Date: 2006-06-20
From: Front Royal, VA

To: Waynesboro, VA
Miles today: 107.1
Weather: scattered clouds

June 10th to June 20thShenandoah National ParkIt¢s been ten days since my last entry. I apologize for not writing but we were not near a town for that long. After I picked up Natasha at the airport we headed to Front Royal, VA, at the North end of the SNP. It was a thirteen mile hike into the shelter in the park. This was my third double digit mileage day, and Natasha¢s first day on the trail. On the way in, we had to stop at a sign in station for back country hikers and fill out registration forms which we then wired onto our packs. This authorized us to enter the park without paying the gateway entry fee that driver¢s pay and enabled us to camp in the back country without paying the campground fees each night. That night, talking to the North bounders who were about to leave the park, they reported spotting between 6 and 9 bears as they went through. I was very religious from that point on about hanging our food bags from the bear poles at the shelters each night. These were metal posts with four arms at the top from which hooks extended. You took your stuff sack of food, which had a loop on it, and put the loop over a hook on a pole. You then reached the end of the pole up about 14 feet into the air and transferred the stuff sack onto one of the hooks atop the bear pole. Besides making it impossible for the bears to get used to coming to the campsite for free food, it also kept mice, skunks, porcupines, and raccoons from your food. This exercise in coordination was most difficult at the beginning, when the bag was really full, but got easier as we got through the park and consumed the food. Besides the food, we also hung the trash bags and anything that had scent which might attract the bears like soap, toothpaste, toilet paper, and cooking kits. This may sound like a lot of work, but one of our bear sightings was right in our camp late one afternoon. Most of the time when we saw a bear, it was on the fast move away from us. This bear in the campsite was not in any hurry to leave, and it was relatively early in the day, shortly after we got into camp, and before we ate dinner. I was filtering water from a spring nearby and Natasha was in her tent. She heard some noise in the bushes around the tenting area, looked up and the bear was watching her from about 20 feet away. She got out of her tent, walked to the shelter, and told the other hikers that there was a bear by her tent. This caused a mass migration of hikers with cameras to get a shot of this 200 plus pound bear sniffing around the site. I¢m convinced it was on the track of the food sacks in my and Natasha¢s backpacks.The trails through the park were well graded for the most part, but there were still plenty of steep spots both up and down hill, and lots of rocks. Periodically, as the trail wound through the park, we would cross the Skyline drive that most tourists see the park from. Occasionally, we would get a nice view from their waysides, but we also got views from the cliffs and rock ledges and trail sides which we were hiking on. We got rained on after we had set up camp the first night and had to put away wet tents and tarps the next morning and we got rained on after we left the park on the last day and had gotten the rental car to take Natasha back to the airport. The rest of the time, the weather was quite nice except for two days of hiking in the end when the temperature was in the mid 90¢s during the day. For the most part, springs were plentiful for filtering our drinking water. And we needed a lot of water. Altogether, the park is divided into three districts from North to South. Looking at the trail profiles, we had a total elevation change of 11,700 feet in each district. That¢s a LOT of up and down! Makes for thirsty hiking.Natasha was great to hike with, and the trail will be a lot lonelier from this point on. She even carved a cribbage board from a branch, and we played a nightly game before bed. Talk about a tough player to beat though!