submitted by Michael Seth
At 10 am Dan Ryan, Marie Moss, Anne Colgate, Lynn Hatch, Nancy Handley, Sharon Celsor-Hughes, Barbara Martin, Fabien Heinen (who drove from Pennsylvania to join us), Paul Boisen, John Brandt, hike leader Michael Seth and PATC-Charlottesville President Jeff Monroe met at the Food Lion Parking lot in Elkton and then headed for the Massanutten Resort (entrance is about a 5 minute drive).
The original plan for this hike was to do a 9 mile loop from Cub Run Road which included hiking 4 miles along an abandoned trail. High streams during an attempted pre-hike required the implementation of Plan B -an 8 mile circuit on the Fridley Gap Trail not far away. But on Saturday morning icy roads made this impossible so we went to Plan C- a hike to Kaylor Knob from inside the Massanutten Resort.
We drove up Del Webb Drive to the lookout at the top where Jim Fye met us. Then we hiked 2.3 miles along the trail from the resort to Kaylor Knob, Jim acted as sweep. Most of it was on a private trail open to the public. The hike leader explained it was an easy ridge walk with good views east and west. The credibility of both statements were shortly challenged. After a few minutes, where another trail forks off to the left, a sign warned that the Kaylor Knob trail was “extremely difficult.” The hike leader explained that this was to scare non hikers from the park and can be ignored. And there was no views due to the thick fog. But he trees and bushes were covered by the previous day’s snow and it was quite pretty.
We had lunch at Kaylor knob. Unfortunately the view had to be imagined in since it was still foggy. Then we walked the 1.8 mile Second Mountain Trail to Boones Run. This is the trail Michael Seth is supposed to maintain and that Paul Boisen the PATC District Manager for South Massanutten is supposed to see that he does. Several people joined Jim including Paul, Jeff, Dan and John as he crossed Boones Run and walked the quarter mile to Boones Run Shelter. Others elected to turn around at the stream. Ann Colgate led the way back up- a good 1200 ascent. On the way several of the sharped eyed hikers Lynn and Sharon spotted the old CCC marker on the trail.
We returned to our cars around 4:00. By this that time the fog had mostly lifted and there were some nice views.
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