Pisgah National Forest hikes

Vaughan Fitzpatrick was a wonderful host and hiking guide for our training this weekend in the Pisgah National Forest which has beautiful trails. Vaughan was our host at his family cabin in Fletcher, NC located very near the Asheville airport. The cabin and surrounding land had been in the family 140 years. We had a wonderful time together and because Vaughan set such a fast past our training at his pace was excellent. Saturday we hiked for 3 hours along a stream, with the trail going up and down and varied terrain including beautiful logs to cross streams of water. We had the sound of water with us the whole hike. The Pilot Rock cove hike was 4.48 miles with an assent of 241 meters we carried packs of 10 lbs each.

Our hike on Sunday was also in the Mills Fort area of Pisgah Forest with a long steady uphill climb ( 2 hours 20 minutes up and another 2 hours down - all walking!) assent for this hike was 320 meters. I carried a 10 lb pack and David carried a 13 lb pack. It took us a total of 5 hrs 30 minutes. Epson salts were definitely needed at the end of the day. Amazing to see mountain bikes on both of these trails!

Bird Knob Hike

Thursday, July 23, 2009: Today we headed off to Charlotte, NC via several hiking stops with the first one being in the Shenandoah valley. We hiked part of Bird Knob trail from the Massanutten Mountain starting near the visitors center. The trail head was difficult to find and we ended up checking into our hotel and then asking them where to go. We hiked 2.5 miles in 3 hours with an elevation change of 278 meters (roughly 1,000 feet). Actually we were moving 1 hr 50 minutes and we were were actually stopped 1 hr 10 minutes. A GPS is a tough taskmaster! this hike was literally straight up and then back down again.

We got off to a later start from McLean than we had intended but Accuweather had predicted a rain storm at 1pm - sure enough at 11:45 there comes the rain. No other rain was forecast until the evening so we headed out on our hike after the rain.

Tomorrow we head for Fletcher, NC near Asheville and will do 2 days hiking with our friend Vaughan.

In Training for Camino de Santiago - 2nd week - Day 9

Tuesday, July 21, 2009: Today was a 6 mile hike at Great Falls National Park using our GPS to give us the elevation, time hiking, time resting and avg speed. Needless to say a GPS is a tough task master. We "hiked" for 3 1/2 hours of which one hour was deemed as not moving (we didn't realize we stopped that much or took that many rest breaks!). Our total assent for the day was 200 meters which fortunately was earlier on in the day and not towards the end of the hike. My pack had been reduced from previous hiking weight of 15lbs to 10 lbs. David carried 15 lbs. Nice hike along the Potomac River and then along the Mather Gorge high up on the ridge line.