Some years ago, Anne decided that we should walk all of the Appalachian Trail. This scheme developed from a less ambitious one of mine that our young family should complete the some 200-mile section of this same trail across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. In Pennsylvania the trail passes from Pen Mar Park with its fabulous view of the Cumberland Valley atop South Mountain at the Maryland border to the grand Delaware Water Gap where the Delaware River cuts through Kittatiny Mountain on its own trek to the sea.  I thought traveling some distance by shanks mare would be a great experience for our two young children. These early walks in the 1980's were short day-hikes. In time our children lost interest and never finished the Pennsylvania section of the A.T., but as they wandered off we found more time to walk and become more enchanted by this national scenic trail.

Twenty years later we are still walking it. We have day-hiked and backpacked short and long sections over the years. Giving up permanent employment, buying an RV, and selling our house, gave us more opportunity for this endeavor. Last fall we spent almost three months in New England and finished missing pieces there. This year only 500 miles of the A.T. remained un-walked by us in Virginia south of Front Royal and in Tennessee. Early this year we were in Florida, Carolina, the Midwest, and New York far from unfinished sections of the A.T. We arrived in September back at our little log house on South Mountain in Pennsylvania.

Activities there kept our attention during that month, but the lady suggested we attempt at least one return to the trail this year. I agreed and looked into walking the one hundred mile trail section in Shenandoah National Park during peak leaf season in the middle of October. October is a great time to hike in Virginia. Cooler temperatures and leaf color add sparkle to the trail. First, I thought we would take the motorhome and break the walk down into two five-day backpacking hikes. But, studying the park map, I realized that the trail closely follows the the scenic Skyline Drive through the park, and that campgrounds along the way are about two walking days apart. The idea came that we could shuttle our motorhome and car to easily day-hike the entire length of the trail in the park. This seemed a great idea.

Backpacking is fun, but it is always an adventure, and more so in October when the weather is changeable. Day hiking is called slack-packing by distance hikers because one need not carry the extra weight required for camping on the trail. Day hiking, being easier, would allow us 60-ish folks to easily make the longer walks required. When we backpack, we try to limit our walks to 10 to 12 miles each day. As Appalachian Trail section hikers, we have made all kinds of hikes.  We have backpacked two hundred-miles sections and numerous shorter sections.  We have also made plenty of day hikes.  These require special arrangements to avoid having to walk back to the car. When we were working, we would often make day-hikes of nearby trail sections with friends.  Each couple would bring their car and we would park one at the end of the walk and drive together to the starting point.  Then we would hike the trail to the other car. 

At other times we have paid to have our car driven to our end point.  We have made “bike-hikes” where we would park our car at the end of the section and bicycle on roads to another trail crossing where we would start the hike back to our car.  On day-hikes it is always a challenge to avoid the seemingly silly walking the trail from point A to B and then back again to point A to return to the car.

To make day hiking possible at Shenandoah, it would be necessary to camp at three of the park’s four campgrounds during the ten-day expedition.  Realizing that the campgrounds would be busy at the height of leaf season, we attempted to make reservations.  We planned to start on Sunday, October 11 and easily obtained reservations for three nights at Mathews Arm Campground in the Northern District of the park. 

Then we attempted to reserve a site at Big Meadows Campground in the Central District for Wednesday through Friday nights.  “No can do,” said the reservation agent who also could not give us a site during that weekend at the Loft Mountain Campground in the South District.  We took reservations through Thursday night knowing that many sites are not reservable.  We hoped we could obtain a non-reservable site early on Friday morning.  The inability to move during the weekend would, however, complicate our walking plans. 

As we set out, the ten-day forecast indicated great weather for a hike.  We realized that the forecast would also encourage many campers to go to the park on the critical weekend. 

The drive from our home to Shenandoah Park is only a few hours and we planned to make a hike on the first day out.  Arriving near Front Royal, Virginia at mid-morning in warm sunshine, we pulled our Winnebago Minnie up to the A.T. crossing of U.S. Highway 522.  We unhooked and parked our Ford Focus dinghy, and continued in the motorhome into the park.  There was a twenty-minute queue at the entrance station this Sunday morning as we began our drive up the Skyline Drive.  We parked the RV at Compton Gap where the A.T. first reaches the park road from the north.  We ate our lunch and prepared for our first day’s hike.

All of our gear was ready, binoculars, hiking poles, canteen, snacks, and ponchos.  Many families and couples were making short walks on the trail from the road crossing.  We started our planned century hike with an easy 5.6-mile walk out of the park and off the mountain.  Near the park boundary we met and greeted a couple of south-bound (so-bo) “through-hikers” who had just reached the top of the ridge.  Their names were Anya and Josh and their trail names were Mt. Yogi and Smokin Loon.  They had started their walk at Mt. Katahdin in Maine and planned to reach Springer Mountain, Georgia late this fall. 

Fall colors were flashing in the sunshine and flocks of small migrant birds darted about the trail.  Observing nature was our first excuse for the game of hiking the trail, and we were happy to see our first Gray-cheeked Thrush of the year on this day.  In three hours we had walked to our car and were driving back to the park.  Now, in late afternoon, the wait at the gate was only ten minutes.  We parked our Focus at Thornton Gap and drove our RV from there to Mathew’s Arm Campground.

The traditional National Park Service campgrounds at Shenandoah have it all.  All being location, location, and location.  The sites are nice, but there are no hookups.  We saw no problem with nine nights of dry camping.  The batteries were charged and both the propane and gasoline tanks were moderately full.  Last winter we had replaced most of our incandescent bulbs with LED’s, and we doubted there would be much use for the generator.  Assumptions are often wrong.

Monday morning was cloudy and a cool 42 degrees F.  We began a 12.1-mile hike at 7:50 a.m.  The walk went well and we met another so-bo who called himself “Straight Jacket.”  He said he was walking about 25 miles a day.  Isn’t youth wonderful?  We encountered a handsome juvenile Red-shouldered Hawk along the trail that day, and reached our dinghy at 2:00 p.m. and returned to camp.

On Tuesday we had scheduled our longest hike of the trip, a 16.6-mile walk from Jewell Hollow Overlook to Mathews Arm Campground.  During our breakfast on that day we listened to the forecast on the weather radio.  It had changed.  Tuesday and Wednesday would be cloudy, Thursday rainy, and the weekend cold with possible snow.  We realized that the weather might change our plans.  Still, hikers deal with the weather they are given. 

We drove our dinghy south on the Skyline Drive to the overlook and began our third walk.  The trail was quiet and the leaf color peaking.  We encountered Straightjacket again, a group of section hikers, and a jogger on the trail.  Near the end of the day we met a young man wearing what looked like a wet suit and carrying a wood saw.  He reported seeing a bear not much earlier.   On this day we also saw a Sharp-shinned Hawk dart through the trees and a Ruffed Grouse flush from the trail.  A Red-tailed Hawk once soared over the slopes and gave its plaintiff keerrr call.  The trail and the shadows had became long by the time we reached camp.   We were happy and very tired when a side trail into Mathews Arm Campground came into view.  We slept well that night. 

Wednesday was time to move the RV.  We quickly broke camp, drove past our dingy, and arrived at the large Big Meadows Campground at about eight o’clock that morning.  Our reserved space was empty, so we checked in and set up our rig before beginning our hike.  This day’s walk from Big Meadows to Jewell Hollow was only 12.4 miles, a piece of cake.  The sky was overcast, but no rain came on this day.  Again the trail was quiet.  We met several day hikers on the Stony Man Trail including a young German family, a so-bo, Phil (Hungry Creepster), and a backpacking section hiker from Frederick, MD.    We warned the distance hikers of the ominous weather forecast.  Northern Ravens and Blackpoll Warblers were the best birds we saw on this day.  We arrived at our dinghy at 4:20 p.m. and drove back to the campground.  Dinner tasted especially good after another day of walking, but the weather forecast for Thursday had become worse.  A cyclone was coming with wind and rain all day. 

We debated our course of action.  Our plan was to move the rig on Friday to get a campsite early and take that day off from hiking, but we would have to skip a section of the trail and make it up on the last day.  Listening to the forecast of cold and possible snow for the weekend, we decided that the campgrounds would not fill.  We decided to take a hiking holiday on Thursday and camp at Big Meadows through Friday night.  Then on Saturday, we would have to move because someone had reserved the space we were in.  Other non-reservable spaces would be available, we hoped. 

On Thursday morning we awoke to the storm.  Wind shook and rain rattled the rig.  Our generator was on so that we could enjoy the comfort of the furnace.  After breakfast, we turned everything off , got into the car, and drove out of the park.  We stopped at the camp office and chatted with a comely ranger who told us that our site was no longer reserved for Friday night.  We told her we would stay through that night.  Then we went to the City of Harrisonburg, shopped, watched a movie, The Informant, and stopped at the library for Internet access.  In the evening we returned to a very cold and soggy campground.

Our hike on Friday required a drive in the dinghy south on the Skyline Drive to the next starting point, a parking area near the Pocosin Cabin.  Our daily pattern was to drive south and hike north.  In a sense we started our hike across the park on the last day of our expedition when we walked into the south end of Shenandoah National Park from Rockfish Gap.  We hiked out the north end of the park on our first day when we walked down the mountain to near Front Royal.  Each day we hiked north on the next section south.  This pattern worked very well for shuttling our vehicles – no wasted mileage – but it made our hike difficult to describe to people we met.  The pattern gave us an opportunity to meet the same southbound backpackers for several days in a row.  We enjoyed these repeat encounters with new trail friends.

The Friday walk was dismal.  With the weather becoming colder, we had brought our rain suits and not ponchos on this day.  We walked through fog passing the Lewis Mountain Campground.  Tent campers there waved to us through the gloom.  We met five day-hikers from Virginia and a young man, Terry, from Frederick, Maryland who was practicing for a planned through-hike next year.  We walked with him into the restaurant at Big Meadows where we enjoyed the hiker special, a blackberry milkshake.  Despite the weather, an Eastern Bluebird sang at the edge of the field.  The temperature was only 43 degrees when we arrived at the camper at four p.m.

On Saturday morning we broke camp early to get a campsite at Loft Mountain Campground on this peak leaf season weekend.  Our schedule this day was complicated.  We drove the camper to near the Pocosin Cabin lot where we had started the preceding day’s hike, but knowing that the motorhome would not fit there, we parked it at the nearby The Oaks Overlook.  We walked a few tenths of a mile from there to our car and then drove that on to the Loft Mountain Campground.  There we found more campers than we thought given the weather forecast, but we had no trouble finding a non-reservable site and took it for three nights. 

Our campsite secured, we drove back north to the Smith Roach Gap trail crossing.  We parked the car there and at 10:40 a.m. began a “short” 7.6-mile hike to the Pocosin Cabin.  On this day’s walk we met another so-bo “G-Fog” from Atlanta.  This young man was hiking alone.  He reported that he had started with a partner who quit the first day.  Mt. Katahdin of Maine convinced the partner that he was not a hiker.  We told G-Fog that having walked up Katahdin, we understood how his partner might have become discouraged.   We also met a Japanese American couple and a section backpacker on this day.  In the afternoon a Barred Owl flew to within thirty feet and watched us as we watched it.  Fog froze in the trees and the wind broke ice free to fall smartly on us.  We anticipated a cold night coming.  North of Hightop Mountain we found a couple of American Chestnut trees in fruit.  We hoped that these obviously disease resistant trees would succeed in propagating and, perhaps, give rise to offspring that will beat the fungal scourge that has in the past century turned the chestnut from a giant tree into a shrub. 

Reaching Pocosin Cabin we had to walk a bit farther to The Oaks Overlook and our camper.  At 4:25 p.m. we got in, turned on the heat, and drove to Loft Mountain.  We were surprised to find it crowded, but not quite full.  We were impressed to see so many tent campers as well as RV’ers on the mountain. 

On Sunday we always make a big breakfast.  After walking some 65 miles, we dreamed pleasantly of that breakfast.  Since it was so cold, we inserted our Alaska aluminum insulation sheets over the windows and foam pads under the skylights.  These precautions blinded us to the weather, but still, the morning seemed strange.  I was pushed out of bed to turn on the heat and check out the day.  The thermostat indicated the house was 42 degrees.  It took me a minute to remove a window cover and wipe away the condensation.  Anne asked how it looked out there.  I answered, “Like Dr. Zhivago!”

Indeed, there was a good inch of snow on the ground, and the trees were full of ice in spite of a gusty wind.  Tenters were already trying to break camp.  The outdoor thermometer indicated 32 degrees.  We enjoyed our customary Sunday breakfast and considered our hike.  We had not brought winter gear, but we decided we had enough layers to be comfortable under these conditions.  My layers were T-shirt, long-sleeved undershirt, long-sleeved shirt, fleece vest, light jacket, and rain jacket.  Seemed barely enough, but with a neck collar and thinsulate cap, I was toasty on the trail.

At 8:55 a.m. we walked out of the campground as others were driving out.  The snow was lovely, but the sky was ominous.  Many shrubs, especially spicebush still bearing leaves, were loaded with snow and arching across the trail.  A few taps with the hiking pole caused some to gently rise and open the path.  Still, the walk was slow and difficult.  We stayed warm, but our feet were wet by the end of the day.  The hike was 12.8 miles. 

We met T-Fog about mid-day.  His spirits were good, but he said it was a cold night at the shelter.  He told us we would meet a section hiker “West” at the shelter.  West was taking the day off.  We stopped there for lunch and worried about these backpackers.  The forecast was for temperatures in the low twenties this night.  We met no one else on the trail on this day, but saw three young runners starting along the trail at the end of the hike.  Our car was largely free of snow, but littered with leaves and twigs.  We cleaned it and drove back to Loft Mountain, which was still a world of ice.  A very few RV’s and no tents remained.

Monday morning was cold.  Very cold.  Inside 38 and outside 26 degrees.  Still, the sky was clear and the sun was rising brightly.  We were tickled pink to have packed extra hiking boots.  Our wet boots would stay at Loft Mountain and our dry boots would hike with us.  We thought of the back-packers who did not have this option.  We were even able to warm up our dinghy before driving to the next starting point on the trail.

 We began walking at 9:15 a.m  at Wildcat Ridge.  The temperature was already 30 degrees, but there the trees were still full of ice.   It pelted us for a short time.  Still, the morning was beautiful.  We were pleasantly surprised to encounter so-bo’s  Anya and Josh whom we had first met on the first day of our hike.  We thought we had seen them for the last time days earlier.  They reported being chased off the mountain by the weather and had considered giving up their hike.  We congratulated them on continuing and wished them well.  We promised them good weather in the coming days.

The trail teased us with a single pinxter-flower blooming in the autumn sunshine.     On the mountain tops most of the leaves were now gone from the trees, but the slopes below still blazed orange.  We met T-Fog at 11:30.  He was already stripped down to short pants and sleeves.  In the afternoon a small crowd of heavily dressed day-hikers were walking about Black Rock and enjoying its fabulous 360-degree vista.  Curiously, there was gross evidence of bears feasting on the abundant pokeweed berries there.  These fruit are highly toxic to people and seemed to be causing diarrhea in the bears.  Every fifteen meters or so we had to tread carefully over another flat circle of purple mush. 

This day’s hike was 14.0 miles.  We arrived at the quiet campground at 4:10 p.m. and waved to a ranger in a pick-up making his last rounds.  The temperature was now 50 degrees and the camper seemed almost warm inside.  Still, we turned on the generator and the heat.  Our dinner beer tasted especially good.  In spite of the difficult weather, we were one day short of completing our planned walk across the park.  The forecast for Tuesday was nearly perfect.  Sunny with a low of 40 and a high of 65 degrees.

That morning was brisk, but still seemed warm and wonderful to us.  We broke camp and took the camper out the south gate of the park nine days after coming through the north gate.  We parked at a lot on the Blue Ridge Parkway over I-64 at Rockfish Gap.  Stepping out of the motorhome, we were accosted by a man who asked if we knew where was the Appalachian Trail.  I pointed to a white blaze on the pavement and told him he was standing on it.  He thanked us and returned to gather his group for a short walk. 

Already it was 48 degrees.  This final walk would include a vigorous 13.4 miles of distance and almost three thousand feet of ascent.  The trail followed the park road to the entrance sign and then cut into the woods and up the ridge.  Much of the forest in the southern end of the park is young and piney.  We saw four species, Virginia, Pitch, Short-leaf, and the wonderfully spiny-coned Table Mountain Pine on our walk that day.  We were blessed to see a pair of Winter Wrens foraging close by a grand moss-covered log.  These tiny mouse-like birds are usually hard to see, scrambling away under cover from us giants.  This pair initially went into hiding, but responded to our patience by coming out to give us treasured views. 

Surprisingly, we met no one on the trail this last day.  Our so-bo’s had gotten ahead of us and were already south of the park.  We saw a middle-aged couple walking a dog at the Beagle Gap road crossing, but we were alone on the trail.  We consciously savored the last mile of walking through a mature woodland on Wildcat Ridge.  The name reminded me of a bobcat I had seen bound off the trail earlier on the hike.   

We reached our RV at 3:25 p.m.  The temperature was 65 degrees.  The ride out of the park was bittersweet.  We were ready to go home but hated leaving now that the weather had so much improved.  We hooked up the dinghy at Rockfish Gap and turned onto I-64 to connect with I-81.  We had walked 106.1 miles in nine days during this ten-day Virginia expedition.  Sixteen hundred miles down, four hundred to go.