Mountain Assault

Due to some prodding by Tina Fink a number of us headed down to the Shenandoah Valley for the weekend to relax a bit and do some awesome hiking through the valley. Ross and two other friends headed out from Philly at about 7pm on Friday. We hit crappy traffic around the Ft. McHenry Tunnel and had to wait for about 45 minutes but we eventually got there around 11:30ish. Ellis, Jon, Tiff, and Tina were all pretty tired then so the four of us from my car hit the hot tub and then played some beer in hand doubles ping pong for about 3 hours until we went to bed around 3:30.

Saturday - We woke up around 10:30, had pancakes made by the lovely Tina and two cups of decent coffee. The weather was generally dry, but very, very moist in the air and there was TONS of fog. We headed out to the park for a long ass hike and found ourselves driving through fog that made it hard to see more than 20 feet in front of the car. We mounted up and headed out on the trail. While the "traditional" views were generally obstructed by all the fog I actually love weather like what we experienced. The next couple of pictures sort of show what we were dealing with. I'm waiting for the full compliment to be posted by the Finks.

Ross and I on a rock we climbed:

Making our way down part of the Appalachian Trail
One of the rivers we forded Oregon trail style.
We ended up hiking down and level for the first couple hours. What made this hike really, really hard was when we then started to hike up in a hurry over the course of about hour 3:30-5 or so. The hike got much more technical and much steeper and while Ross, Ellis and I tried to push ourselves up the hill (mostly Ellis) and eventually we pooped out after about 45 minutes of pushing ourselves really, really hard. Ross and I waited for the rest of our group and then we all caught up with Ellis and finished up the rest of the hike together. All in all it ended up being about a 5.5 hour hike for about 10 miles. We then went home, made BBQ, watched basketball, and sat in the Hot tub to recover for the next day.

Sunday:
Woke up a little earlier, grabbed some pancakes, eggs and coffee and headed out again to do a shorter, easier hike. We went about 5 miles round trip including a stop at an overlook:
And bask on the rocks lizard style (or do something weird with your shirt if you're Ross):


We then hit up a winery and then headed back to the house, watched a little basketball and headed home. Fantastic weekend overall. Definitely was great to get away from everything and especially cell phone service. Looking forward to Fools and Case Race 2 this weekend followed by Paganello the weekend after.

(211....pssst...Beer is not good for losing weight. I'll be back under 210 by Wednesday).