Compton Peak

Quick Trip

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Wild flame azalea

Shenandoah National Park, April 25, 2023 — My new job as club president is keeping my away from the outdoors, more than I would have thought.  In addition, this month’s Hoodlums work trip was rained out.  I needed an outdoor fix.

My excuse:  Yesterday was the park staff’s annual meeting with its partners – park association, trust, concessionaire, and volunteer organizations.  It’s a chance to share, learn and maintain relationships.  After the meeting I drove an hour northward.

A blowdown was calling near the summit on the section Caroline and I maintain.  After the meeting, I dashed up the mountain to clear it.  It was a step-over, so not the highest priority.  We left it during spring cleaning because we didn’t think we had time to cut it with a hand saw.

The weather was ideal, a sunny 47 degrees.  No breeze and no sweat on the hike up to the summit. It’s been awhile since I’ve been solo.  The solitude was priceless.

Got there and it was gone.  Much later I realized our first ridgerunner was on the trail and that he probably removed it.  Meanwhile, the greenbrier and blackberry canes are starting to go nuts.  My clippers clocked overtime.

The inspection established everything was in shipshape.  The spring was flowing well.  No major concerns other than we can anticipate more than our fair share of weeds.

The azalea and mountain laurel are beginning to bloom.  We have a walkabout planned for May 13 to catch peak flowers.  That date seems about right.

As one might expect, the animals are very active.

Coyotes mark their territory with scat.  It’s possible that this is two males arguing over the boundary.  This has happened several times along game trails lower down.  This rock was part of some steps much further up the mountain, so I’m not certain exactly what the story is.  In addition, found some bear scat, cub size, near the trailhead.  That’s the fist bear scat in awhile.

Fresh bear activity.  There’s not much to eat right now – mostly acorns and other nuts under the leaf litter, and insects. The bears use their claws to shred rotting logs to expose the bugs inside.   This is a black birch.  They are soft and rot quickly – good bug habitat.

Blowdowns never end.  This one is a minor obstruction at 12″ in diameter.  It’s going to need a bigger saw.  We’ll get it next work trip which should be May 20.

Sisu

Cool Rocks. Bad Trail. Hoodlums’ Mission: Fix it.

/ jim fetig / 4 Comments

Hiking trails are like smart phone aps. Sometimes they need to be up-graded. Unlike phone aps, you can’t just punch up the ap store and push a button.

Upgrading a hiking trail is hard work. Normal maintenance such as weeding, clearing blowdowns, and repairing check dams and water bars only maintains the status quo. Adding features takes it to a whole new level. This is the story behind a trail upgrade that changed everything.

The Appalachian range is chock full of remarkable rock formations. Many of these iconic nature works are on the Appalachian Trail (AT) itself which has been purposefully routed so hikers can appreciate them. Others are nearby on side trails marked by blue blazes.

One blue blaze you hardly notice passing by crosses the AT on Compton’s Peak in Shenandoah National Park (SNP). It leads to a delightful, and one of the more geologically interesting columnar basalt formations in the eastern U.S. It’s well worth a look.

Compton Peak columnar basalt formation.

Compton Peak columnar basalt formation.

Better yet, the trail intersection is about a mile south of the Compton Gap parking lot on Skyline Drive. It’s an easy approach hike to the top of Compton Peak. With the side trail, it’s a snappy 2.5 mile round trip. Wow! Let’s go.

Not so fast. – literally. The blue blaze was not only steep, but was treacherous featuring spring-saturated mud-covered boulders and unstable talus on the final half. Not fun to hike and an easy way to turn an ankle or worse.

That’s a problem. The solution: Send in the Hoodlums.

By way of full disclosure, the Hoodlums aren’t criminals. This grubby group of trail maintainers just looks that way. In real life they’re educated professionals who love the AT, Shenandoah National Park. They volunteer their time, sweat and energy to protect and maintain them for everyone to enjoy.

The moniker came by way of an unknown tourist in SNP. When she saw a gang of filthy, tired folks staggering out of the woods, she was overheard observing that they looked like a bunch of “hoodlums” to her, and a brand was born.

Over three hard days last week, a Hoodlum crew of seven led by three National Park Service pros proved that rolling rock isn’t always a brand of beer as we pried, pushed, rolled, dragged, levered, and pounded chunks of basalt, some weighing hundreds of pounds, into 64 stone steps and hundreds of feet of rip rap.

When we were done, the new trail was like a stone escalator down and back up. Thanks to National Park Service folks – Don, Eric and Lyndon, plus PATC Hoodlums – Wayne, Noel, Scott, Steve, Jim, Amy and Cindi – we got ‘er done in three days. We used the last day of our volunteer week to build stone erosion control structures further south on the AT.

At the end we were an exhausted and bruised, but happy lot. As a bonus, I was able to meet some of the thru-hikers I’ve been following this year. Hike on folks, and have fun ya’ll. Meanwhile, we’ll keep improving the AT for those yet to come.