Shenandoah

Shenandoah National Park is located in Virginia, and is home to a stretch of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The place has a lot of history. Shenandoah was authorized in 1926 and fully established on December 26, 1935. Prior to being a park, much of the area was farmland and there are still remnants of old farms in several places. The state of Virginia slowly acquired the land through eminent domain and then gave it to the U.S. Federal Government on the promise it would be designated a National Park. The park itself is long and narrow. The Shenandoah River and valley are on the west side, and the hills of Piedmont on the east. The most popular aspect of the park seems to be Skyline Drive-a 105 mile long National Scenic Byway that follows the ridgeline. Even though I think paving roads on top of beautiful mountains because people are too lazy to climb them is criminal, they have redeemed themselves by saving lots of other land from future development. Almost 79,579 acres have been designated as a protected wilderness and there are over 500 miles of hiking trails. As you can imagine, Skyline Drive attracts huge crowds. Even so, I was impressed with the cleanliness of the park facilities and trails.
The part we decided to hike was a loop in the Matthew’s Arm section, in the northern part of the park. We arrived late at night, and instead of getting a hotel room, we just fell asleep in the car. We wanted to get on the trail at sunrise, and we figured paying for a room just to sleep 4 hours wasn’t worth it. Anyhow, the next morning we waited a few minutes for the Park Office to open so we could get our required backcountry permit. This was surprisingly a painless process and the Ranger guy was super helpful.
Our route was developed around a few interesting destinations- Devils Stairs and a forgotten frontier town cemetery. The trails in this area are beautiful. We had trouble finding the Sugarloaf Trail which connected a crucial leg of our trip. We spent some valuable time searching for it, but eventually we decided to take a look at our maps and make some changes. (We would later find this trail on the last bit of the hike) We improvised a new loop consisting of several trails that would still allow us to visit those interesting locations. It worked out great, and gave us some experience with navigation that will come in handy for our future trips. The Devil’s stairs were steep and slippery, as promised. It was very similar to Rickett’s Glenn, back home. There were huge walls of rock on either side that became narrower and formed chutes funneling water with us as we descended. The trail drops over a thousand feet in just a fraction of a mile. After reaching the bottom there were nice hollows we might have camped in, but we wanted to make more distance before retiring for the night. The trail flanks Pignut Mountain for a few miles, and about ¾ the way up is where the cemetery’s located. Most of the literature we’ve seen describes this place as spooky, but I thought it was serene. It is surrounded by a large stone wall with a single iron gate. We continued on past rock walls of old farms to our campsite for that night. It was not an established campsite, but it was perfect. Actually, I can’t recall more than one or two obvious campsites on the entire loop. We set up quicker than ever and enjoyed some delicious dinner and card games before calling it a day. In the morning I took some extra time to make it look like we were never there, then we headed out. We didn’t leave too much distance for ourselves, and made it back to the car in the afternoon. I still have mixed feelings about the whole Park and its commercialized pseudo-nature identity, but these trails were amazing.