Buttermilk Northbank Trail Loop

This trail is the epitome of an urban hike.  At about 6.2 miles, the loop is a multi-use walking and biking trail in Richmond that crosses the James River, bypasses a cemetery, traverses through several wooded areas, and provides access to Texas Beach and Belle Isle.  For walking, it's a pretty easy trail with just a few mild ascents and descents.  Casey and I haven't tried biking it yet, but I imagine that it takes a bit more finesse to manage the ramps, roots, rocks, and single-track areas on a bike.  The bikers were generally kind to us (and are expected to yield to pedestrians), but at points the trail is tight.  We parked at the Texas Beach access lot and took the trail in a clockwise direction, beginning on the Northbank trail, crossing the Tyler Potterfield Pedestrian Bridge, taking Railroad Ave. to get to the Buttermilk trail, following the Buttermilk trail to the Boulevard bridge, crossing the bridge, and then taking the rest of the Northbank trail back to the parking lot.  It may be an urban trail, but it's worth checking out if you are in the area!

Trail passes a cemetery

Northbank Trail

View from the T.Tyler Potterfield Bridge

View of rock climbers and pedestrians from near the bridge

Playing on rocks near Belle Isle

High Bridge Trail

High Bridge Trail has been on my to-do list for quite some time, but I've never had an excuse to get to Farmville, VA until recently.  Fortunately, timing worked out well last weekend and Casey and I were able to make a day trip to visit this neat bridge.  The bridge has some historical significance from the Civil War and from what I'd read, is an interesting place to visit.  It's not exactly a hike (although could make a nice walk), so Casey and I decided to bike it instead.  We started from a lot near downtown Farmville, biked a bit in the opposite direction to check out the town and then headed the 4.4 miles to the bridge.  Even in the dead of winter, the views from the top of the bridge were nice and the trail was excellent for a leisurely bike ride.  The trail actually spans 31 miles, but we didn't even attempt to do the whole thing this time around!   If you go, I'd recommend checking out the quaint downtown area as well as the bridge.  

View of the Appomattox River from High Bridge

Casey looking over the side of the bridge

The bridge doesn't look so high here, but it was right about at the treeline

In downtown Farmville

Hightop Mountain

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.  Not that a 60 degree day in January should be considered analogous to lemons; however, when a ski weekend was in the plans, but not the forecast, hiking turned out to be a pretty good substitute.  The weather was unusually warm on my trip to Massanutten, so Stephanie, Josh, and I decided to hit a different sort of slope.  Hightop Mountain fit the bill.  It was rated as having good views, being moderately difficult, and not too long.  Add in that neither Stephanie nor Josh had previously been to Shenandoah National Park and it seemed like a "must do."  The hike didn't disappoint.  The trail was entirely along the AT and the vistas were quite nice, even if not quite up to the expansive summit area of Old Rag or the neat overhanging rock of McAffee's Knob.  I'll let the photos do the rest of the talking.

View from Hightop Mountain (2nd vista)

View from Hightop Mountain (1st Vista)

Trees along the trail

Stephanie and Josh on the trail

Me at the first vista

Tibbet Knob

We tried to go to West Virginia and ended up at Tibbet Knob.  I suppose you could say that we did end up in West Virginia (just barely!), although perhaps not the New River Gorge as we were originally intending.  To backtrack for a moment, Casey and I are big on "experience" gifts. As a result, for Christmas he gave me a trip to the New River Gorge with an overnight in Staunton, VA on the way back home.  This was a great surprise and would have been an amazing plan except for the fact that the New River Gorge is over 5 hours away from home and Casey's family was hosting a giant family gathering the night before.  In order to get to the gorge and do a reasonably short hike before dark, we projected that we would need to leave in the early hours of the morning.  On a normal off-work day, this might be workable, but with the family around, we wanted to enjoy the night without worrying about a lack of beauty rest.  And so, we ended up keeping our trip closer to home and did this little hike on the way home from our overnight instead.

Tibbet knob is a neat hike with a great effort:reward ratio.  Steep at parts, it had me out of breath a time or two, but overall the 1.6 miles up the mountain weren't too strenuous.  Hiking Upward classifies the difficulty as a "2" (only second to the easiest hikes on the list), but I probably would have called it a "3" on the difficulty scale because Hiking Upward also calls Difficult Run up by DC a "2" and that hike is more of a walk in the woods with very few elevation changes.  This hike also had two areas that were similar to the Billy Goat Trail near DC with some small scrambles to get to the top.  To get to it, park at the Wolf Run Recreation Area and walk across the main street that the recreation area is off of (675).  The trail is right there (yellow blazed) and easy to follow the whole way up.

We were the only ones on the trail which was quite nice.

Wooded area on trail

Sun through the trees on a ridge

View from the ridge

Me at the ridge

At the summit

Me and Casey at summit

Campground at the summit

Tibbet Knob summit again

Sky Meadows Farms

This was a nice little hike that wasn't too far from home.  Casey and I had been to Sky Meadows before, but not to this area.  This time, we headed over to the farm area of Sky Meadows and hiked along the horse trails.  No horses were out on Friday, but we did see some very pretty views!  The hike is a meadow hike (so no mountain overlooks), but is quite gorgeous nonetheless.  There are a variety of trails to take and you can pick up a map when you park.  Our loop was probably just under 5 miles.

Creek crossing!

Views from the trail

Some views from the trail

Cow pasture beside the trail

Big Schloss Hike

This was such a cool hike near Woodstock,VA.  The hike itself wasn't too difficult, but the views were pretty exceptional!  The first part of the hike had me out of breath, but before too long, you end up on a ridge line and the hike turns into more of a very scenic stroll.  We saw several other groups while we were there, so it certainly wasn't an isolated feeling hike, but there weren't even close to the crowds that you would see at a hike like Old Rag.  We used these directions.  Basically, from the coordinates (38.92404, -78.68949), take the orange blazed trail from right near campsite #9.

Wilma poses at the ridge

Casey and Wilma at the ridgeline

A really neat bridge right near the biggest overlook

View from the final overlook

Casey and Wilma at Big Schloss (the final overlook)

Me sitting on a rock outcropping near the top

Survival Training

This one isn't quite a hike, but Casey and I finally had an opportunity to take a survival course, something that I've been meaning to do for some time.  The course that we chose was the Primitive Survival Crash Course run by Advanced Survival Training near Fredericksburg, VA.  I don't have any affiliation to the individuals who run the training, but I can say that Casey and I both thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and learned a lot in the process.  The crash course went from 9 a.m. - 4 p.m., but the instructor was willing to keep the class going until 5:30 p.m. because we hadn't finished everything that he hoped to cover in the allotted time frame.  I was thrilled for the extra time to learn.  The course covered how to survive for a brief period of time outdoors with no supplies.  As avid day hikers, we thought that this could be useful to know (although we always to carry a handful of supplies for all but the shortest and most populated day hikes - think Burke Lake level for those types of "hikes" that might forgo the kit).  In any case, we do not always carry tents, knives, sleeping bags, and lighters (although after this course, the knife and the lighter might get added to the day-hike "just in case" kit).  So on to the fun stuff!  What we learned (noting that I am not a survival professional and am merely sharing some of the neat things we got to do):

This list is shared in order of urgency as according to our instructor.

Pre-Anything Else: Mindset!  He highlighted that having a positive attitude and tenacity is crucial to survival.

1) Shelter.  He said that shelter should only be second on the list if someone needs immediate first-aid (i.e. bleeding out, suffocating, or otherwise will die without immediate treatment).

Our leaf hut when it was just bare bones.  Two ~3' 'Y' shaped sticks leaned together with a long, ~12' stick forming the "spine" of the structure.  Ribs were then leaned against the spine to form this frame.  We got to do this all ourselves!

Beginning to add some leaves to the shelter.

With a few more leaves.  A functional shelter should apparently have ~2' of leaves on top and actually be filled inside with leaves as well.

Side view.  You can see that it's tight, but that a grown man fits fully inside!

 Water: He said that water is only second to shelter because while you can get hypothermia in 3-4 hours in poor weather, you can die of dehydration in 3-4 days.

We learned how to boil water using rocks that were heated in a fire in the case that a pot was unavailable (you could even use a rock depression as your "bowl" and place small hot rocks in the water within this depression to boil it.

 Fire:

Casey and another gentleman in our training use a bow-drill to attempt to get a fire going.  The drill and board were both cedar in this case.

Successful fire creation!  It is way harder than our instructor made it look.

This particular crash course didn't go too far into identifying edible plants and trapping animals, but it was extremely useful for our purposes (we also covered a bit about making tools from rocks).  There was an option for a longer course (a bit out of my current budget), in which we would have been able to spend the night in our shelter and learn far more about finding food and other survival essentials.  I would love to return - it was a great and informative time!