Date: 2005-04-18
From: Va 635, Stoney Creek Valley

To: Va 601 Rocky Gap
Miles today: 10.0

We are Terry and Cindy from Illinois. We are starting our 2005 section hike in Virginia.What is a split hike? 2 or more separate hikes in same day.Va 613 to Va 601 Rocky Gap   N 7.9milesVa 635, Stoney Creek Valley to  Va 635, Stoney Creek   S 2.1miles We drove all day yesterday from Illinois to Christiansburg, Virginia. We stayed at a Super Eight last night. Our hotel is right down from Enterprise car rental, which is where we picked up our rental this morning, when they opened the doors. And it took us a while to get up here, dropped off one car at Va 601 and got our other car situated for the first hike from Va 613.  It's a nice warm morning. Clouds are starting to roll in a little bit.But now we're on the trail. Its 11:37 and we are stopped at a camp area with a nice stone fire pit. We read about todays hike. The sun's been behind the clouds. Terry is going to go off and do his duty. We move on down the trail. We arrive at Lone Pine Peak in the middle of nowhere. It's 12:35 p.m. The books tell us we've gone 2 .6 miles. We met a hiker going Southbound, we are going north. He's doing a 400-mile section from Waynesboro to Damascus. We might see him tomorrow if we hike that 17.6 Mile Hike into Pearisburg. We didn't get his trail name (David Baggs). We got to the War Spur shelter at 1:30 pm. Took shoes off relaxed and had snack bars for lunch. We read the shelter journals and looked at Maps. We decided we had hiked 5.1 miles to this shelter. At 2:02 p.m. we left the shelter and went down across a creek. We walked across USFS 156 at 2:25 and three big logging trucks full of logs were sitting on the side of the road. We went across the road and into the woods and came to a really nice creek. It was called Johns Creek. With a beautiful bridge. After the bridge we start going up, and according to the GPS we are it 2600 feet at 3 pm. Another 660 feet to go on this warm day, it will be nice to get to the car. It's a little bit cloudy and a little warmer than we like. We came out of the woods to our car on Va 601 at about 3:41 pm. A trail angel had been there with a cooler and Terry took one soda. We took a big shuttle around the north side to get back to our car, on 613. The drive was better on the North side except there were some small trees down, Terry had to get out of the car and break some branches to get through the road. We repositioned a car for this next 2 .1 mile hike but decided to check the trail first before leaving a car. We saw a sign that said "bridge out" on far end of the trail. So we decided to hike it the other way, to get the Stoney Creek fording done at the beginning of the hike. So it's 5:18 p.m. and we're starting our hike. The place we left the rental car is called Cherokee flats and you just walk down the road 0.1 miles to the trail. The trail crosses the road here and the trail bridge is totally washed out at the creek. This is result of Hurricane Jeanne in 2004. Terry walks back to the car to leave the camera behind. Terry fords the creek with socks on instead of shoes. It worked pretty well for him. The water was very cold but we got across and put our boots back on at 5:30 and started walking down the trail. Just an easy stroll thru the woods. We went up and down a few more times and near the creek. Finally we were out on Va 635 at about 6:30 pm at Peters Mt Wilderness parking. We drove down Va 635 about 2 miles and picked up our other car, and are heading for Pearisburg.