My friend and gung-ho backpacking partner D--, with the packs unloaded from
my old 1993 Escort on Skyline Drive.  My pack (right) has the older style external frame.

Making Camp--
a weekend's trip into the Blue Ridge backcountry

---

After about a three-hour drive from the city, down US 29 to the US 33 entrance to Shenandoah National Park at Swift Run Gap, I strapped 32 pounds of equipment onto my back and proceeded to enter Browns Cove with my friend D--.  He was an accomplished Eagle Scout and must find great nostalgia in getting out like this.  D--'s gear is somewhat more casual than mine, all stuffed into a big internal-frame outfit that really looks more like an old-fashioned rucksack.  It was not really a rigorous trip compared to some we've been on, but I haven't done it in 3 years and had lost some of my acquired wisdom about preparation and procedure.  We walked about 600 feet down in altitude from our parking spot at milepost 81.1, elevation 2900, on Skyline Drive (the ridge roadway built in the 1930's by the CCC, when Shenandoah was being established).  We were finally able to set up my two-man Eureka hex dome at a  camp at 2300 feet elevation, 1-1/2 miles in near a Doyles River tributary stream.  Finding flat camping ground along trails that tend to follow the contours of river gullies can be difficult at times.  We wanted to camp closer to the car (see "no site", map), but nothing out of sight of the trail was usable.  We ended up nestled below a stand of pine, near the mowed-out right-of-way for an electrical power line that appeared destined for the Loft Mountain developed campground about a mile to the north. I rapidly deployed my ThermaRest pad that has seen so much use that I have to blow it up "manually", and unfurled my Coleman 15-degree mummy bag, which should really be washed one of these days. There is nothing like crashing out at a remote site, with such comfortable bedding after any kind of a hiking workout.

Of course, "roughing it" always means doing without or extra work. Readily accessible water from a bottle or the tap (depending upon your level of fear) is a city luxury that we did not have.  Besides the inconvenience of needing to treat stream water at all in the backcountry, I had to contend with my older "non-ergonomic" water filtration system, a 1990-vintage First Need unit, which I have replaced for the next trip with the more straightforward PUR Scout.  To get to the water supply, we had to walk about 100 feet down in altitude, along a 4x4 fire road, to a stream crossing where the water was deep enough to immerse the intake tubing.  I should really just bring a good-sized aluminum vessel and boil it for 3 minutes, since I never run out of fuel for my Coleman Peak 1 gasoline stove in just 3 days when I carry an MSRP reserve fuel bottle.  Actually, we were being model campers by staying so far from the river, thus lessening the "impact" of our inevitable run-off. We had planned even lower impact by camping at two separate sites on the two nights of the trip, but we got so settled in and tired at the first that we decided to stay put at our "base".  I can see why older men like us are not readily drafted as infantry soldiers.
 

A detail of the USGS topo map showing where we camped. The full map at this resolution, an 830 x  900 x 256-color .jpg file, is a 226 KB download, accessible by clicking above.  Our 2nd day day hike heads down the main run to the left and back.

Saturday, 22 June 1996 -- Day hike and lounging about camp On the second day, we packed up the bare minimum in daypacks and wandered down the stream we were camped on, past two waterfalls, to a low point at 1480 feet where our river met the other main branch to form the larger Doyles River as it runs out of the hollow.  We spied a campsite clearly in view of the trail there ("who wouldn't like to camp there?", I said to myself).  This was a well-travelled day-hike route, so maybe they got busted by the NPS rangers, whom D-- said he encountered on an earlier trip to the nearby falls.  We climbed back out of the valley along the second stream and found a most delightful waterfall at 1900 feet, which you could walk right into from the trail.  D-- quickly donned his swim suit and was in the water in no time, getting a free hydro-foot-massage from the cold, rapidly-rushing water.  I put my feet in, and since it was about 85 degrees F and we had been climbing for a long time, it wasn't long before I was splashing this water over myself as well.  We saw 4 or 5 groups of day-hikers pass by, probably thinking we were weird.  No, we were hot and getting tired.  I hated putting my boots back on.  But at least I had put some money into a pair of watertight full-leather footgear that can take immersion up to about 6 inches in the water without soaking one's socks (the first step on the road to terminal blistering).  When we got back to the camp after hiking, I indulged in the relative luxury of freeze-dried dinners.  The first night I dared to try a 3-year old package of Mountain House brand "chili", along with "green peas" from a similar historical epoch.  The second night I used a more contemporary package of "Louisiana red beans and rice".  During those 3 years, the freeze-dry people must have realized that those entrees really don't feed two people, so now they're bigger (20 oz vs 13 oz total, when reconstituted).  A 20 oz serving is quite the meal for just one.  I didn't realize how much food was in those packs, so I ended up carrying home 3 spare ones to be resurrected another day (or year).  When we squared away our site for each of the nights, we of course had to secure "everything having a strong scent" into plastic-enshrouded rainproof stuff sacks, suspended by a rope from a high tree branch on account of the bears.  I have only seen two black bears in all the time I've been visiting Shenandoah NP since 1988, but do not want to run the risk.  At Loft Mountain campground, the ranger station and check-in point had on prominent display a picnic cooler that has been chewed and/or clawed all the way through by one of our bruin friends, to warn people to stow their food in their cars overnight.  Well, we had no car--only trees and rope.

Sunday, 23 June 1996 -- Climbing our way out again

Having had our fill of the outdoors (and especially the experience of these enormous black ants that tended to crawl over everything outside of the tent netting), D-- and myself shouldered our full loads and backtracked to the car.  The typical hike originating at Skyline Drive is just like that.  A long ways down going in, with the continual reminder that what goes down must come up, unless you're using two cars.  I am always amazed that my strength for climbing up to the ridge in that park has a way of giving out precisely when we hit the top and pass the trailhead going the other way.  Back in sight of the asphalt, I pulled my amassed trash, dutifully packed out, from its storage bag in my pack and disposed of it in the bearproof receptacle at the parking area.  I have to say I was tired, though not to the point of feeling injured, like on some trips.  We rode into Warrenton on US 211 and had our first real food again--at the Burger King.  This restaurant is the last fast food before the hills, and after three days of freeze-dried and non-perishable victuals, I don't mind going for a flame-broiled burger.  It was another 1-1/2 hours up the gradient of city congestion to metro Washington, and back to drop off D--, where his family awaited his return from the silence.  I then went home to start putting away my own equipment.  A consistent feature of any kind of camping, but especially of backpacking, is the toleration of dirt--until rejoining urban sanitary conveniences such as showers, dishwashers, and washing machines.  But the dirt is readily forgotten, the woods are not.