Date: 2010-03-03
To: View Entry
Miles today: 0.0

Yesterday, cycling buddy, former co-worker, and friend, ShortKut , and I headed out to Prince William Forest Park, about 45 miles south of my home in Alexandria,VA. We originally planned to do an overnight on the Massanutten Trail in the George Washington National Forest. However, after checking on conditions with the Lee District rangers, we opted for less snow at PWFP. Upon our arrival at the park, which is managed by the National Park Service, we stopped in at the Visitors Center. Two nice volunteers helped us pick out a loop hike that would get us to the campground for our overnight, and enable us to hike a different route back out to our car. Backcountry camping is not permitted in this part of the Park we were in, so we had to "rough it" in the campground.We parked the car and shouldered our packs. We set off on a short connector trail which led us to a stream that we had to cross to get onto our main trail. Well, maybe we could cross the stream in the summer, but with all the snow runoff, the water was way too high for us to get across. We backtracked and did a short road walk to reach our trail. We worked our way to the campground by connecting several trails, and, we managed to do it without getting lost. Temps must have been in the high 30's or low 40's and the sky was overcast. We ended up doing about 4 1/2 miles in about 2 1/2 hours. We set up our tents and gathered firewood for our campfire later that evening. As dusk fell, we cooked our dinners. I was testing a pre-cooked Thai lime rice dish to which I added a packet of salmon. ShortKut had a Mountain House Spanish rice and chicken dinner. I fired up my alcohol stove and ShortKut fired up his Jetboil. He had boiling water about 3 minutes later. I finally had a luke warm meal about 15 minutes later. Those Jetboils are sweet! We shared meals and both were so-so. I washed mine down with some hot chocolate and water. I actually drank quite a bit of water, which suggests I did not consume enough during the day. ShortKut turned in about 8 pm and I stayed up tending the fire until about 9 pm before calling it a night. I slept reasonably well; about as well as I expect I ever will on the A.T. I did have to get up twice during the night due to all the water I drank at dinner: a big inconvenience when the temps are in the upper 30's. I actually slept until about 7:30am.ShortKut was already up and talking to Ranger Ken who'd stopped by to check on us. We took our time and finally fired up our stoves. He had Mountain House eggs and bacon and I had two packets of instant oatmeal, which I found to be almost too sweet. After breakfast, we packed up our gear. I noted that my titanium stakes did not perform too well in the soft ground, so I'll add a couple aluminum ones into my bag from now on. I also couldn't find my stuff sacks for my tent, tent poles, or mattress. I wandered through the campground looking for it, believing a raccoon may have wandered off with it. It didn't make sense, but it wasn't in my pack or at my campsite (or so I thought). We finally set off on our way back to our car on a stream-side trail. It was sunny and the trail had little elevation change. We walked 6 miles back to the car. All in all, just what I was looking for on my final shakedown hike. I'll make a couple of gear changes, but I think everything worked out well, and I enjoyed sharing it with ShortKut.