Date: 2009-06-16
From: Hawksbill Mountain

To: Skyland
Miles today: 9.0

Geological PhenomenonI got up and made breakfast on the cliff and watched the mist roll in though the mountains as I had my morning coffee. Several hikers passed by on the trail ad said hello. As I hear d some more trekking poles approaching I heard someone yell out ¢Einstein!¢ It was Limbo, Bird and their dog Mama Bear. Einstein recognized Mama Bear immediately and could barely contain his enthusiasm. We took a little while to catch up and tell each other of our plans. Apparently they were planning an aqua blaze from Front Royal to Harpers Ferry. We were planning one as well ¢ intending to jump pack to Waynesboro after reaching Harpers Ferry taking canoes back up. The Phlo, Graveyard, Stone Skipper and others were going to be doing it with us.Limbo, Bird and Mama Bear soon moved on and we got busy packing up. As we have come to expect in Shenandoah, just before we started taking down the tent it began to rain. So we put everything inside the tent and decided to wait it out.It rained for a couple of hours, but we were fortunate to have phone service so we would catch up on some email and news. Eventually it stopped raining and we got back on the trail around noon.The trail was pretty easy going at first, winding along the cliffs until we got to Rock Springs Hut, where we took a short break and refilled our water from a piped spring nearby. But after leafing Rock Springs the trail got much rockier as we made our climb of Hawksbill Mountain. It wasn¢t a steep climb, but th4ere was a lot of loose shale and a few boulder fields where the side of the mountain had collapsed eons ago. Eventually, after Hawksbill Gap, the trail smoothed out again and we passed by some very interesting rock formations where it looked like the bluffs had been chiseled or quarried out of the side of the mountain, some sides with 6 or 8 facets to them. It is called columnar jointing, a ¢geological phenomenon cause by the rapid cooling of molten lava¢, according to a park guidebook.Eventually, after passing by the Skyland horse stables, we made it to Skyland Resort, where we found a lace to camp in the woods. Skyland Resort predates the park by several decades and was built by George Freeman Pollack, who was an early advocate for a national park and tried hard to get small surrounding landowners evicted. It is somewhat poetic justice that he was forced to sell the resort when Shenandoah was created.We took the opportunity to have a nice dinner at the resort restaurant, watched a little TV in the lounge and stayed to watch the Shenandoah cloggers in the taproom.By the time we left the resort it had gotten dark and very foggy. We had to walk a half mile back to our tent along the trail. Our headlamp, of which we only had one between us, only lit up a couple of feet in front of us and just reflected right back in our eyes if we tried to see further. Einstein went ahead and followed the trail which was helpful because we could see the reflective strips on his harness. It was slow going and after about half an hour Einstein veered off the trail. He had found our tent of course.Not to break tradition of our week in the park, just then it started raining ¢ again.