With the onslaught of 100-degree plus days, hiking partner Tom and I decided it was best not to take on one of the “75@75” hikes this weekend. We had planned to do the hike that combines Pocosin Cabin and South River Falls, which would be convenient for him and me. He had a campsite reservation at Big Meadows and wanted to do something to take advantage of that, and of course, I am anxious to make the miles, so we came up with something that would meet the criteria for 75@75, but allow us to take frequent breaks.
That “Plan B” was to summit the three tallest peaks in the park: Hawksbill, at 4,049 feet; Stonyman, at 4,010; and Hazeltop, at 3,850. We could do each of the three day hikes to these, around 2-miles each, and also manage to ascend about 1,500 feet in elevation. We would car shuttle between trail heads, allowing some air conditioned cooling off and ensuring that we had plenty of fluids. Even so, the mileage and elevation gain would qualify this effort as a 75@75 day for me.
In the end, the temperatures were just too high to take on this effort. Tom ended up canceling his campsite, and I went out to Hawksbill Cabin to check in on things – and sit in the pool for an hour. By Saturday afternoon, I started getting news that the temperatures up on the mountains were at least 10 degrees cooler than in the valley, and I really still wanted to get up there for a leg stretcher.
On Sunday, I decided I would head on up to do the Hazeltop portion of that segmented hike – from the Bootens Gap Trailhead, estimated at about 2.2 miles round trip. I had been to the summit of Hazeltop with Chris when we did the first of the 75@75 hikes, the big loop down to Camp Rapidan. That was a foggy day, with rain at times, so there was no view, and I had planned to come back to check out the views.
With the canopy up, I didn’t expect much of a view on this day, especially through the sultry haze. In reality, I was just looking for a cool breeze, and a complementary view would have been nice.
From the trailhead – this entire route was on the AT, by the way – both the south and north directions look inviting. But I was headed north and uphill, first passing the intersection with the Laurel Prong trail, which leads down to Camp Rapidan, and then on up to the summit.
There are beautiful summer wildflowers all along Skyline Drive right now, mainly Black-eyed Susan. However, I had noticed a few Turk’s cap Lillies – also known as Carolina Lillies – as bright orange highlights, and had been tempted to stop and take a photo of some. I kept my fingers crossed that I might see some along the hike, and I did – I’ve got a photo of a pair here as the opening image.
(Note, something's up with the Blogger interface today and I can only upload one image, so I'll come back to post the others later.)The other photos are some views of the trail, and a few of the rock outcroppings and boulders along the way. The last of these is the one that I took my summit altimeter reading from, although it probably wasn’t the actual high point of the mountain. I remember that it was pretty close from the last hike, when I approached from the other direction; walking ahead a few dozen more yards revealed that you began a descent from this point onward.
By the Pathfinder’s altimeter, I climbed about 530 feet on this short hike, although by official altitude readings, it may have been more than 600 feet. In any case, I found my cool breeze at an AT switchback, where a little canyon tapered down of the hill. A storm was rolling in, and it sent some brisk cool air up my way from down in some stream bed below.
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