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Thursday, August 24, 2006
AT: Harpers Ferry to Keys Gap
This past weekend, Jason and I drove up to Harpers Ferry, WV to spend some time camping and hiking the Appalachian Trail. Jason had spent some time hiking the trail in the past, but I've haven't done much "real" hiking or backpacking, so we thought that a day hike would be a good test run. Somehow, our test run wound up being an 18 mile hike, which makes me feel pretty tough and very accomplished.
We drove up to West Virginia on Friday night and set up camp at the KOA just outside of Harpers Ferry.
We pitched our tent in the wanning light, but headed to Ruby Tuesdays for dinner because we wanted to have an easy night and thought Saturday night post-hike would be out campfire dinner. It turned out to be good that we decided on that plan because when we got there, we found that the women camping next door had taken over our picnic table and fire ring.
I've camped at commerical campgrounds before, but I don't remember any of them being as terrible as the KOA. The staff clearly had no clue about the area outside the KOA park, and the guests there were just awful. No one had any concept of which areas belonged to their site, and there was no one In Charge circulating to help out. All we could get was a, "Your picnic table and firering should be to the right of your site marker," which was really no help at all unless we were going to argue with half a dozen groups of campers.
After dinner, we settled down in the tent, and Jason read while I studied for my exam on Tuesday. All around us, large drunken groups of campers were blasting their radios, playing charades and generally carrying on as loudly as possible. Before bed, I walked to the bathhouse without a flashlight, and remembered how lovely it was to walk through a campsite (the other areas were quiet) at night and smell the burning wood and hear the crackling fires with the stars overhead and the crickets chirping.
We settled down to sleep at around 11:30, a solid 90 minutes after lights-out, and the parties around us were still going strong. I will never understand how camping=alcohol, but there you go. Around midnight, upon realizing that we were never going to get any sleep, Jason went over and asked the loudest of the groups to keep the noice down a little. Over the next several hours, he would make two more trips out to ask groups to please
Somehow, though, we found our way to sleep, and woke around 7:00 Saturday morning, feeling reasonably well rested. We had bagels for breakfast and chatted with the girls to our left, all marveling that the loud partiers were already starting to crawl out of their tents.
Someone told Jason over the phone that the AT was only a few miles from the camp, but it took us several tried to find someone who could even begin to tell us how to get there. In the end, it turned out that we really just needed to walk back up the highway a few miles to the trailhead.
From the highway, the AT jutted away from the shoulder, up a steep flight of wooden steps built into the side of a hill. The trail was fairly easy going, with views here and there of the rlver or of more mountains. Along the side facing the mountain were large rocks. I will never get used to seeing rocks in the middle of the woods. not far along, I spotted an old, decrepit house aside the trail. It was large and sprawling, and covered in small murals that looked to be storybook pictures. I ventured off the trail for a closer look, but was afraid to go near enough to peer inside.
Not much farther along, I saw a little side trail and went off to investigate. When I poked my head out of the treeline, I saw a wonderful, crumbling cemetery. A closer look told us that it was Harpers Cemetery, the town's original burial ground and resting place of Robert Harper, who built the town's original Quaker Meeting House. It took a great deal of willpower to walk away without exploring the headstones.
Closer still to town was Jefferson Rock. If there was any way to make me realize straight away how wonderful the AT was, that little stretch of path was the way to go. The views were spectacular, and I could understand why someone would want to settle there.
The trail took is in to town, and we followed it to the place where Jason ended his last hike, coming from the north. We wandered around town a little, and along the way met an AT thru-hiker who called himself Bonzo, and was about to leave to go back to the trail with his dog.
From there, we hiked back to the Appalachian Trail Conference, a small white building that serves as the headquarters for the trail's governing organization. We saw a topographical map of the trail, which was more than a little impressive and daunting and chatted with the woman working there. As we poked around, a man came in, and when the clerk asked where he was from, he said wearily, "Georgia. I know, I'm late." He asked Jason about the trail to the north and was unhappy to learn that it was rocky, and he told us about the trail he'd hiked from the south. Thru-hikers are pretty much cooler than rock stars to me, and I so want to be hard core enough to hike 2000 miles straight one day.
After talking to the lady at the ATC, we decided to head south on the trail, and see if we could make it to keys Gap and back. We weren't really clear what Keys Gap was, but vaguely recalled it being a starting point in a guidebook. It was supposed to be about 6 miles from the ATC, which would make the hike bout 12 miles, as we'd still have to walk back.
The trail south to Keys Gap was significantly more strenuous than the hike to Harpers Ferry, but it still wasn't terribly bad. There were some switchbacks and gradual uphills, and lots and lots of rocky trail to navigate but nothing to try much more than our stamina. The scenery changed several times along the way, which was fun for me, and though I was scared to death of twisting an ankle, the novelty of walking through a sea of rocks never did wear off.
Keys Gap, as it turned out, was little more than a stopping point at a road, but it did sit right on the Virginia/West Virginia border, which was kind of cool. Also, it had a gas station just up the road, which was fortunate, as we had run out of water and still had a 6+ mile hike back. We thought, for a few minutes, about trying to find a ride back to the KOA, but in the end, hoofed it back in the other direction.
Turns out that walkind down hill is, in many ways, as tough as walking uphill, and by the time we found the end of the trail, my knees, hips and ankles were killing me. Jason had worn ankle socks with his hiking boots, so his ankles were pretty torn up, too. It was rather a gimpy walk back down the highway to the camp. I did, along the way, see the only real wildlife on the hike--a large, two or three point buck in the woods off of the highway.
When we got back to camp, our site was still surrounded by partiers, though we did seem to have our table and fire ring back. We consulted for a few minutes and decided that what we really wanted was a good night's sleep, above dinner cooked over a campfire, so we packed up and headed home.
I'm still paying for the long, rocky hike a little. My knees and ankles have recovered, but my hip is still sore. Mostly, I want to go back out again. I can completely understand what drives people to hike the whole trail, and I'm totally on board with Jason now, wanting to section hike the whole thing. I would figure that out at the end of the summer, huh?
Posted at 10:29 AM ::