Jana Walters and Kelly O’Rouke joined hike leader Michael Seth on this very nice September day.
Michael and Jana came from Harrisonburg and met Kelly who was the only one from Charlottesville to come.
The parking lot was full but it was a mystery as to where all the
people were since we only saw a few on this long hike and some of them
were hiking from the Skyline Drive.
We hiked up to Bear Church Rock taking a slight detour along the way to visit the Jones Mountain Cabin.
There a few people staying there who gave us a tour.
It is a nice quiet spot but with only winter views.
We then climbed up Bear Church Rocks where we had lunch.
The weather was clear with nice breezes and we had excellent
views. After a good rest we hiked along Jones Mountain with it
interesting big rocks through a fairly rich forest and eventually to The
Sag, supposedly the point in the park furthest from a
road. We then hiked back along the scenic
Staunton River which had a surprising amount of water for the middle of a
drought, enough for many small cascades and pools that would have been
tempting had it been hotter.
The stream crossings were easy and as was most of the hike back.
It was about quarter to six when we got back to our cars.
If all the distances on the trail markers are added up we had hiked 13.8 miles.
However, according to Kelly’s GPS we hiked 13.5 miles with 3100 feet elevation gain.
The general consensus was this is one of the best hikes in the Shenandoah National Park and a new one for Jana and Kelly.
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