Bushwhacking isn’t what it sounds like.
Whacking bushes happens on trail maintenance hikes.
When ten folks took off from the Hightop Mountain pull-off near the Swift Run Gap entrance to Shenandoah Park entrance for a PATC bushwhack hike, it meant leaving the maintained and blazed trails of the park for a scramble through the not-yet-overgrown spring undergrowth.
We joked that it should have been called a “Tramp Thru the Trillium,” so many of the lovely white and pale pink, three-pedaled wildflowers were still in full bloom as we made our way south and east toward Mutton Hollow.
Trail leader Mark Walkup led the way, with help from Bill Holman and multiple GPS readings. Iva Gillet followed as sweep, with her ever-enthusiastic hiking pooch Remy alternating between sweep companion and leader of the pack. Both helped with hiker herding as the rest of us - Jeanne Siler, Dennis Templeton, Bev and Pete Fink, CJ Woodburn, Dave Borszich and Patrick Cory clambered over fallen logs and carefully picked our way downhill. We rarely wandered in a straight line because on a bushwhack everyone finds their own path of least resistance.
Investigations continued all day with findings of three separate piles of bear scat, the stone remains of some mountain homes, an abandoned cemetery, a bear-chewed water bottle and trail sign post, several rare deep red trillium, and even a couple morels.
CJ managed her first-ever morel sighting just beyond the site of the abandoned cemetery along the Park boundary near the Vining tract.
Lunch was at a perfect picnic spot on the edge of a east-facing cliff with terrific views of the hollows and flatlands below. Drone photos were taken during lunch, with Remy providing extra amusement as she attempted to tackle the flying camera, which sounded ever so much like a giant bumblebee.
After lunch the group headed down the to newly “refound” cemetery. Mark, Bill and Iva had located the unnamed cemetery on a pre-hike a few weeks earlier. Bill plans to continue researching its history prior to being known as part of the Graves family property. It is detectable now only by a series of depressions and the remnants of a few pairs of fieldstone markers.
The hike out was a simple affair once the Cliff and Boundary West trails on the Vining Tract were intersected, with hike leaders directing the troupe past the PATC’s popular Mutton Top cabin. The last stretch was completed thanks to Iva’s trusty F250, its pickup bed providing spacious seating for the raucous crowd, plus being a convenient spot for one muddy dog.
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