Where have you been all my life, Old Rag? How is it that I hadn’t hiked this mountain until yesterday? I had certainly heard of it, but had filed it away as a hike that sounded nice, but whatever.
Well, it’s probably the most beautiful and fun hike I’ve ever done on the east coast. I can even say it ranks up there with Zion and Bryce Canyon. What endears it to me even more is that it’s home, having grown up driving down Skyline Drive with my dad and sisters on the occasional fall Sunday while my mother got a few hours to herself, and then spending four school years and two summers in Harrisonburg, Virginia, right in the heart of the Shenandoah Valley.
The trail begins with a winding hike through the forest, part of which runs alongside a babbling brook. Every now and then, we came to an overlook, so we could clearly see the progress we were making as we began to look down upon treetops and gliding hawks.
Just as the kids seemed to be running out of steam, a grand new adventure began: we had reached the rock scramble portion of our hike. We shimmied through crevasses between colossal boulders, scampered over rock faces, and used a rope to heave ourselves up the side of a steep rock wall. When we finally reached the 3,284 foot summit, we were in awe of the beauty that surrounded us. We gazed out across the Shenandoah Valley, as the breeze blew gently across the exposed rock summit and giant puffy clouds hung in the sky.
After a long photo session of selfies, groups pics, and amateur panoramas, we began our descent, winding down a different set of switchbacks. I was acutely aware of and impressed by the occasional set of steps created by large granite rocks placed just so. How many people did it take to position them? Did they cut them? How far did they have to carry them? Surely, a front-end loader was not an option way up there. It had to have involved only ropes, chains, hand tools, and human sweat and tears.
As we finally dropped below the base of the valley’s treeline, we emerged on the fire road. Though very pretty in the surrounding forest, it seems to go on forever when you’ve hiked nearly seven miles already. The three 13-year-old girls, though not above the occasional complaint about the never-ending road, didn’t run out of topics of conversation. The lone boy, the seven-year-old brother of one of the teens, whose feelings were hurt by being shooed away by big sis every time he lingered too long or too close, informed us they were talking about TV shows and that once they exhausted that topic, they would move on to the subject of facial products. He was not wrong.
The fire road did, indeed, come to an end after a couple miles (I can’t be precise because my watch had died), but we still had one last brief ascent up to the main trail, on which we would trek for the final mile back to the parking lot.
Boy, were our dogs barking by the end, but it was well worth it. I would love to return when the leaves change, but I’m not sure how to avoid the crowds. Even on a late-summer Tuesday morning, we had to put our masks up dozens of times to pass and yield to groups. All I know is that I’m already longing to be back on the mountain.
My Corner of the Village 