Yesterday (Jan. 10), at long last, SNP opened part of Skyline Drive and luckily it was the Central District where I need to hike trails. So I decided to hike around the Big Meadows area. It was a warm and lovely day. I parked at the Fishers Gap overlook. I had prepared myself for the worst this time. Since last week I had procured some instep crampons (Hillsound Cypress 6). I started to go down the Rose River Fire Road and immediately had to put on my new crampons. They worked great! Not only do they function like regular crampons, the straps are super easy to put on, take off, and adjust. And they're much better than the cheapo microspikes.
The first interesting thing I ran into was the Cave cemetery.
The snow was pretty solid but as I walked I started breaking through in sunny spots. The Rose River Fire Road was pretty solid even though the woods beside it were sometimes bare.
Here are my new instep crampons. They have six points.
I walked all the way down to the junction with the Stony Mountain Trail (where I left off last week) then backtracked to the Dark Hollow Falls Trail. I was the first hiker since the snow to ascend the Dark Hollow Falls trail and I really appreciated my crampons there! The falls were lovely. I stopped at the overlook, thinking it would be easy to hike down and back from the Dark Hollow Falls parking lot another time.
After returning to the Rose River Fire Road, I then took the Rose River Loop trail. I spied what looked like a baby daddy longlegs on the snow.
That stream was lovely and would provide many dipping spots for the warm weather hiker. I needed my crampons on that steep trail too because only deer had broken the snow crust. There were lots of blowdowns, though, and I fell on my face trying to get over one.
I was delighted at the low point to find that there was a bridge across the stream. As soon as I crossed the stream and got out of the shadows, the snow disappeared. So I took off my crampons.
Pretty soon the trail was bare dirt.
Wouldn't you know it, though, when I got to the beautiful overlook of Rose River Falls, I had to negotiate an icy hard frozen patch (I was too lazy to put my crampons back on). The falls were lovely and a couple of nice pools bracketed it.
Then, as I ascended, the snow got deeper but it was mushy and didn't require crampons. It did require extra effort because for each step up I sank back 2-3 inches. Pretty soon my wet feet got cold so I put on my winter overboots. I noticed that the trail distances in the book and on the back of the map double count the 0.9 miles of trail shared by the Skyland/Big Meadows Horse Trail and the Rose River Loop so I subtracted 0.9 mi. from the length of the Loop for my Excel table and the total for the Park.
When I returned to Fishers Gap I ate half my lunch and decided to hike the Skyland/Big Meadows Horse Trail to Big Meadows. That was very tiring. Every step caved in. When I finally reached the stables I continued on the Tanners Ridge Horse Trail (to finish that trail) as far as the Lewis Spring Rd. I descended the road to the AT where I encountered 2 hikers out for a 5 day backpack on the AT. Hearty souls! I took a picture of them with their camera then continued on the (unbroken) AT north. As I was ascending, I met a couple of hikers coming down. They were doing a circuit from Milam Gap. Somehow I missed the cutoff to Black Rock while ascending (Rats! I missed picking up that trail). The going got a little better because the trail was broken. Then, after the cutoff (somehow I didn't add 2 and 2 together to deduce that I'd missed the cutoff) I was back to breaking trail. Luckily the snow was perfect after cresting the ridge. Not icy and strong enough to hold me up.
I continued north on the AT around the various parts of the Big Meadows complex and then down virgin trail through the woods. It was absolutely lovely! Just after passing the cutoff to the parking lot, I ran into a really icy patch and had to put my crampons back on for the last 100 feet of trail. I finished at the Red Gate Fire Road, tramped up to Skyline Drive and back to my car.
Total miles for the day 9.6 (it felt like more!). 3 trails completed and sections of three more added.
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