Day 40 - Sunday, April 4, 2021

Happy Easter Sunday 🐇 ✟!


Overnight temperatures only dipped down to 38° with the todays highs expected to be in the mid 60’s. 

Today we are hiking from VA 624, Newport Road (704.6 NoBo) To VA 621, Craigs Creek Road (689.2 NoBo) equaling 15.4 miles. 

We began hiking at 8:15 am and the temperature was 42° with partly cloudy skies. 





We continued hiking in the Brush Mountain East Wilderness which is part of the Thomas Jefferson National Forest. 



I was attempting to capture the magnitude of one of our climbs that we did today. Elevation changes for this hike were over 11,000 feet when you take into account all the ascents and descents that we did today. 


Many of the ascents and descents that we encountered the last four days were “ridge runners” where you hiked directly up the mountain taking the grade straight on with very few switchbacks which made hiking very strenuous and physical. As you can see in the picture, the ridges were very narrow, only 15-20 feet wide. The adjacent oversteepened side slopes were in excess of 60° from horizontal and several hundred feet high. 





The Audie Leon Murphy Monument marking the site of his death in an airplane crash on Brush Mountain in 1971.  Audie Murphy was the most decorated American soldier of World War II who later became one of the most recognized actors of his time. The AT was relocated in 1990 so the trail would pass his monument. It was a moment of reflection taking in the all gifts and tributes that have been left at the monument in his honor over the years; coins, flowers, medals, personal notes, toy soldiers and even bottles of champagne... and of course numerous American flags.





Jim made a ground blaze and I made a cairn to mark the trail. 



Turtle Power in a rock scramble or is he looking for grubs to eat 😂





Overlook at Cove Mountain.










Dragons Tooth.




Views from Dragons Tooth.





We are making our descent from Dragons Tooth and I was somewhat surprised of the degree of difficulty negotiating the rock scrambles. The pictures above are actually “tame” in comparison to most of the other rock descents that we encountered. There were several multi-level, tiered, fractured face, near vertical bedrock slopes to descend which required some substantial upper body strength and and coordination and balance. If you were afraid of heights it would have been “challenging”. Considering the volume of day hikers and the degree of skill required to ascend and descend to go to Dragons Tooth I am shocked that there aren’t more falling accidents and/or frequent calls to 911 for assistance. It took us considerably longer to come down than what we expected and I was happy to have this hike behind us...


We finished hiking at 5:10 pm. It was a great day to hike with partly sunny skies and the high for the day was 64°. 

Till next time... Happy Hiking  🥾

😋 

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