the weekend was still great, if not a bit altered from the original plan.

Our camp site for the second night of our trip.

St. Mary's is an awesome place to backpack. The other backpacker's we came across were really friendly (whadup Dozer!) and the terrain was great. There were plenty of places to set up camp and in the sweltering heat of summer there are a plethora of refreshing swimming holes to dip in.

For those keeping track, I used 14 ellipsis's in this blog entry. I think that's a record...

Make that 15.

The Cove

So every year my rowdy group of friends heads out to Gore, VA to do some serious car camping at the Cove. The sites are well separated from each other and this allows us to be our ridiculous, noisy, pyromaniac selves without disturbing too many people. In addition, since it's car camping you can bring everything you want. Take food for example. I believe on this trip we had two full sides of beef, one pig, two thousand hot dogs, one metric ton of various types of chips, 26.4 dozen eggs and a can of Spam. Everything was eaten except the Spam. From the look of it we had enough beer and liquor to create a booze lake if we'd wanted.

This year it rained off and on. As it got worse and worse we constructed a bit of a tarp city which really did a good job of keeping us dry. I thought it'd be fun to have some mud wrestling but no one else was up for it.

Ahhh... sitting 'round the fire...

I think Maddie was trying to figure out why humans would do this on purpose.

Yup, we had a Shoe-B-Q.

Hanging out under the tarp city.

Rain can't stop us!

Not sure if Matt and Erin are having fun or thinking about hopping in the car and taking off.

Kinda dark but you can see the system of tarps we used to stay dry.

Small by historical Cove fire standards, but still warm.

Well, one more Cove trip down and 764 animals slaughtered to feed us. We'd be back on Labor day as usual except some of us will be backpacking amongst the grizzly bears at 10K feet in the wilderness of Montana... How do you like that for a bit of allusion?