Strickler Knob - a Moderate GWNF Day Hike

There are a few of them:  Strickler Knob has been one of those hikes that I've strived to complete, but things just never have seemed to work out.  There have been weather-related cancellations, and then there was the time we tried to do it in January 2011, only to fail (check out the Strickler Knob label at the end of this post for more info about the trail and the 2011 attempt).  So when Chris and I arrived at the trail head at 11am last Saturday, I was happy to realize that we were going to finally check the box on this one - even if we were using a shorter version to make sure we completed the summit in daylight!

The trail we used starts at the Scotthorn Gap parking area - a spot in the GWNF we are very familiar with, since we started several of our training hikes for the 2005 Half Dome trip here, hiking up some of these very same trails.  Our planned route was about 5.4 miles long with approximately 800 feet of elevation.

Back in 2005, Strickler Knob was a true bushwack, I guess, which is one of the reasons we never found it.  The trail had been roughed out and was blazed, but it wasn't maintained and the route was lost.  Over the last few years, as discussed in the Hiking Upward review (http://www.hikingupward.com/GWNF/StricklerKnob/), it has been rediscovered and the route has been partially reblazed.

Our route led up the fire road - we'd hiked this many times before, and our familiarity was one of the reasons I wanted to start out and end the hike here, since if we ran out of daylight, we would be on a familiar stretch of trail.  Eventually we passed through a clearing - great campsites here, and we paused to rest on the fire ring - and then a slight descent to a beaver pond and the crossroads, where we had turned back from the summit in the 2001 attempt.

After another short climb, the intersection with the summit trail is hard to find because it is not marked with a sign or blaze. Instead, someone has built a rock pile talisman there, which is the spot where you should make your way to the north to begin following the ridge.  Before you cross the ridge, look up for a few pink or magenta items nailed high on tree trunks - the old blazes for this trail were that color, or pink.

For the most part, this hike follows the ridge of Strickler Knob, which is handy since the blazes can be hard to see - they are either not there, having been worn off, or there are long stretches where they haven't been placed, since the scrubby tree growth up here doesn't allow for the usual placement.  Being up on the ridge like that offers two key benefits:  as long as you continue north, eventually you will reach your objective; and there are incredible views to the east and west of the Luray Valley and the folds of the Massanutten Mountain, with glimpses that stretch off to West Virginia in places!

The highlight of this hike, which is a main feature of the Hiking Upward review, is the rock scramble that comprises the last third of a mile before the summit.  The terrain requires hand over hand climbing in two or three places, to heights of 10 to 12 feet - fortunately, the rock on this summit is mostly eroded limestone layers from the old seabed that was here prehistorically, so there are plenty of hand- and foot-holds.  Even in my out of shape condition, I didn't find it too difficult.

The ridge scramble becomes progressively more intense as you approach the summit.  The last few yards require a scramble over large bolders and rocks, and through a rock crack, more of a tunnel - I've got a shot of Chris standing in it.  And then finally, you're there on the summit, where you will find several stacks that you can climb up to take a seat on, and where there are even surfaces large enough to stretch out on for a sunny nap, if the weather permits.

For our part, we stayed up there for a half hour or so, resting and preparing for the descent.  We started back down the path, satisfied that our preparation and planning meant we'd have plenty of daylight for the hike back down.  We passed a couple of back country campsites, and even three hiking parties just getting to the ridge on our way back down.

I didn't envy those people, as this trail would be quite difficult with headlamps in the dark - I don't know that I would even attempt the scramble with any threat of darkness, and that's why we had bailed before.

But this time - we had accomplished what we set out to do.  This is definitely a highlight of the trails on Massanutten Mountain - and it is one I'm looking forward to trying again sometime!

Prep for the Strickler Knob Reattempt

Chris and I had been in touch about the possibility of taking a hike sometime this fall, and we finally managed to pull it all together over Veterans Day weekend.  We'd contemplated several routes, including a second climb of Duncan Knob, climbing Kennedy Peak to enjoy the views overlooking the Luray Valley, or perhaps Marys Rock in Shenandoah National Park.  In the end, we decided that we would go back and tend to some unfinished business by completing the Strickler Knob route we had tried back in 2011.

As we often do, we used www.hikingupward.com as one of our guides for preparing for the hike.  It describes a 9.1 mile trail as follows:

"Some of the best vistas in the mid-Atlantic.  The new Strickler Knob trail is a challenging rock hopping/scramble that has beautiful views of New Market Gap, the Luray Valley, and a 360 picture perfect panorama from the Strickler Knob summit.  A nice hike with a great little rock scramble on the ridge."

We set about preparing logistics for the hike, with the goal of Chris staying over at Hawksbill Cabin the night before to shorten the time it would take to rendezvous and get to the trail head.  So we met on Friday night at the house, and were ready to head out by 9am - with a quick stop at Southern Kitchen in New Market on the way.  We were on the trail by 11am, which gave us six hours of daylight for this moderate hike, shortened from the Hiking Upward version - we would do approximately 5.4 miles, with an elevation gain of 800+ feet.

Google Earth image of our route to the Strickler Knob summit.

As I mentioned, this was not the first attempt at this hike.  We first tried in in January 2011, on a cold day with temperatures in the teens - I was still dealing with jet lag after returning from my trip to Japan the weekend before.  In the end, as we struggled, burdened with so many layers to fight off the cold while we climbed nearly 900 feet over the course of a mile and a half section of the longer hike, and we simply had to give up because we were running out of daylight.  The blog post about that failed attempt is here:
http://hawksbillcabin.blogspot.com/2011/02/strickler-knob-moderate-and-incomplete.html

I had promised myself I would make another go of this one, and was glad that Chris agreed to try it.  I'll post about the trail tomorrow.

Strickler Knob: A Moderate (and incomplete) Day Hike

Our hiking group set out on the enterprise that is Strickler Knob a few weeks back. We had just heard too many good things about the trail from the gang at Appalachian Outdoors Adventures, and the reviews of the hike on Hiking Upward were very tempting. Never mind that we chose possibly the very coldest day of the January to make a go of it – the temperature was 20 degrees at the trailhead – or that I was still a bit jetlagged from my trip to Japan. I can never resist a mountaintop view of Page Valley, so it was easily decided.

 

With Tom and Andy coming down from Leesburg, and Chris and I setting off from Hawksbill Cabin, we set up a 9 am rendezvous at the Southern Kitchen. On the way to the meeting point, Chris and I drove by the trailhead parking area to make sure that Chrisman hollow was open – it was; we also continued on down to Scotthorn Gap to make sure that we could park there, since I thought we might reconsider the main route for the day.

 

Our plan was to use the Massanutten trailhead and hike down Waterfall Mountain to the gap between it and Strickler, head to the crossroads where Scotthorn Gap trail comes in, and then up the spine of Strickler Knob to the summit. Hiking Upward (no link today because their site won’t open, I’ll correct this later) has the total distance of 9.5 miles for this hike – very aggressive for our first hike of the season, but Strickler has been looming over us for a couple of years now and the gang was chomping at the bit to complete it.

 

This hike also has pretty significant altitude change, so I was prepared with a Plan B and Plan C when we met the guys at Southern Kitchen:

 

• Plan A – the whole shebang, 9.5 miles, from Hiking Upward;
• Plan B – the shorter, 5.5 mile trail from the trailhead at Scotthorn Gap; or
• Plan C – a car shuttle, starting from either trailhead after leaving cars at both, shortening the trip to 7.5 miles.

Over a hearty breakfast, we chose Plan C…we’ve come down from Duncan Knob and Old Rag in the dark before(in fact Chris and I did the last 3 miles of Half Dome in the dark in 2005), something we didn’t want to repeat, and we decided that 9.5 miles would guarantee that same result again. (FYI, a link to Southern Kitchen is here: http://www.roadfood.com/Reviews/Overview.aspx?RefID=427 )

 

I’ve already mentioned how cold it was starting out. I had prepared with long underwear and flannel lined jeans, I knew I had to be careful of getting them wet, but the streams were hard frozen and that wasn’t going to be a problem. The other guys chose technical hiking pants over long underwear – I think everyone was okay for the cold, but as we warmed up from hiking it was challenging to stay comfortable.

 

From the Massanutten Trailhead, Strickler is a hike that doesn’t cut any slack. About a quarter of a mile in, there is a half mile long descent that plunges 800 feet in a series of switchbacks on a rocky trail – challenging footing with winter leaf litter still covering the trail and with icy spots here and there in the shade. Andy and I synchronized our Casio Pathfinders and both got good readings on the altitude change, I’m glad to say. Chris didn’t fire up this feature of the Suunto, so we didn’t compare Tech Watch results.

 

From the bottom of that descent to the next waypoint, the crossroads with the Scotthorn Gap trail, is about 2 miles. There is a gentle climb over this distance, and the path more or less follows a stream, which you cross twice in this valley. It was very pretty in this hollow, given the cold and the fact that the leaves were down. But you could hear the happy little stream under the ice, and nobody was complaining about the trail difficulty at all.

 

From our past experience, our worries about running out of daylight were driving us. Our usual pace is about a mile per hour on these hikes, and we knew that wouldn’t be good enough – it’s why we made alternate plans. Still, at one point, we did one of these miles in a half hour. I think it was part of one of the old furnace roads, and footing was tough, but we really covered that distance.

 

At last we reached the way point, slung off our packs for snacks, and reconnoitered our situation. We were at the start of the ridge trek for this trail, with about an hour to 90 minutes of daylight left, with 3 miles of rock scramble to look forward to before getting back here, only a mile to a mile and a half on an easy fire road trail from the car. The math wasn’t working, so we had to bag it.

 

Still, all in all, a good workout of about 5.5 miles, and now we are more familiar with this trail’s logistics. We’re going to take it on again at some point this winter, maybe early spring (we prefer not to do the rock scrambles in the summer due to snakes sunning themselves on the rocks).