Grayson Highlands Fall Pt. 1

A perfectly timed couples hike

By the fall of 2014, our growing family (then with kids aged 17, 13, 11 and 8) had been on quite a few overnight hikes together on weekends, but although the older ones seemed to enjoy them, it turned out not to really be their thing as they grew up. They claimed to love camping but not so much the work involved getting there. So I had started to do a few hikes on my own, which in the previous year had included the Foothills Trail and the Smokies section of the AT the week after Christmas (yes, it was really damn cold and no, I don’t know what I was thinking). I felt like I wasn’t a noob on the trail anymore, and I finally felt capable enough to take my wife on one of my journeys. Obviously, I was going to cherry-pick a great section of the AT for her, and when she learned that Grayson Highlands was both beautiful AND had wild ponies, she was sold. The fact that I happened to hit peak fall colors was sheer luck but definitely a great bonus.

Our plan was to drive up to Damascus for the night and stay at the Old Mill Inn, and then get shuttled up to the Mt. Rogers Visitor Center and hike southbound 60+ miles over the following 6 days, winding up back in Damascus for a couple nights at the Inn, with days for exploring the town. It was a great plan. And per usual it was not adhered to. But it all worked out great in the end.

Our shuttle driver Gecko met us early the morning after our arrival and shuttled us up to the Visitors Center by around 10:00. It was already warm and humid but we were excited and quickly hit the trail. The first 4 miles were more or less the typical green tunnel. We had a ways to go before reaching the really good stuff.

It’s probably a good time to note that these are my wife’s photos. Mine were vaporized on my old hard drive along with all of my earlier trips. A real tragedy.

The trail was easy early on, and Marmot Girl took plenty of pics of things that caught her eye.

I was used to hiking 10-12 mile days on my own, and I was pleased to see that Marmot Girl seemed comfortable with that pace. As a result, we made good time. At nearly 8 miles we crossed the South Fork of the Holston River on a fairly long (120 ft.) wooden bridge.

I noticed that the sun was dipping lower towards the horizon, and we still had over 2 miles to go, so even though we were tired we put the pedal down and made it to the side trail that led to Trimpi Shelter about 30 minutes before dark. There we met Dave and Gary. Dave was on his way to Damascus to decide if he was going to live his dream and purchase a hiker hostel. Gary may or may not have been homeless, but he was very friendly, as was his 15 year-old canine companion. He said he was holing up there for a few days waiting on a package and noted that he hiked on a total knee replacement.

I went down to the slowly-flowing water source and filled our water bottles, and then we set up our tent together, a Tarptent Rainshadow out for its maiden voyage. We fumbled a little bit but managed a decent pitch without killing each other in the process.

We offloaded some pack weight by cooking up some really tasty Fishpeople Coconut Curry with rice. We shared a little with an appreciative Gary. After dinner, Hops and Chaco arrived. They showed off their mess of stings suffered during an encounter with a nest of “tracker jackers.” They were hiking NOBO so we got the details from them about the location to be wary of.

As we were getting ready to turn in, Marmot Girl found another friend.

My wife got a nice introduction to the social side of the AT, which seemed to put her more at ease. All in all, it was a great first day back in the woods. Day 1: 10.1 miles.

Somehow we managed to take forever to break camp the next morning. Marmot Girl isn’t exactly a morning person, so it was 10:30 before we were back on the trail, which had me a little bit apprehensive. We had a 10 mile day ahead of us.

We remained in the woods, but the character of the woods changed. We started to see these big old maples with gnarly trunks, and Marmot Girl was fascinated by them.

Early in the afternoon, we discovered that Hops and Chaco had left a message- a note in a ziploc stuck to a branch that read “Tracker Jackers Ahead! Highly pissed!!!” So we crept forward very carefully, and sure enough we discovered that there was a yellow jacket nest hole right in the middle of the dang trail. Because AT. Naturally, the trail at this point was skirting a steep slope, with dense stands of rhododendron both above and below the trail. We watched, and it was like a Star Wars scene with a spacecraft returning to the mother ship every 15 seconds. Finally though, the activity tapered off, and we were about to make our move…when all of a sudden, an acorn fell and landed right next to the hole. Instantly, several hundred angry yellow jackets swarmed out in a cloud. They were gonna mess some shizzle up, that was clear. There was no way we were going to sneak through THAT. So begrudgingly, we bushwhacked around them through the rhododendrons, which at times required us to belly crawl. It took a good long while too. We rejoined the trail 50 yards beyond the winged hordes of pain and got moving again.

Not long after that we got our first good view of the trip, which picked our spirits up a bit at the time.

I’m a wildflower buff, and I was pleased to see quite a few gentians in bloom. Some gentians are really neat in that a bee (typically a bumblebee) has to pry open their petals to reach the nectar and pollen.

By mid-afternoon we had crossed Dickey Gap and reached Comer Creek Falls. I can’t remember if this cascade is the actual “falls” or not.

It was getting late in the day and we still had 4 miles to go, and for the first time I sensed that Marmot Girl didn’t like this pace. There is a saying in the hiking community that “the trail provides.” Well, this time, it provided misery. As dusk fell the trail began to follow an old logging road that went endlessly uphill, and it kinda broke her spirit. Didn’t help mine much either. We quit talking and just did our best to keep putting one foot in front of the other. As we got close, we reached a stream that served as the shelter’s water source, so we stopped to camel up…..and it started raining.

Two wet, tired and miserable hikers finally reached the shelter, which at least we had to ourselves. We got unpacked and did our best to start drying things while I prepared dinner, and somewhere in there I brought up something about how we had 11 miles to do tomorrow. I could see my wife’s shoulders just slump in despair.

This is where Old Me would’ve been stubborn and insisted that we STICK TO THE PLAN dammit, but New Me- 50 year-old me- had enough wisdom to think first. I studied our maps while we ate dinner, and I thought I saw an alternative. So I turned to my wife and offered a new plan. It was supposed to rain into the morning, so I said why don’t we sleep in, wait for the rain to stop and then just go 5-6 miles to the next shelter. “But won’t that put us way behind schedule?” “Well, yes and no. We COULD just change the schedule. We could lower our daily miles so that you have more fun, and on Day 6 we’ll call Gecko from the road we’ll cross and get him to shuttle us back to Damascus.” Her plaintive reply was “reeeaaallllly?” And thus it was decided and my wife became happy again.

This was the moment that I learned something very important about a hike- you don’t HAVE to stick to your itinerary. Hike what makes you happy. If the miles are making you or your partner miserable, dial back and come up with a Plan B. This is particularly easy to do on the AT since you cross a lot of roads that have shuttle access. You can always come back another time to hike the miles you missed. Day 2: 9.9 miles.

Marmot Girl learned during the night that many AT shelters have a mouse or two. Hurricane Mountain Shelter apparently had a whole herd, one of whom ran across her sleeping bag during the night. Having survived their savagery, she decided that they were merely an annoyance, but not one that would keep her out of a dry shelter.

We slept in late and cooked a leisurely breakfast while we waited for the rain to stop, which it finally did around 11:00. We got packed and hit the trail at 11:30 in noticeably better spirits, knowing we had a short day ahead of us. The trail did its best to squelch this good vibe with an early rocky climb over Hurricane Mountain at over 4300 ft., but our good moods prevailed.

At roughly 3.5 miles into the day we crossed the footbridge over Fox Creek.

Once again, we ran into lots of old wizened maple trees.

The terrain became pretty rocky, and the trail seemed to be going uphill most of the time. I guess if you’re hiking into the Highlands you have to hike upwards.

Towards the end of the day we entered the Lewis Fork Wilderness, and a mile later the trail meandered through an old overgrown orchard before reaching, you guessed it, Old Orchard Shelter. This is an unusual shelter in that it is practically right on the trail. We briefly met a hiker there who went by CK, but he was on his way to the next shelter, so we once again had this one all to ourselves.

Neither of us felt worn out- after such a short day we surely shouldn’t have either- but the energy around camp was unusually upbeat as a result. I made it even better by heating up some Tasty Bite Punjab Eggplant, Madras Lentils and Punjab Choley, and then broke out a bottle of our favorite Major Grey’s Chutney that I’d been humping for 3 days. Not only was it a great dinner, my pack weighed a whole lot less the next morning. Day 3: 5.0 miles.

To read part 2, CLICK HERE