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Weekend Hikes - Week 77
WEB EXCLUSIVE
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The weekend hikers: Gail and Kurt Rheinheimer stand on top of Rice Fields, a bald southwest of Blacksburg, Va. along the Appalachian Trail. They were photographed in May by a couple who were thru-hiking the AT with their two children. |
Week 77: The Old Hotel/AT loop in the Mount Pleasant Special Management Area just east of Buena Vista is a guilty pleasure. It’s only 5.7 miles in length (we never feel we’ve earned our lunch), and it offers other treats, including the beautiful bald on Cold Mountain, a great variety of terrain, a pretty stream near Cow Camp Gap Shelter and the famed blackberry patch, which is what had us headed back here on the last day of July – to try to beat the crowds that descend – well, you really have to ascend – on the crop, which is just over a mile into the hike if you start with the Old Hotel Trail and save the AT and Cold Mountain for toward the end (as of course you should).
Alas, the blackberry fields had nothing to offer for the containers we’d carried along, nor for the 21-year-old, who’d been convinced to come along at least in part because of the promised berry bounty. An old-timer (heck, he was my age) reached the patch just as we paused to lament, and he looked around only briefly before offering his perspective:
“Well, they’re a lot like us, I guess – get to a certain age they just don’t bear anymore.” He laughed lightly. “You need a good fire or to just cut ’em all down and let ’em start over again.”
He turned back, saying he had picked about a quart down along Irish Creek, and we headed on toward lunch and then the bald. The table at Cow Camp Gap Shelter is an oversized one, and that fact, along with the bevy of campsites around it give ample proof of the popularity of the section. The rise to the AT and then the fruits of the rest of the climb along the AT to the top of Cold Mountain (just above 4,000 feet) go a long way toward explaining that popularity.
The views to the east and west from the mile-long walk in open field are stunning, the breeze is distinctly cool and on this end-of-July day, The Greatest Day Hiker Of Them All had the proverbial field day quizzing Adam and me on the names of wildflowers.
“I can’t believe,” Gail allowed as she marveled at the color and variety, “that last year when we came through here, I hardly noticed them, much less knew their names.”
She knows ’em now; just ask her.
–Kurt Rheinheimer, Editor in Chief
Click here for the archive of Kurt's Hikes
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