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Weekend Hikes - Week 83
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 83: After these 19 months of hiking, perhaps The Greatest Day Hiker Of Them All and I can count ourselves as experienced, prepared, knowledgeable hikers.
No so at all with one simple logistic of day hikers The Car Plant.
This was to be a pretty-cool-deal hiking day: Meet Adam, the senior at Tech, and drive south to plant one car at the northern end of the 13.3-mile stretch of AT between Va. 727 and Va. 615; then drive through beautiful Burkes Garden in the other vehicle, plant it and hike north back to the first one; then drive back…
You think, given that this was our first car plant, that three fairly level-headed, college-educated people can be forgiven for not realizing until just after lunch (not too far shy of the halfway mark) that the key to the walked-toward car was locked away back in the walked-away-from vehicle?
Nah, me neither.
Adam, gracious as well as pleased to have only about 5 1/2 miles to go to get back instead of the nearly 8 ahead of Mom and Dad (plus, really, the only reason to walk with the aging, trail-nut, wildflower-watching ’rents is to get the big free lunch), took off gleefully back south while we continued along the ridge of Garden Mountain, with repeated rues of our stupidity and occasional views down into Burkes Garden.
Adam did get to be a part of the best section of this hike – the climb to the ridge line and the walk, at a nearly constant 4,000 feet, along Garden Mountain in its role as part of the bowl lip for “God’s Thumbprint,” Burkes Garden. The northern end of this stretch takes you down off the mountain and then along Little Wolf Creek, with lots of easy rock hops and stretches of deeply shaded rhododendron tunnel.
(For anyone keeping score: Our last hike down this way – walking north to south – ended just more than a mile short of reaching Va. 615; we closed that little gap as our morning run on this day. Not too long a run – 2.5 total up and down – but a genuine thigh-burner going up those 10 switchbacks on the side of Brushy Mountain.)
Click here for the archive of Kurt's Hikes
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