Tromping through slush, mud, and water

Since Skyline Drive was closed today, March 11, 2013 (natch!), I decided to pick up some lowland trails that I was missing.  I started out on the Thornton River Trail to pick up the 0.7 miles of the Hull School Trail I had stupidly failed to hike the last time I was on the Thornton River Trail.  I parked along 612 in exactly the same spot as last time (no problem negotiating the road). 

As I said last time, the Thornton River is lovely.

The trail started out as just wet dirt, then became a combination of slush and stream.

There was no way to keep my feet dry.  Either I was walking in mud, or in water, or in slush.  By the time I reached the junction of the Hull School Trail and the Fork Mt. Trail (North District) the trail was all snow.

Since I was already near Sperryville I decided to go to the next trail south of there I was missing.  This happened to be the "Meadows Cabin Loop" (noted only on the map, not in the guidebook).  After parking on VA 648 just west of Syria, I walked up the cabin access road and turned left on the blue blazed trail.  Horses had already gone by but that didn't help the footing much.  The snow was even wetter here and undergirded with lots of mud.  It was wet and dirty going.  The trail goes uphill from the driveway.  At the first ridge, my predecessors had gone left while the blue blazed trail went right.  Later on I thought that perhaps that might have been the Doubletop Mt. Trail (within Rapidan WMA) but there was no sign or blazing.  After that point, I was making my own trail.  The snow was 4-6 inches deep (except where it had drifted deeper) and very very wet.  This made from some slipperiness.  The trail ascended to a height of land from which there were good views through the trees.  Then it descended back to the cabin.  Along the way I saw some very odd "footprints".  Basically an arrow.  Either this was a large bird or someone had a bizarre footprint trekking pole but there were no other footprints nearby.

I also so what I hope might have been a large cat print

If it was a dog, there were no signs of other human footprints anywhere.

Meadows Cabin Loop Trail, coming down hill

Meadows Loop Trail headed downhill

I saw another print that I thought might be a bear.

That print was about 4 inches long.

The Meadows Cabin is lovely.

That was it for the day.  My feet were soaking and there weren't any reasonable distance trails close by.