You know you're getting old when...

... when you pay no attention to holiday traditions.

It never occurred to me to wear green today (St. Patrick's Day). Now I face the looming and frightening prospect of walking down the halls of my office knowing full well that middle-to-old age women might come flying out of darkened doorways with the intention of pinching the living hell out of me for my forgetful transgression.

This could be a bad day.

-Dave

Backpacking #2 - Jones Mountain Cabin

Jones Mountain Cabin is up in them thar hills above Grave's Mill, Virginia. The cabin and most of the trail leading to it are in the Shenandoah National Park and maintained by the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club.

There are two routes to the cabin. One is a 6.5 mile hike in from the Skyline Drive, the other is a 3.5 mile climb straight up from the valley floor (about 1200 feet elevation gain). Because we hate ourselves and continually wish to find ways to better punish our bodies we opted for the 3.5 mile walk of death.

Getting ready to hike at the trailhead.



From left: Me, Rob, Allison, Heather, Joe, Erin, Maddie, Angie, Pearson.

At first the trail pretty leisurely winds up and down beside a small creek - ahem, crik - which looks to be mostly fed by snow melt and rain. It'd probably be a cool place to come back to in the Spring and just rock hop until you find a nice deep pool to sit around and have a lunch or something.

The creek widened and deepened at some points with nice big rocks to scramble on.

And then out of nowhere the trail turned on us. It wont be apparent from the pictures but we were walking straight up towards the sky... literally. Apparently whoever built this trail didn't think that making a few switchbacks was a good idea. There were even a few spots where I caught myself about to reach out and put my hands on the ground in front of me as I kept trudging along.

About 1 minute into the hike we all stopped to shed a layer of clothing.

The further we hiked the more snow fell on us and the mistier it got. All this was great for setting the creepy mood that would later scare Erin to the point that she slept with an axe propped against the door.

Up up up. The trail in was about 97% incline.

For most of the hike in Heather was setting the pace and I think her goal was to see how many of us she could get to pass out behind her. I did notice that once you get into a stride its easier to just keep going than to stop and try to get started again.

The snow and cold temps actually made for pretty comfortable hiking.

Then finally, after 2 hours and 20 minutes the trail leveled off, sloped down, and there was the cabin.

How cool is that?

The dinner bell (can on a string) hanging at the front porch produced a loud and resounding blast that would surely burst ear drums for miles around... or not. At full tilt it could barely be heard over the pitter-patter of centipede feet on the forest floor; completely useless.

The mist was so thick at one point that you couldn't see 10 feet in front of you.

Shortly after we arrived at the cabin and set down our packs we all froze solid and realized it was cold outside. So we scavenged the surrounding woods for anything we could break, saw, hack, pummel or otherwise make into a shape that would fit in the fireplace or woodstove.

Joe pounding away with a blunt maul.

Allison and Heather working on a piece of wood. (giggity)

The write-up on the cabin says there is a spring nearby. Well we found a piece of PVC sticking out of the ground with water pouring out of it so whether or not that was the intended water source, we used it.

Joe brought a Katydyn water filter which worked great.

Inside the cabin was rustic and full of splinters. We couldn't get into the storage space underneath which is just as well because I'm fairly certain it was filled with the decomposing corpses of previous hikers who were taken by the axe-murdering, crazy face mountain man that Erin was so concerned about.

The wood stove kept us nice and toasty.

There were a couple of "bunks" downstairs and then a large loft area above for more sleeping space. This worked out great since Erin had Maddie with her and they had the downstairs to themselves each night... well, themselves and the axe-murdering, crazy face mountain man. It also turned out that at Jones Mountain Cabin heat actually doesn't rise and the loft area was always a good 10 degrees cooler than the main floor.

Looking down from the loft.

At night we created some very nice track lighting by hanging headlamps from nails in the rafters. This made it much easier to find things like: lost flasks of Jameson, bottles of vodka and some weird fru-fru shots in test tubes that Pearson and the girls seemed to enjoy.

The ghosts of Jones Mountain Cabin.

Our second day at the cabin was all rain, all the time. So we stayed inside and entertained ourselves as best we could with dice games, reading, chasing rats, listening to ipods, chasing more rats, poking the fire, eating dehydrated food, chasing rats again and every once in a while making a mad dash out to the privy. I'm just kidding, we didn't eat that much dehydrated food.

There were several journals left in the cabin so we could leave our mark.

Sunday morning we woke up to find that the wood supply was nearly exhausted. It turns out this was a good thing cause no one wants to stand around in a cold, dark cabin so we made good time getting packed up and headed back down the trail.

It continued to rain and mist as we hiked back down the sheer cliff which was the trail. With gravity's help we made it back in 1 hour and 45 minutes and to my surprise no one took a header the whole way down. We did have an incident with a trash bag, and Joe saved a family of helpless deer from a mud slide but other than that the hike back was uneventful. I'm just kidding, we didn't have any trouble with the trash.

Wet and hungry but having a good time.

Once we got back to the cars we took the most indirect route to the closest IHOP we could find and did our best to offend every patron in the place with our 3 day backpacker smell. Then it was another 1.5 hours and we were home sweet home again... ahhh hot showers.

This was an awesome trip. The snow and rain actually added to the ambiance for me. I think there was a consensus that the hike along the creek alone would be something worth doing again. Now it's time to plan the next trip!

-Dave

PS - We never did make contact with the axe-murdering, crazy face mountain man.

Catch Up

Just so I don't feel like I've left anything out, here's a quick run-down of recent past happenings, particularly those occurring in the outdoors.

The Cove - Fall 2008

Also the Cove - Fall 2008

Bill's annual attempt to make a hickory wood grill for his steak.

Birds can and will poo on you whenever possible. Because they are inherently evil.

That's how you make breakfast!

Big John catches a monster.

Shenandoah NP - On top of the Bear Fence rock scramble.

Solo Camping at a walk-in site in Big Meadows.

Potomac River - Great Falls - Billy Goat Trail

You can probably tell how big the fire was.

Climbing out of John's mom... long story.

Ireland 2007 - Awesome trip


Also Ireland - Nice picture

Beach camping sucks without coffee and donuts.

-Dave

Backpacking #1 - Prince William Forest

Caveat: This was a one night trip with only a couple miles of hiking involved. It also occurred less than 30 miles from my home near Washington, DC. So, it may be a stretch to call it "backpacking" but that's what I'm calling it and if you don't like it you can go suck on a dead dog's nose (name that movie).

Prince William Forest Park is located in close proximity to the nation's capital. For this reason I was a little skeptical about the supposed "backcountry" area (click picture to see detail). Overall the park covers 15,000 acres which is pretty decent. Certainly bigger than your mom's back yard - giggity.

As it turns out, the backcountry section of the park is separated from the rest entirely (see the Chopawamsic Area in the map above). You need a key to get through a gate letting you into the area and onto a dirt/gravel road. We noticed a sign that read something along the lines of, "All persons and vehicles entering this area are subject to search, humiliation, rape and torture by the United States Marine Corp." or something like that. Apparently the park shares a border with the Quantico Marine Base (oorah).

Some of us have been camping and hiking forever, some not so much, and one or two may have trouble distinguishing between a deer and a duckbill platypus.

The group (from left): Erin, Heather, Joe, Allison, Mike, Ben, Matt and myself.

The hiking was great, if not short. I believe the trail was something like a 2.2 mile loop. We took a detour or two to hike from the main trail back to a few of the designated backcountry camping sites. There was a bit of a mix up on sign painting day apparently because the sign supposedly leading us to site 4 plopped us out at site 5, sign 7 led to site 10, and so forth. At some point I was expecting to see sign x=(a+b)/c leading us to site 3.14159265.

Taking care of a few necessities on/before the hike.

After we let the rest of the group out the locked gate Heather, Joe and I hiked back in to the site we'd picked out (#4 or 5 or Pi or something). I believe it took us a grand total of 7 minutes to get the tents all set up. It took me significantly longer to blow up my air pad, after which I spent some time pretending to ponder the contents of my pack while really just leaning against a tree so I didn't pass out.

Many backcountry areas limit the number of tents allowed at each site.

After camp was set we made food. I think you can see my gourmet masterpiece sitting on a log with a plastic bag and spork over it. Mmmm, nothing like hot instant soup to warm your... but wait, what's this? Joe and Heather are chomping down on spaghetti that's probably better than anything I can cook at home with Martha Stewart giving me directions.

The Jetboil stove (center) can be limiting in some ways, but it can boil water in no time.

Joe used an MSR Pocket Rocket stove and a lightweight cookset to prepare this feast.

As it started getting dark we thought it might be a good idea to practice the art of hanging a bear bag. Except in our case there are no bears to worry about so we went for the "varmint bag" instead.

If we were in bear country the bag would need to be hung MUCH higher.

Turns out that when you can't have a camp fire, things get kind of dull right after the sun sets. We spent a little time watching Invader Zim (Gir rocks!) on Heather's phone until the battery ran out. Next I pretended to know something about astronomy by pointing at anything in the sky and claiming it was a constellation whose name I couldn't remember. Joe and I also spent a few minutes dorking around with the shutter speed on my camera and our headlamps. The effects were pretty cool.

Blue Collar War will shred your face. Check their Myspace.

Always ground your tents in case of lightning... I'm kidding... or maybe not.

Well we made it through the night, had a bite to eat in the morning and got the heck out of dodge, by way of Bob Evans. I'll definitely be going back to PW Forest Park. Mostly cause I'm lazy and it's right down the road but also because it really is pretty secluded, particularly considering the region where it's located.

Leave No Trace means you leave your camp looking the same as it did when you arrived, if not better.

-Dave

Something Different

This is me. Yep, my face actually looks like that.

This will be my blog I suppose. Mostly I will neglect it but sometimes I'll write exquisite and masterful literary works of genius... but mostly the former.

I suspect a lot of the content of this blog will focus on backpacking. I've always loved the outdoors but over the past year I've developed a wee bit of an obsession with backpacking. I'm just beginning so if I do this right, you'll get to see some sort of progression from poster boy wanna-be, to trail hiking, camp setting, fire building, wildlife communing nature freak! Or something along those lines. If in two years my picture looks less like the above, and more like Tom Hanks about half way through "Cast Away" then we'll know I've succeeded... and lost my job.

So enough blather, on with the show!

-Dave