Date: 2015-04-12
From: VA 623

To: VA 42 (O'Lystery Pavilion)
Miles today: 17.7
Weather: broken clouds

Our hike today, Sunday, started at the edge of a unique feature in Virginia - Burke's Garden, also known to some as "Gods Thumbprint." The garden is a high valley, completely surrounded by a mountain, with very limited access to the outside. The prevailing theory is that the valley was formed when underground limestone caverns collapsed. Our shuttle driver today, Bubba, picked us up early at 6:00 am and for the next hour drove us through a series of twisting, mountainous roads to a ridge on the eastern side of Burke's Garden. The AT follows the ridge a portion of the way around the valley. We reached the trail just after daybreak. The temperature actually rose as we climbed the mountain, but the wind at the ridge was brisk and chilly. We had a short climb from the trailhead to the crest of the ridge where we were treated to a view across the width of the valley. The valley is fertile with a patchwork of farms and appeared lush and green from the ridge. We spent the next couple of hours following the ridge line south weaving through boulders and rock outcroppings (we slack-packed SoBo today). It's too early for tree leaves, so we had plenty of views of the valley through the trees. But there were only a few opportunities for unobstructed views. The first hiker we met today was Tree Ninja and he was moving quickly. Eventually we dropped down to a gap where we met a volunteer trail maintainer who was headed up the hill we just came down. He had worked the first part of the ridge trail yesterday, left his tools on the mountain overnight and was returning to finish the rest of the ridge today. From the gap, we had the toughest climb of the day, about 45 min of very steep uphill grade. (The trail maintainer joked that it was "45 min of everything you got".) Fortunately it was early enough in the day that we still had legs. After several false summits, we reached a grassy meadow at the top, with a great view of the valley, and a unique shelter. It's the only fully enclosed shelter on the AT, with double bunks and a door. I believe it was originally built to support a fire tower that no longer exists. From the shelter, we started a long descent away from the valley to a large, bald meadow with incredible panoramic views of the surrounding mountain ridges. The bald seemed endless, but eventually narrowed to an old access road that led us back into the forest. Along the way we saw Bowie, who we just met the previous day, and Silverback. The remainder of the descent was several miles long and quite steep in places. From that point we had two more mountains to climb, Lynn Camp Mountain and Brushy Mountain, both just over 3,000 ft. The Lynn Camp climb was about a mile long, followed by a similar descent. We met Lorax headed NoBo on the way up as well as Archangel who was hiking with him. The climb up Brushy Mountain was a little more gradual and we followed a ridge for a bit until we reached the peak. But the descent was about as steep as from Lynn Camp. We passed the Knot Maul Branch shelter on the way up Brushy and saw Spooner and Cookie Monster at the table. Happy Feet was curled up in her sleeping bag inside the shelter, and Cookie M said she was recovering from an illness and just needed some sleep. We felt sorry for her, especially since it was such a beautiful day for hiking. We also saw Moglie coming up near the top of Brushy. We finished the day's hike at about 2:00 pm back at the O'Lystery Pavilion where Skip picked us up and drive us back to the motel. It's our last night at the Comfort Inn. It's been a great place for us, they have a hiker rate that makes it affordable and they have all the amenities (except laundry - there is a laundromat about a half mile down the road by the Post Office and Dollar General). The staff is very attentive, courteous and competent. They have a sign posted outside that they are the winners of the "Choice Award" for excellence, and from our perspective they deserve it.