And Then There Were Two: LM: Trout Run Valley July 5-7, 2024

James R. planned what should have been a straight-forward weekend backpacking trip circumnavigating the Trout Run Valley, along the Virginia/West Virginia border near Wardensville, WV. This is an area where DCUL goes often, since there are spectacular views from high points, ample drinking water, and capacious campsites. Well, it didn’t quite work out that way, but the two DCUL backpackers who were silly enough to go had fun anyway.

Trip organizer James got sick and couldn’t make the outing, while several other would-be participants also dropped out for various reasons. So Aileen K (“Lucky Charms”) and Mark R. (“Snake Jumper”) made up a crew of two. The extreme heat and humidity, as well as lack of drinking water due to drought, caused us to modify James’ plan a bit — either purposely or by accident. Aileen claimed that sweating is supposed to be good for the soul and help eliminate toxins. If that were true, then by the end of the weekend we would have qualified as benign angels. Nah, not likely.

Honestly, the toughest part of the whole weekend was the first mile and a half, as we climbed from Wolf Gap to Tibbit Knob. That is a mere 850 feet of ascent, but we were carrying lots of water since we would not see a source until midway through the following day. More to the point, while the air temperature was in the mid-90’s, the bare rocks on the steep portion had been baking all day to a much higher temperature. It was brutal. On the plus side, the view from the knob once we got there was spectacular, there was a nice breeze at the exposed high point, and we had the nearby shady campsite to ourselves. Nobody else was mad enough to brave the heat. Luckily, the predicted thunderstorms never arrived, since lightning would have been no fun on the exposed knob. We only got some light rain sprinkles, after we had set our shelters.

At Lucky Charms’ suggestion, we got up at 4:30 Saturday morning, in time to catch the sunrise from Tibbit Knob and high-tail it down the mountain toward Devil’s Hole at first light. We moved fast, trying to cover miles before the heat and humidity built up. We stopped to talk with a local day-hiker, though, who complained that the people who left a mess with fireworks at a nearby campsite must be “urbanites.” We passed several places where the map showed dotted blue lines, indicating unreliable streams, which were all dry. As expected.

As the sun climbed high in the sky, we turned toward the next expected water source at Halfmoon Run, now moving more deliberately to avoid suffocating in the humidity trapped in the dense vegetation. We both noticed that we weren’t urinating much and what did come out was cloudy and so yellow it was nearly orange. Those are signs of dehydration, but since we were not getting headaches, nausea, dizziness or weakness, we pressed on. Unfortunately, the incipient heat exhaustion might have affected our judgement. Once we got to the lovely water source at Halfmoon Run, we were so focussed on drinking and cooling off that we completely ignored the ample signage pointing the way up Halfmoon Mountain, and we turned the wrong direction. That cost us a couple of miles of extra outdoor sauna-walking, and by the time we returned to Halfmoon Run, Snake Jumper was momentarily tempted to just camp by the creek. Lucky Charms rightly pointed out, however, that we would have nothing to do for hours but laze around with plenty of cool water — which is plainly intolerable.

So, we ground our way up the Halfmoon Mountain blast furnace. Worth it! As you can see from the sunset photo at the top of this report, the view was grand. Plus, there was a blessed breeze. Since there were only two of us (and some teenagers had already taken the only small campsite nearby) we stealth-camped on a steep slope. Lucky Charms wedged herself between two trees in a space so tight that she could only set up one of the two poles on her tiny UL tent. Snake Jumper hung his hammock with no problem, but had to get creative folding his tarp around some inconvenient branches. Luckily, it didn’t rain.

Sunday, we once again arose at 4:30 to beat the heat, but Snake Jumper was feeling a bit worn from the previous day’s effort. So, we moved a bit more slowly, enjoying the butterflies, colorful mushrooms and flowers, while pitying the drought-parched vegetation. Thankfully there was plenty of drinking water available on our final day, at Halfmoon and Deep Gutter Runs.

When we arrived at the base of Big Schloss (which is usually the literal and figurative highpoint of hiking Trout Run Valley) we decided to keep going without climbing the rocky “castle.” If you’ve never been there before, you should definitely climb the Schloss. Aileen and Mark had been there many times, however, and were not in the mood to deal with it in the heat. So, we pushed past toward the car parked at Wolf Gap containing a cooler of drinks on ice. The ice was gone and the drinks were warm. Oh well, at least they were wet. Mark needs to buy a better cooler.

On the way home, our two salt-crusted protagonists stopped for second-breakfast at the Apple House. Talk about the absolute classic place to replace expended calories after a backpacking trip in this region! The Apple House is best known for its apple butter cinnamon donuts (pictured) but Mark prefers the apple fritters.

For planning future trips, here is a link to the trip announcement on MeetUp: https://www.meetup.com/dc-ul-backpacking/events/301966235/

Here is a link to the planned trip route (not what we actually followed) on the GPS-enabled app Caltopo: https://caltopo.com/m/KJF41