Like a fine wine, a recent jaunt on the Appalachian Trail through the Three Ridges Wilderness continues to get better with age. It was such a fun trip over 16 miles with enough vertical feet to satisfy a month’s worth of leg days at the gym. And two days of catching up with old friends on the trail made the first backpacking trip of the year all the more memorable.
The week leading up to the trip, the forecast was beyond perfect and I was holding my breath it would stay that way. Seems like every adventure recently included a solid soaking from Mother Nature and just once I was hoping for sunny skies and moderate temps and it looked like we were going to get it. Friday rolled around and of course the rain rolled in but the weather window for Saturday and Sunday was still drool inducing.
The alarm went off early Saturday morning and the dog and I loaded up the car and set a southern bearing to Charlottesville to meet up with my friends Rachel and Ross. We pulled into the Bodos parking lot right on time. Of course we had to grab a bagel before entering the wilderness. We’d be foolish not to.
About an hour later we arrived at the trail head on the Blue Ridge Parkway and… oh. my. god. Everyone and their mother, father, siblings, aunts and uncles were there. We’re talking Old Rag full. We made our way to the end of the line along the parkway and snagged a parking spot. As we exited the car we were mentally preparing ourselves to jump into the conga line up the mountain. Much to our surprise this happened not to be the case. We did encounter and pass numerous hiking parties but traffic was otherwise pretty light. Starting a bit later was actually in our favor as we guess most of the cars were day hikers who got early starts and were way ahead of us on the trail.
We pushed along the ridge under a cloudless blue sky, soaking in the sun. Spring was only beginning to show itself on the ridge and the contrast between a leafless canopy up high and vibrant green carpet below was beautiful. In nearly nine years living along the Blue Ridge, I had never seen the demarcation between winter and spring.
As afternoon turned to evening we setup camp on the ridge below Chimney Rock. It was a cozy campsite, barely big enough for two tents. We greeted hiking parties as they passed on their way to the trail hut about two miles yonder.
Dinner was served atop flat rock with unobstructed views to the west. As clouds rolled in, it was surprisingly chilly with a breeze and I was thankful at the last minute I threw my light puffy into my pack. As dusk turned to dark, we hiked back up the trail to camp and quickly called it a night knowing Sunday was going to be almost entirely up hill for six miles or so.
Of course this wouldn’t be a proper adventure if we stayed dry so lo-and-behold a front moved through in the middle of the night bringing rain showers. If you haven’t been jolted awake by raindrops hitting you in the face inside your tent, have you really lived? I hadn’t put my rainfly up and suddenly found myself in fire drill mode trying to get out of my tent and get the rainfly on before everything became soaked. Some curse words were thrown around as I tried to untangle the rainfly but eventually I decided it was good enough to keep me dry until morning.
Sunday’s sunrise was a classic Blue Ridge Mountain sunrise with pastel greens, blues, yellows and oranges with a haziness in the valleys. I grabbed the camera and quickly made my way up to Chimney Rock to shoot the scene. It was one of those dreamy sunrises in the Blue Ridge that I hadn’t seen in a good long while.
After packing up camp we made our way down to the shelter to refill our water for the day’s climb back out to the parkway. We were greeted by a full creek and beautiful waterfalls for the majority of the climb out. We passed by multiple backcountry swimming holes and I cannot wait to return later in the summer to escape the stifling heat of DC.
Six hours later we exited the wilderness on the Blue Ridge Parkway and quickly made our way to cold beer and a delicious food truck lunch in Nelson County Virginia.
