Some day hikers approached us from the opposite direction on this final DCUL backpacking trip of 2023. Mark (“Snake Jumper”) smiled broadly and greeted them more warmly than to most hikers one passes on the Appalachian Trail. They greeted each other by name, exchanged a few words, and wished each other a happy New Year. What a coincidence, I thought! One does not commonly see acquaintances randomly on the AT. However, when this occurrence replicated itself a third time, I pieced the clues together: (1) each group was clearly a different hiking club, (2) they all knew Snake Jumper, and (3) Snake Jumper is not famous or anything.
I stopped and cleared my throat to get Snake Jumper’s attention. James, who was also hiking with us, stopped too. Striking a Superman pose with my fists on my hips I confronted Snake Jumper. “You’ve been seeing other hiking clubs, haven’t you?” Snake Jumper looked down sheepishly. I persisted, “each of those three groups of hikers were obviously other Meetup hiking groups, and you knew them all!”
He came clean immediately and confessed that he had been seeing other hiking clubs. However, he quickly assured us that DCUL was his favorite and that the others meant nothing to him. Satisfied with that response, I asked what he liked about those other clubs that DCUL could not provide. He said DCUL could be a bit hard core with the milage, hiking speed, and willingness to backpack in extreme weather. Sometimes, he needed to just slow down and smell the roses with his day hiking clubs. Then he told me how his day hiking clubs perceive DCUL: we are extreme maniacs who look down on hikers who carry too much gear. “Hey! We do not look down on other hikers!” I countered. We really don’t—you can carry whatever you want; its your back. (Implicitly, I conceded that we can be “extreme maniacs.” Some of our trips are too challenging even for me, and my trail name is “Spider-Man!” For example, I’d love to go on Michael’s (“Uturn’s”) Adirondack snowshoe mountain trek in deep Winter, if I was less afraid of hiking and camping in sustained sub freezing cold and deep snow. Also, I’d love to do a Colorado high route trip with the group, but for my fear of falling off cliffs. However, we have a whole range of trips ranging from low-mileage, relaxing beach parties and refreshing waterfall dips, to our feats of endurance such as the 50 mile Four State Challenge or 26 miles before 4:00 into a hurricane).
In any event, I did not have to give Snake Jumper a comeuppance; the last day-hiker group who passed us did this for us. Upon recognizing Snake Jumper, one hiker in the group brightly said, “hi, Mark” (they don’t know him as “Snake Jumper,” as we in DCUL do). Then, regarding James and me, asked stabbingly “are these your sons?” Snake Jumper recoiled and replied dryly, “no,” and kept walking, insulted by the implication that he’d have to be in his 80s to have fathered us. Always good natured, though, Snake Jumper just walked it off. He’d have to if we were to make it to Whiskey Hollow by sunset.
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DCUL led some great backpacking trips in 2023, but I was hungry for one last hurrah. Snake Jumper and James signed on with me to hike a short 23 mile sliver of the AT from the SNP northbound to Sky Meadows. We planned to hike 17 miles on Saturday, wake early to watch the sunrise over Sky Meadows, and return to civilization with plenty of time to have breakfast and shower up for New Year’s Eve.
After setting up our simple shuttle with one car parked in Ashby Gap and the other near the 4H Center in Front Royal, we started hiking northbound. I never before hiked the section of the AT from our cars to Manassas Gap, thinking it was just a boring connection between the better known SNP and Sky Meadows. I was wrong.
Mostly wooded, this part of the trail featured a nice grassy mountaintop bald. It also skirted the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute for a few miles. According to their website, they “study and breed more than 20 species . . . including those that were once extinct in the wild, like black-footed ferrets and scimitar-horned oryx.” That explains all the scimitar-horned oryx droppings one sees on this section of the AT. According to Wikipedia, the scimitar-horned oryx have a distinctive mating ritual. “Courting is done by means of a mating circle; the male and female stand parallel to one another, facing in opposite directions, and then circle around each other until [a Marvin Gaye song plays and nature takes its course]. If the female is [just not into] the male, she runs away and circles in the reverse direction.” (Brackets supplied). So, basically, they date like most of us did in college, making their extinction puzzling. I don’t know how successful the Smithsonian has been with this project. I did not see a single scimitar-horned oryx, but I did see a rhino.
We broke for lunch along a gentle brook. James whipped out and quickly assembled a portable chair—a decidedly non-ultra-light accessory. Because we DCULers do not look down on frivolous gear choices of others, we only gently teased him as we looked up at him from our perch on the ground by his feet.
Crossing Manassas Gap, we climbed to a rolling ridge leading us to Whiskey Hollow, our home for the evening. Arriving shortly before sundown, we gathered wood and started a blazing fire outside the nice, well-kept shelter. The shelter was so desirable, and the nearby tent sites so lacking, that Snake Jumper and James chose to set up for the night inside. I always sleep better in my tent, so I planned to set up after dinner a quarter mile up the trail on a nice flat spot.
We sat around the campfire enjoying our dinners. Riffing off the name of our evening refuge, “Whiskey Hollow,” I made some inviting promises in the trip posting that attracted my companions. “Imagine your last act of 2023 sipping Scotch in the mountain woods in front of a warming fire with a nearby rushing spring-fed stream ready to serenade you to sleep.” The fire certainly chased away the edges of the freezing temperature a few feet beyond its glow. The gentle flow of the nearby brook was soothing and, indeed, made slumber easy. I blew it with the Scotch, though. None of us brought any. I had tequila, which I normally don’t drink and don’t know why I brought it. James had something other than Scotch. Snake Jumper only brought his memories. A nondrinker, he said with a sigh that the only time he misses bourbon is when sitting around a campfire after a long day hiking. Neither James nor I shared with Snake Jumper—I suppose it is rude to tempt a teetotaler, so we were doing him (and us) a favor.
We went to sleep early, but well after dark with bright stars overhead. I promised a sunrise viewing at the Ambassador Whitehouse overlook the next day. This required us to wake early and start hiking by 6:00 a.m., in the dark, to beat the sun.
Sunday morning at 6:00 a.m. I stood alone all packed up, slightly shivering in the cold darkness. I waited briefly for Snake Jumper and James to hike up to me. I looked down the trail and did not see their headlamps approaching me. I hiked down to the shelter to check on their status and saw them still packing up. I excused myself and told them I’d meet them at the overlook. A few weeks ago on another DCUL trip I tried, and failed, to witness a dramatic sunrise. I did not want to miss this one. Because of my detour to the shelter, I did not actually begin to make forward progress toward the overlook until well after 6:00. This did not leave me much time to make a 7:00 a.m. sunrise with the distance to the overlook, so I hiked up the mountain at a very fast clip. At the mountain top ridge I started jogging. Success! I arrived before 7:00 and discovered the sun does not follow human solar miscalculations. Sunrise was 7:30. So, I patiently sat at a picnic table and admired an unusual natural light show. A thin, deep red line on the horizon, between the mountains in the distance and the thick clouds a little bit above their peaks, glowed brighter and brighter. The red light spread steadily across the clouds toward me in different hews with the pinpoint of the sun’s location becoming increasingly obvious.
The skyline of Tysons Corner is more than 50 miles away, but with the rising spotlight of sun shining from behind it, it stood out distinctly.
Then, the sun silently rose above the ridge line.
I said a short prayer thanking God for keeping us alive, sustaining us, and bringing us to this season. Then, still alone, I brushed my teeth.
I later learned that Snake Jumper and James witnessed the sunrise on a clearing off the AT. Unlike some DCUL trips that promised mountain top sunrises—are you reading this and taking notes, David U (“Baseball”)?—I delivered.
We easily hiked the remaining miles downhill toward our cars. Along the way Snake Jumper, who is a true dog-lover, saw some day hikers with a cute puppy striding toward us. The dog’s tail wagged and Snake Jumper asked the hiker with the lead “is your dog friendly,” as he motioned towards a petting. The man replied, “yes, he is very friendly.” However, when Snake Jumper held out the back of his hand, the dog ran away like a scimitar-horned oryx uninterested in a potential suitor. “Hey!” Snake Jumper complained. “I thought you said your dog was friendly!” The man replied, “that’s not my dog.” (See ‘The Pink Panther Strikes Again.’)
We arrived at our cars to reverse the shuttle and have breakfast at the Apple House before returning home. This trip concluded DCUL’s 2023 hiking year. I already am anticipating three exciting DCUL trips posted for 2024–Jones’ Mountain Cabin, the Secret Agent Mission, and Pariah Canyon in Southern Utah.
—David O. (“Spider-Man”)
DC UL Backpacking 
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