Robertson Mountain Hike

 On October 19th, hoping to catch something near peak foliage, I drove out to Shenandoah National Park to do some hiking. Looking at places to hike, I saw Robertson Mountain mentioned as a neglected gem - overshadowed by nearby popular hikes like Old Rag.

You can approach Robertson from the valley (here and here are listings for that hike) but I chose the somewhat easier (though about the same length) hike from Skyline Drive. I parked at the Limberlost parking area (about mile 43 on Skyline Drive) and started out on the Limberlost Trail, which it turns out is one of the accessible trails in the park - it's flat, smooth gravel. It was chilly when I headed out and I started out bundled up in my puffy jacket, wool hat and light gloves. After a little bit, Limberlost intersects with the Old Rag Fire Road, which, being a road, was pretty easy hiking by the standards of Shenandoah. I mean, the trail is wide and flat enough to drive a truck down - something I saw proof of when a forest ranger pickup truck passed by. I'm nervous about a lot of things when I hike, one of which is losing the trail. This is particularly true in autumn, when even the most obvious trail can get obscured by leaves. It's pretty damn impossible to lose sight of a forest road, so I was able to relax about that particular issue on this hike.

Pretty spot on the way up

The fire road intersects with other interesting trails along the way. If I had started earlier in the day or at a time of year when the days are long, I could see extending this hike via a side excursion down the White Oak trail or even bagging both Robertson and Old Rag mountains in one hike. As it was, I continued on my planned route, noticing many of the various trails that intersected the fire road but actually almost missing the Robertson Mountain Trail. There is a trail marker at the intersection of the fire road and the Robertson Mountain trail, but it's sort of off to the side - possible to miss if you're lost in thought while hiking.

The big vistas weren't quite at peak, but individual leaves were beautiful. My new iPhone 13 takes amazing close-up photos!

The trail up to the mountain is unblazed and fairly steep. According to my Strava log, you climb about 500 feet in a little less than a mile (in contrast, hiking up from the valley you climb 1,500 feet in 1.5 miles!). When I got to the top I found the expected rock outcropping at the peak. Here's another thing I worry about while hiking. I don't have a great sense of direction, and it's easy for me, while exploring the rocks at the top of such mountains, to get totally turned around and have no idea where I came in. If there are several trails leading to the peak I can get confused about which one I came in on. Because of this, I took out a red Buff I had in my bag and tied it around a tree right next to the trail I had come in on.

A marker to help me stay unlost

I explored the rock outcropping at the peak, but didn't find any vista. I felt kind of bummed - like maybe this is one of those views that's only good when the trees were bare. It was still a nice hike, but I was a little bit disappointed about climbing a mountain and not getting a view. I explored around the peak area some more; I didn't find any view, but I did find a campsite, where I sat down and had lunch. While I was eating my lunch I spotted a guy coming out of the rock outcropping at the peak. As far as I could tell, there was only one way in and out of the rocks, and I hadn't seen him arrive, nor had I seen him while I was up on the rocks - so he must have been on some part of the rocks I had missed.

After lunch I climbed back up the rocks to try and find where this other hiker had been, and lo and behold - I found an area I had missed before, with a lovely, expansive view of Old Rag and the valley below. The spot was warm and sunny, as well. I unbundled a bit and walked around taking pictures, then sat for a bit just enjoying the view.

View at the top

Bald on Night Mountain (apologies to Mussorgsky)

Shiny!

The hike back was just the reverse of the hike in - except that I stayed on the fire road all the way to the parking lot. On the way out I made a quick stop at the Skyland Lodge. I'm rarely in this section of the park and I wanted to see what the lodge was like (nothing special). I also wanted coffee, but the line was too long. I stopped at a couple of the overlooks on Skyline Drive, then headed home. I did eventually get my coffee, along with a soft pretzel, at a WaWa Market on the way home. Ted and I are big WaWa fans, and we both particularly like their pretzels. Coffee and a pretzel may seem like an odd combo - but not if it's WaWa.

Looking west from a Skyline Drive overlook

BTW, one thing I didn't worry about, but perhaps should have, was bears. When I posted photos from the hike on Facebook, a friend commented that she had been hiking that trail just a week earlier and had had a close encounter with a a bear!

Western Maryland Rail Trail

This was the incredible shrinking trip. I had originally hoped to pull off an overnight bike camping trip. Unfortunately, as the date approached I just couldn't motivate myself to prepare for a camping trip, which is a lot of work no matter how many times you've done it before. So I changed to the idea of doing a day of biking, staying over in a hotel, then a day of hiking. But really, who wants to stay in a hotel in these COVID times, particularly in areas which may not take it seriously? And let's face it, given the political signs around town I'm not at all certain this is an area that gives much weight to pandemic precautions. Also, as the date approached, the weather, while great for biking (cloudy, though warm), wasn't great for leaf peeping - so I decided to put off the hiking portion and just do a cycling day trip.

Yeah, maybe I wouldn't want to stay in a hotel in this town

So here's what it came down to: a roughly 50 mile one day bike ride. I would start in Big Pool, MD and ride out the C&O Canal towpath for about 25 miles to the western terminus of the Western Maryland Rail Trail, which pretty much parallels the C&O, then take the WMRT back. The C&O is a rough gravel path, while the WMRT is paved - I figured I'd do the harder riding first.

Big Pool has a nice parking lot for trail users. Unfortunately the bathrooms were still locked at 8:30 AM. Fortunately, there were bushes. I grabbed the Biffy Bag out of my glove box in case more serious bathroom needs were to arise later. I set out on the WMRT and was able to transfer to the C&O Towpath after less than a mile (turn left at the scary "I Voted for Biden" Halloween display).

This is scary, but not in the way they intended

This part of the C&O Towpath is pretty rutted (other sections have been recently resurfaced and are much smoother). I soon figured out this was going to be slow going - and a bumpy ride on a bike with no suspension and relatively narrow tires (I'm running 35 mm tires). Still the scenery is lovely and the riding wasn't all that bad. The only challenge was the muddy parts, through which the bike would slip and slide. At one point I hit a stick in a muddy area. I started to feel the bike slide out from under me, but I instinctively powered through it somehow. I remember years ago I had the same feeling riding a motorcycle around a corner on wet fallen leaves. I could feel the bike start to slide out sideways. For whatever reason I instinctively hit the throttle, which turned out to have been the right thing to have done. The power pushed me through the turn and the bike recovered. When I came to a stop at a traffic light the driver who stopped next to me said he saw me slide and was sure I was going to go down. But I didn't then and I didn't now.

C&O Scenery

The ride was pretty uneventful for a while. I rode along, taking in the scenery, looking at the river, checking out the hiker/biker campsites as I went by (only one was occupied). Then at one point I suddenly got that sinking feeling that the bike wasn't riding right. I looked down, and sure enough, my rear tire was going flat. Fortunately, I had brought along two extra tubes, tools and my brand new air pump. Unfortunately, my new pump didn't fare that well. The pump has two settings - one to pump higher volumes of air, but at lower pressure, and another to pump at higher pressure, but lower volume. The idea is that you fill the tire using the high volume setting, then finish it up pumping it to full pressure with the high pressure setting. Unfortunately, the mode switch jammed and so I was stuck on the high pressure setting. I got the tire pumped up well enough, and in fact let a little air out of the front tire to give myself a cushier ride. As I resumed riding I noticed how much smoother the ride was with the tires a little soft - I should have done this at the beginning of the ride. I guessed that the rear tire was probably still below the recommended minimum pressure of 55 PSI, but it was close enough. I rode on, a little concerned that I had already had a flat and still had a lot of miles to go.

Changing a tire on the C&O trail

About five miles later I started to hear a weird squeaking sound form the rear of the bike. I had put one pannier on the bike to hold my layers of clothing, food, camera, etc. When I looked back I found it swinging back and forth - barely fastened to the bike. My panniers are old and aren't quite a fit for my current rear rack (which is also an antique). The bags hook onto the top of the rack with two hooks, and then there's a third hook at the bottom. Well, the bottom hook had bent out of shape so it was more of an L shape than a hook shape. It had slipped off the rack, which allowed the bag to start bouncing around, which had then allowed one of the top hooks to come undone. The squeaking I had heard was the bag swinging back and forth on the one remaining hook. Once again, I stopped. I pulled out my multi-tool, bent the bottom hook back into shape, and reattached the back. I rode on.

At the ruins of the kilns at the Round Top Cement Mill

The C&O is a fun ride in part because of the remnants of its past - the various canal locks and other infrastructure. My favorite spot on this ride was the ruins of the Round Top Cement Works, a business dating to the 1830's. Apparently it thrived for many years - the cement used in building the Washington Monument comes form here. The business ran into problems thanks to several major fires (it appears that for a business that operated eight large kilns, their fire safety practices may have been a little lacking). In any case, around the turn of the 20th century there was a third major fire, plus the world was shifting away from limestone-based cement and towards using the exciting new product of Portland Cement. Round Top went out of business, but the kilns remain. 

The rest of the ride was free from mechanical problems. As I got towards my destination it was a little hard to tell where the connection points between the trails were. I didn't want to miss the final connection and blithely keep pedaling west, so I switched trails at C&O Lock 56. When I got on the WMRT I realized I wasn't at the end - it turns out I jumped the gun - the western terminus of the WMRT wasn't for another two miles of so. But that was OK. 

By this point it was lunchtime. About a mile into my ride back I came across a parking lot which had a picnic table. I stopped there for lunch, the main part of which was leftovers of last night's leftovers of the previous night's Indian food - doctored up with vegetables and cashews. Yum! While I was eating a woman on a recumbent trike rode in to take a break and use the Porta-Pot. She and I chatted for a minute. Her trike was all rigged out with a cargo rack and had a couple of water bottle holders, whereas it's hard to carry anything on Valerie's trike. Her setup gave me ideas on how to rig up Valerie's trike to increase its cargo capacity.

Now that I was back on pavement I figured I could pump the tires up a bit. My pump was still half stuck, but fortunately I had a Plan B - CO₂ cylinders. As a alternative to a pump, people carry compressed CO₂ cylinders and a little adapter head to connect the cylinder to the tire valve. I had one of these - in fact, I realized I had two cylinders with me, which made we more willing to use one up. I usd the CO₂ to fill both tires - though when I got home, I realized they were both still low. Heavens knows what pressure I had been riding at on the C&O. One thing about using gas cartridges - if you remember learning the ideal gas law in physics, you'll know that the gas gets cold as it is released from high pressure. By the time I finished putting air in the tires the valves were covered in a thin layer of ice! I packed up and rode on.

I guess riding the C&O had taken a toll on me. As I rode back both my tush and hands started to hurt. I found myself shifting both sitting position and hand position almost constantly. Things were starting to hurt. When I reached the town of Hancock I decided to make a stop. This allowed my body to get a break, and I bought and consumed my secret ride weapon - a cup of caffeinated coffee, purchased from The Fractured Banana ice cream shop. I don't drink caffeine on a regular basis, so when I do it really is like a video game "power-up". I did, I must say, resist the enticement of the ice cream. I drank my coffee and rode on.

Coffee outside The Fractured Banana

A few more miles of riding, and I was back at the car. Total mileage was about 47 miles (I figured on 50 for the day, but came up a few short because I jumped the gun and turned around at Lock 56 rather than the western WMRT terminus). Good ride, comfortable weather, and exploring a new trail.