The Perfect Weekend
November 7, 2023 § 1 Comment
We returned to an area of West Virginia where I believe the first backpacking trip that I drove down to meet what would later become known as “The Virginia Crew” finished up. Then, it was a point to point that finished just off the Tuscarora Trail near Rt 48 between Strassburg and Wardensville, and now it was an in and out back up into Racer Hollow out of The Wilson Cove Wildlife Management Area. We picked this weekend, basically, because I didn’t give but 2 possible weekends for me to participate, and as it so happened, turned out to be the weekend after Walt’s final day at Iridium, bound for his post-work-life as a retiree.
Anyone reading this that lives in the Northeast knows that it has basically been one fucking shitty assed Autumn that has had weekend after weekend ruined by at least 1 day of solid rainfall. This NYT article spells out the doom in NY self-picking apple orchards that rely heavily on Autumn weekenders getting out there to pick apples, so I think it is safe to say that we all harbored great expectations of a fine weekend for this excursion. As soon as one could pull a long term posit, it was looking good, and unlike all my other long term looks, this forecast actually improved every day it got closer. At some point I realized that temperature wise, it wasn’t going to be any different this weekend than it was my entire week above 10,000′ this past August in Utah. So, with that great news, I put away my 0 degree bag, and packed my 35 bag with a liner and not only committed to my 45 liter Lite AF pack, but I did not even pack rain gear. No Pack cover, no tarp, no rain jacket, and no rain kilt. I, and a few others it turns out, went all in on the forecast.
Joining me on this weekend’s adventure was Jed P, who you may be familiar with from other hiking related posts in my blog and the same Jed P who joined me this past August in one of my week-long Western adventures. This would be Jed’s first excursion with this crew, and I have to admit, I wasn’t entirely sure he would like it as much as he did. My reservations related mainly to fact that these weekends are more about establishing a base camp after a not-so-strenuous hike in, which involves getting our camp provisioned. Provisioned with what you ask? Obviously we carry in our food, and most of us carry a minimum amount of water so that we can carry more beer in. And a spirit. Of course. What else would we need? Well we have to filter a shitload of water, as 9 guys and a dog (Reilly) can go through a lot of it. The main attraction of these events is our fire, and we don’t just have a little itty bitty fire, no. We have big-as-fuck fire, and to have a big-as-fuck fire, you need a big-as-fuck amount of wood to burn, so there is a lot of time spent gathering that. All this doesn’t even begin until everyone has found a spot to bed down and setup their own personal shelters. So, the point being made here concerning my reservations that Jed would enjoy this type of trip, because once we settled in, there wasn’t any real planned afternoon day hike to do.
As it turned out though there was an afternoon hike because we had a special guest with us who was not spending the night, and for safety’s sake required an escort back to the cars, which basically meant that some of us hiked that distance 3 times on Friday. Sorry. Our special guest you ask? It is with great love and pleasure to announce that Drew Butler felt well enough join us for the day. Those of you who know Drew, know what he has been going through the last 5 months, and really the last year, so it was a very happy moment to see him in his boots with a daypack on hiking in the woods again. So, as I said, a few of use walked back to the cars, which also allowed us to hike in the rest of the beer!
80%. That’s about how I felt by the weekend as I suffered the previous weekend an early season flu in which I made a terrible mistake. On the bright side, I was Covid negative, however my fever began on Thursday, and was in full force Friday. I usually switch from Coffee to Green Tea, as the acid upsets my stomach, but when I opened the cupboard and saw some Ginger Tea, I audibled and drank that instead not realizing (or forgetting) my addiction to caffeine and the discomforts of withdrawal. What are those you ask? Well they don’t feel all that different from the aches and pains of a fever, so while I felt the same all weekend, I found that by Monday my temperature had completely stabilized, while I still felt like shit, and then I realized I needed caffeine. Don’t believe me? Well, two cups of Joe later and what felt like another lost day of work turned into a fully productive day. Fuuuuuuuuck!
So, throughout the week, while I was looking forward to the weekend, my appetite for a weekend drinking beer and bourbon was flat and I was also glad that Jed offered to drive down, so that allowed me to get some rest as I really hadn’t slept well (for me) all week.
We were also celebrating Walt’s retirement, so there was going to be a lot of toasting to my Brother that involved raised cups of beer and as it so happened, an entire bottle of Elijah Craig Small Batch that didn’t take too long to empty, leaving us with all the other spirits in our inventory. Needless to say, even at 80% I managed to participate, and I think everyone had a step-stutter-step walk back to their tents when each decided at their own behest to retire for the evening.
While my night was interrupted 4 or 5 times for old-man-needs, I managed to sleep well into the morning, emerging finally around 10am. I would say I was 85% at that point, as I moseyed over to my camp chair and proceeded to cook myself all the ingredients for a nice morning plant-based breakfast burrito, which after I finished rolling said burrito led Dan G to query whether I had attended Burrito Rolling School as in his words “Dude, you rolled the perfect burrito!” I guess I did, as with both hands I didn’t have any trouble keeping it together as I methodically ate through it.
It was around this time, 11 that is, that Walt finally emerged from his cocoon, and no one sitting around the fire that morning exclaimed “Oh look at the pretty butterfly”. He looked like he had endured two bourbon heavy days, and was anxious to get his immediate needs taken care of, and I will not go any further into that.
While Walt got himself together the rest of us, minus me (lazy as fuck), did another wood run so that we could head out on our afternoon hike with the knowledge that upon our return all we would have to do was to get the fire going, and we could jump right into dinner time. If I didn’t mention it, we actually hauled Terry O’s chain saw all the way into camp, so that actually made short work of getting all of our wood needs taken care of. As heavy as it is, it does get the task done.
That brings us to Saturday’s day hike finally. Better late than never! The goal was to hike up Racer Hollow up to a visible saddle between two mountains where the Tuscarora Trail hugs the border between Virginia and West Virginia. There, we would hang a North and hike to a side trail that descends down the East side to a rocky knob known as White Rocks. Total distance to the Rocks, maybe 4.5 miles and for the most part it wasn’t a very hard hike. And it wasn’t. The trail hugged Racer creek, crossing a few times and gained elevation slowly, and for most of the hour it took, the apparent Saddle never seemed to be getting any closer until we were finally upon it, where we found a nice sized camp that lacked the one important camp necessity. Water. Now we were on the Blue Blazed Tuscarora Trail which had to gain more elevation to get up onto the ridge. It was a very mild grade as well, and hugged the Western edge of the mountain until we finally gained the ridgeline and a nice opportunity to look out over Racer Hollow. Another .7 miles and we reached the side trail to out to White Rocks. By this time, my 85% had me last in line and I trailed into the viewing area of the rocks about 5 minutes after everyone else. Like many of these rocky outcroppings we have visited, it’s a bit of a boulder scramble to get up onto the knob, where you will find some conifers that look like they have lived a hard life gripping whatever they can to maintain their purchase. No limb is straight and we are reminded somewhat of the ancient Bristlecone Pines of the Sierras. There is usually, and there was, a breeze, though on this day, it wasn’t that intimidating, and the Sun was out in full force, so it was easy to set there and relax, eating the food stuffs hauled up there as well as a few cans of beer. I believe there was bourbon but there was a fuck-up and it never found the light of day. Most of us had something easy to munch, however Terry O hauled his stove and all the ingredients to make a soup up there on that rock, and he sat there over in his neck of the knob and soup’d away.
While we all sat with a mostly Southern exposed vista, Jed did a little exploring and found an equally nice spot that offered up the full Eastern vista that showed the small foothill that separated us from the Western Shenandoah Valley with Fort Valley beyond that, and finally filling up the rear, The Great Shenandoah Mountain on which Skyline Drive runs. A truly epic vista.
It started to cloud just enough that when the sun was slightly obscured it was cool enough for some to think about the return trip. When asked, I indicated I was continuing up the Tuscarora to The Old Mail path which would take us back down to Racer Hollow Trail which we knew would take us back to camp. It was that or backtrack the way we came, and I’d rather do a loop then an out and back. So, Larry, Kevin, Dan and Bruce left without the rest of really noticing that until they were gone. To be honest this was when I followed Jed to check out The Great Eastern Vista, and when we returned for that little excursion, Ed and Terry were getting each a paired up image with Walt and his let-down Samson hair (Yes, that means Ed and Terry were both playing their part as Delilah). I think it was Terry that said “Where did the others go?” And that was our cue to head back up to The Tuscarora with a very short stop at the camp site there at the base of the knob where a couple and a super cute puppy (Rosy) had set up their camp, and had a little chat.
Approaching the junction with the main trail we were quite surprised to find that our friends weren’t there awaiting our much delayed arrival. We figured that someone wanted to or needed to get back to camp, and they simply set off. Whether they went the way we discussed or not didn’t matter, but what did matter was we weren’t entirely sure that Bruce was in that group or whether he was still behind us climbing back up from the knob. We didn’t wait too long because the hike back up wasn’t that far, and we figured he probably slipped past us while we were chatting up the couple with the cute puppy, and so we set off on our own. Here is what we knew. From our camp, we hike south for an hour to gain the saddle, and then we hike North for 20-25 minutes to the cut-off trail to White Rocks. That meant that technically, at some point we could literally hang a left and bushwhack back to camp, depending on just how steep the terrain looked. It was about a 1000′ down the mountain which was kind of steep looking, but at least it would be quicker. We did not do that. What we did do was we just followed the Tuscarora Trail to The Old Mail Path, and then followed the long slow descent over leaf covered rocks where every 4th or 5th step a hidden rock caused your footfall to feel unstable and thus watching ever more carefully where each footfall fell. It was 1.1 miles down the path, and at no point, peering down the left side of the mountain did I ever see any part of what I knew the features of the Racer Hollow trail were. Hell, there were two fairly giant green open fields that surely could be spotted. If I had seen one of them I would have hung a hard left and bushwhacked down, cutting the trail, but I never saw it, and so we walked completely down which placed us about 1 mile North of our camp. At least it was a fairly easy mile. In hind sight those woods were tick laden, and so bushwhacking would have had its costs on that warm day.
Back in camp we found Bruce taking a nap and so we all relaxed our fears that we left our brother behind, and grabbed our chairs and sat around enough of a fire to prepare dinner. By this point I was feeling about 95% and in much better shape, and so I took the opportunity to grab one of my beers (No more Whalers 😦 ) for a little relaxation before getting into my dinner prep. Dinners that night ran the gambit from the hot water only dehydrated varieties that we eat on my week-long adventures, to hot dogs over the fire, to Terry and Bruce who both had big hunks of Red meat. Me, I had some left over onions and peppers and sautéed those up with some brown rice and BBQ Jack Fruit, and then rolled another perfect burrito leaving me one flour tortilla for next morning’s breakfast.
With dinners done, we started to pile on the wood to build up the fire as the last rays of Eastern Daylight Time had set, and the coolness of Eastern Standard Time was setting in, and we all craved the long wavelength radiant heat of red hot coals. With the fire hot, our tummies filled we set to a long evening of finishing up what beers we had left while sharing some pulls on the bourbons and scotches in our possession while recounting our deeds of not only this day, but deeds of days long past. I might have fallen asleep at least two times before finally turning in around 11. I am not sure how much longer the die-hards stayed out, but by the time I emerged for my first pee there was no one left at the fire.
With the Fall Back, we all emerged the next morning fairly early and gathered around the fire for breakfast and coffee. As it was the final day, I at least broke down all the stuff inside my tent so that when it came time, I only had to break down my tent and pack everything away back into my pack. With that task behind me I was finally able to enjoy another fine breakfast burrito with coffee while also making a quick trip to the creek to fill up my filter with a liter of fresh cold sweet water for my H20 needs. Everyone moved at their own pace and slowly the entire camp was broken down, unburned trash pulled from the ashes to be hauled out, and water spread upon what was left of the hot coals from the previous night to lay waste to any notion of a fire pit flare-up. With all our gear packed up, we began the 2.87 miles to hike out on what was already starting to be another fantastic day.
The hike out was relatively uneventful except for Terry keeping Reilly from rolling around in all the fresh Horse Shit we found along the trail, and a small group of young 20 somethings that occupied a site not more than a mile into the woods. I could hear them before I could see them, and they were yakking away probably not all that differently than our own yakking we were doing just an hour earlier. I waved to them, they waved back, and I didn’t hear them again until I stopped one last time to grab some more of that West Virginia sweet water and I could hear their gaggle yakking coming closer, so I set off to finally emerge last of our group out of the woods where I found my Brother Larry awaiting me and we walked the final 150 yards back to the cars.
While we were all loosening up and changing back into street clothes the young gaggle group of yakkers walked into our midst and we talked them up for about 20 minutes. They had hiked in for a one nighter, and were all friends from College. Two of them were tried and true backpackers, and the others had less experience with one being on his first adventure. It was nice and we told them so, to see a younger generation taking an interest, and forming the kinds of bonds that we old men have been enjoying for the last 30-40 years. Our friendship is an inspiration to the younger group that they too can enjoy this for many years to come if they can make the effort to keep it up. With those parting sentiments, they walked off, we finished our de-compression and then we embarked on the next stage of the weekend to grab some grub at Pave Mint Smokin Tap House in Front Royal Virginia at Dan Grubb’s suggestion. The kitchen was a little over-loaded but they eventually accommodated us with food and a beer or two.
In the parking lot we hugged, shook hands and bade our goodbyes and so longs, and we all hit our various roads with Jed and I of course having the longest journey to make to get home. Jed was a trooper and drove the whole way with just one stop in Delaware. I think the fact that I nodded off at least 4 or 5 times didn’t give him a high degree of confidence in handing over control of his new car to me. In addition the fact that I drive about 10-15 mph faster than him may also have played into that reluctance, so for me it was a sit back and enjoy the ride. Thank you Jed!
Another Weekend adventure in the books with a great group of friends. Life is certainly good!
Big Bird's Adventures 
As it turns out I had contracted Lyme Disease in mid October, and the early symptoms of this were probably just starting to kick in.