Old Rag Mountain: Sunday, March 10, 2013

    For the last year I have been making changes in my life so that me and Dan could participate in fun and exciting activities and travel the beautiful United States.  I wanted to experience and enjoy life. Too much work and not enough play is what I decided. I'll do something about it.  Here we go:

Sunday,       

     March 10th, 2013         

       Old Rag Mountain

  My desire for adventure, excitement, and fun has begun.   Dan and I decided to drive into the Shanendoah's to hike Old Rag Mountain.  He had already hiked it several years back and knew what is what like, but chose not to warn me as he guessed I would probably chicken out had I known what it was really like.

Old Rag -- kind of a funny name for a mountain but Old Rag is known as the most spectacular mountain in the northern Virginia Blue Ridge and the trail is one of the most beautiful in all of the magnificent Shenandoah National Park.

  The Old Rag trail is a little over 9 miles and is a challenge for even very experienced hikers. If Old Rag were anymore difficult, you'd need to bring climbing gear.  Many aspiring mountain climbers use this mountain as somewhat of a stepping stone..... both literally and figuraturatively speaking.


At the head of the Old Rag trail are some very deliberate forewarnings. On a scale of 1-10, the degree of difficulty, it's an 8. There are also warnings for people with high blood pressure, and the unprepared -- without water
or food or appropriate footwear.


Most omnious of all is a warning that falling off of the mountain side can result in death....  Yikes!  What has Dan gotten me into? 

 The trail starts out -- going up and up and up and up getting so steep that it becomes a series of "endless" switchbacks. I tried counting the number of  endless switchbacks, but I gave up after an hour or two.  The snow was my biggest problem; snow and running shoes aren't a good combination.  I just couldn't get the traction I needed to move at a quicker pace.

 As we started up the switchbacks we started seeing a considerable number of people going down the trail. I didn't think too much of it at the time but later I came to realize that those were the people who just didn't make it.





At the top of the last switchback (2 or so hours later) the trail suddenly turns into large boulders..... boulders as big as cars, semi-trucks and in some cases, as big as enormously large buildings! Normal hiking had now turned into frightening rock scrambling and scaling!

 

 

 

  Well, this hike was certainly challenging but, relatively speaking, I was having no problem physically.  I looked at some of the situations and said...."No way!  Nope this just isn't the type of hiking I do."  I was looking at a crevice in one of the boulders that had to be about 10 feet deep and 4 feet wide -- down there was the trail marker! ....... I got this vision of me, down in the crevice and then precisely at the moment, the earth jars slightly, the crevice closes --flattening me like a pancake!  I mustered up the courage and went for it.....I did it!  So, I had what it takes after all.







 There were other challenges along the way but all in all I was doing great.  Many times we were in a potentially very dangerous situation.

I had never said the words, "No way!" so much in my entire life.









I was amazed at the endurance and flexiblility that I had.  Years of aerobics, running, yoga, and pilates has paid off! I had no idea that I was physically capable of this.  I really have a new outlook on training now that I have conquered Old Rag Mountain!








    Just as I wanted to be finished, I see a sign that says we have 5.2 more miles to go!  We weren't "by any means" finished with our journey on Old Rag and I was GETTING TIRED........we plodded on....













There were more challenging areas;  places where you had to be a contortionist of sorts, and with no immediately adjacent
bottomless mountain sides.

I seemed to become more and more nimble..... It was okay.  I knew there was no turning back...I had to move forward!  Other challenges remained... but I met them all.  Leaping boulders and rocking climbing was certainly a challenge that I welcomed!  Dan was certainly amazed at my hidden talents!

Old Rag Mountain Summit

 

The Descent

 

 

(There is a video here and if you can't see it, go to your desktop) 

The descent was dangerous for me since I did not have the appropriate footwear on.  Basically, I felt like I was wearing a pair of ski's.  I just slid most of way down, either by foot or I just sat down and slid on my bottom!  It was actually quite fun, however, I did take three falls where I landed straight on my back!  I laughed the entire time, however!  I just got back up, dusted my self off and kept going. It was 6:30 p.m. by now; we started at 1:50 p.m.  My socks had gotten wet a 1/2 hour into the hike since I did not have on waterproof hiking shoes.  I was uncomfortably soaked and tired, but I new it would be dark in 30 minutes.  We still had 2 miles to go on the fire trail but we managed to keep a brisk pace to beat the dark. 

 

The Fire Trail

 

 

From The Fire Trail

 



  From the fire trail, we took these pictures of Old Rag Mountain from a distance.  Dan and I had climbed that mountain together, scaled and jumped the boulders, slid down the other side in the wet and sometimes deep snow, and finished hiking the fire trail.  At times, all I could do was to just trust Dan.  Trust that he would be at the bottom to catch me when I slid down a wet, semi-sized boulder.....trust that the tree wasn't going to break when that's all we had to hold onto....trust that we would be out of there before dark.  We did some true bonding this day....  It was awesome.



Our total hike that day was about 5 1/2 hours and 9.5 miles. We had put in a great day! And, I





made it!!!!!!! What a rewarding and somewhat spiritual journey for me. It was by far the most difficult thing I have accomplished.  


I had a tear or two swell up in my eyes when I finished and said, " That was awesome, but I never want to do that again!"


Gina sitting on Old Rag Mountain