Wild Oak-Grooms Ridge, October 11, 2014

Reported by John Shannon

Mike Smith and Michael Seth clearing
growth on Grooms Ridge Trail

Our meeting place (Albemarle High parking lot) was full of cars, but in a few circuits around it, Marian Styles and I saw no hikers and were about to leave when John Brandt rolled up. So only three of us headed out in light rain. Weather.com forecast no rain after 10 a.m. in Churchville, so we hoped for the best. We stopped in Churchville to verify that no one was meeting us there and shopped for a corn dog, chicken, and fuel.

The directions to the trailhead sounded quite complex, but aided by memories of past trips, reaching the trailhead was fairly simple. We met leader Michael Seth and Mike Smith and headed up. Unlike the majority of times Charlottesville Chapter has taken this route, we headed up Wild Oak Trail first, because it seemed before that this direction was less steep. However, Grindstone Mountain still seemed appropriately named.

Although the rain stopped, the fog remained, so we saw virtually nothing from some excellent overlooks.

What the trails looked like all day

As usual George Washington National Forest has many fewer invasive plants than SNP, but we did spot what we thought were only a few oriental lady's thumb. We started pulling them, until Marian went a little further and saw the infestation was too extensive to remove without disrupting our plans.

After about 3 hours of strenuous climbing, we finally reached the highest point of the day and started down to find the area where we were going to help overseers Lynn and Malcolm Cameron keep Grooms Ridge trail easily passable. We clipped away with loppers and hand clippers until Marian reported that we would do more good attacking thicker growth further on. After a little more work, we decided that a long drive to a long hike with lots of clearing was making for a long day, so we moved on. John Brandt could not resist trying his saw on a large tree that had fallen across the trail, but soon decided that a warm, dry house that night sounded better than a cold night on the mountain with a large blowdown removed from the trail.

We met up with the Camerons, who had started working along the trail from the opposite direction.

Marian and I then headed off and tackled a very steep climb to what is normally an excellent overlook. Rather than waiting for the Camerons to drive us from the end of the trail to our car, we walked the mile back then drove back to the end of trail to reconnoiter with the others.

They were happy to hear that the trail was passable, even though like most trails, more could be done.