Today, my partner and I began our latest thru-hike, the 71-mile long Massanutten Trail in Virginia.
Journey to the Trail
With a roughly two hour drive to Massanutten Mountain, CareFree and I opted to leave home around 7 am. Unfortunately, we (by which I mean, I) were a little slower than we’d have liked, and we didn’t leave until 7:15. That wouldn’t have been a problem, except for morning rush-hour traffic to get around the Washington DC beltway. I knew traffic would be bad, though thanks to working from home, it’d been a good ten years since I had a regular morning commute, and I’d forgotten just how bad the morning traffic was. This added roughly an hour to our drive time to Massanutten.
We stopped for gas, and then after a detour in Luray, VA for sandwiches for lunch, we drove over Massanutten’s western ridge near the Kennedy Peak trailhead, and descended into Fort Valley. Stoping at the Stephens Trail parking lot, about three and a half hours after we left home, we found a tree on the hill just below the parking lot, tied a gallon of water to its trunk, and covered it with leaves. One cache down, three to go.
Our second cache, located at a campsite near Crisman Hollow Road, towards the southernmost extent of the trail, took more than half an hour to get to, as it involved a long drive down a dirt road. Behind the campsite, we located a space inside a small ring of trees, and dropped our two bear canisters and another gallon of water, and again secured them with rope. We’d brought the shovel largely for this cache since it had food, but it was clear it was entirely unnecessary.
To get to our third cache location at Moreland Gap Road, we exited the mountains and drove up a highway outside the western side of the ridge, re-entering the mountain through a pass and driving down another gravel road. Like with our first two caches, we dropped two gallons of water in the woods just off the trail, tied to a tree and covered with leaves. Our fourth cache, at Edinburg Gap proceeded similarly, though there, we saw someone else’s cache of water behind a tree on the other side of the trail.
Finally, after a long, windy drive up Fort Valley’s central road, we made it to the Signal Knob trailhead just after 1 pm, five hours after we left home this morning. I wished we’d left at least half an hour earlier to get ahead of more of the traffic, since our late arrival cut into our “short” day planned to Little Crease Shelter, but, there wasn’t much we could do about that now. We could have been a few minutes faster dropping the caches if we’d pre-written the notes we taped to the water and bear cans, but, all things considered, we were still reasonably efficient given this was the first time we’d cached anything on any trail.
We did note, especially on the western side of the mountains, that there seemed to be quite some haze in the air. Hopefully it’ll clear out at some point and we won’t have obscured views.
After eating our sandwiches, we left the parking lot around 1:30, beginning our clockwise loop on the trail.
The Massanutten Trail
About fifteen minutes after we started, the Tuscarora Trail joined the Massanutten, coming in from the west. The Tuscarora will follow the Massanutten Trail the rest of the day, and into tomorrow morning after we climb up the ridge east of Little Crease Shelter. Shortly after that, we entered the Elizabeth Furnace Recreational Area, passing by a large campground and the ruins of the Elizabeth Furnace, which used to make pig iron in the 1800s.
After passing the furnace, the trail began our main climb of the day, heading up towards Shawl Gap and the northwestern ridge. A light drizzle fell, though thankfully not for too long.
For most of the climb up to the ridge, and then along the ridge south for a while past Shawl Gap, we passed through a relatively recent burn area, most likely a prescribed burn given the trail tread itself looked unscathed. A smoky scent hung in the air until we got up to the ridge and the breeze could carry it off. Along the way, we were treated to some very impressive stonework and staircases by the trail maintainers.
On the ridge, we got nice views, both out to the Shenandoah Valley and towards Shenandoah National Park, and also in towards Fort Valley. There were still leaves on some trees, but prior wind had cleared much of it out, leaving us with more of a view than we’d have had in summer.
On the ridge, the trail was a bit rugged, and lots of leaf litter made it hard to see the trail tread, slowing us somewhat. Fortunately, there were several campsites, and about ten minutes before sunset, we stopped at one of them, at the trail’s intersection with the Sherman Gap Trail. We’d planned for another 3.5 miles to Little Crease Shelter, but our later than expected start thanks to traffic this morning prevented us from getting there while it was still daylight. Unfortunately, this’ll give us a longer than planned day tomorrow, but it should be manageable if we’re efficient about leaving camp in the morning.
We knew there were a few more campsites up ahead, and getting to those would have made for an easier day tomorrow, but a brief light rain fell as we started setting up our tent, confirming it was a good idea to stop where we did. Sunlight quickly disappeared, and through the trees, we could see a sliver of a sunset on the clouds to the west.
It was nice to re-hike this area again (and in the opposite direction I did when I was on the Tuscarora Trail), and I recognized at least some parts of the trail, including the Elizabeth Furnace area and one of the views along the ridge.
Being in bear country, after dinner (which was just snacks, since we were still kind of full from our sandwich from lunch) we set up a bear hang on a tree entirely too close to our tent. Our bear canisters in use for our food drop two days ahead, we stuffed our food in my Ursack.
This is the latest in the year I’ve hiked (in the northern hemisphere, that is), so with sunset just before 5 pm, it was completely dark out by 6. This felt very weird; when I finished the Continental Divide Trail two years ago, the sun still set after 6:30! And when I was here on the Tuscarora Trail, sunset was after 7:30! With little else to do, we went to sleep early, just after 7 pm, with an alarm for 6 am tomorrow morning so we can get an early start.