Guest post by Jodi Meadows
Hightop Mountain, the Conquest Of
Every time my friend Laurel visits, we head up to the Shenandoah National Park. She and her husband do a lot of hiking in their home state and have all sorts of cool hiking gear: boots, backpacks, GPS… And the Shenandoah has trails galore, waterfalls, and is utterly beautiful all times of the year. There’s no way to resist it.
So the last time they visited, we tried the Appalachian Trail. Not the whole thing, obviously! But there’s a part near the park entrance that leads up to the summit of Hightop Mountain. It’s not a LONG trail, but it involves climbing about a 1000 feet over rocks and streams. Last time, we forgot to eat breakfast before leaving the house, the mountains were foggy*, and we couldn’t even SEE the top. We made it a little over 700 feet before the trail defeated us.
This time, we were determined to conquer Hightop Mountain.
After a breakfast of buttermilk pancakes, we drove up to the park, took a few pictures of the mountain we were determined to climb, and started on the trail. The April morning was gorgeous, only about 70 degrees (F) as we started along. The sky was clear and blue, trees green and white and pink with leaves and buds, and the birds had struck up a symphony. It wasn’t bad. Well, the vultures circling the parking lot were a little ominous.
The forest being — get this — a forest, we saw quite a lot of animals. A mouse darted away and hopped over a few logs and pieces of brush. Woodpeckers did their noisy thing. Chipmunks marauded around the park, as is their wont. A little deeper into the woods, there was an enormous deer standing in the middle of the path. We all stopped at the same time, stared at each other a moment, and then the deer bounded off — absolutely silent with her** white tail straight up. She vanished down the hill. One minute she was there, the next, nothing.
The hike was pleasant, but as the morning wore on, the forest got warmer and the trail never seemed flatter. If anything, it got steeper. Lots of the trail was just packed dirt, but there were other parts with flat, brittle rocks that tipped if you stepped on them wrong. At one point, a stream crossed the path***, and at another, a spring bubbled up out of nowhere to make the rocks slick. We pressed on.
300 feet.
500 feet.
We had to stop and breathe a few times. I don’t know about the others, but I quickly became aware of the existence of my thigh muscles. I started out in the lead, but much like a ferret, I am either on or off, and I was determined to go up the mountain at too-swift a pace. I don’t really have a medium setting unless someone else forces me, so Laurel took the lead after a while and set a reasonable pace. Oddly enough, it got a lot easier after that!
About 700 feet, we came to where we’d turned around before. It looked very different without the fog shrouding the trees and flowers. Still, we recognized the bend and the place where we’d thought before that surely it couldn’t be much further, surely. We marched on past.
And past.
And past.
I swear, the mountain got bigger. The sun was hotter. Laurel and I both have whitewhitewhite skin, and even with sunscreen, we were beginning to turn pink. Laurel’s husband was telling us there were two tops of the mountain, one with a great view, and another off a little side trail that went up to the REAL summit…and supposedly was marked by a bucket. We joked about that as we came nearer the top, but never actually went up to it; the trail started circling the peak, little tease.
Finally we arrived at a rocky ledge just off the path, and a spectacular view of the valley. We could almost see my house from there! (If only we could see through mountains.) We took a zillion pictures and loitered for a while, still clearly not at the TOP of the mountain, and having made it this far, we were determined to see the bucket.
It wasn’t much further. We found a marker that pointed out a spring, other trails, and the summit. The summit path was off the regular Appalachian Trail some, and not quite as cleared, but it was obvious enough. We hiked up…
And there was a wide, flat area with trees, brush, and two especially flirty butterflies. No bucket. We did find a few mysterious blocks of concrete, though, with metal rods sticking out of them, as if someone had thought to build something up there, and changed their mind. A quick search of the summit revealed no bucket, just those blocks, so after some pictures and a nice long breather (and Laurel’s husband checking his phone to see if he could get internet up there), we left the butterflies to do their thing, and began the long climb down.
Victorious.
*It was seriously walking into a cloud. Gorgeous, but cold and wet, utterly uncomfortable. We couldn’t see anything beyond five feet. The forest was crazy quiet, too. Fog smothers everything.
**We said her. Might have been a him. There were no antlers, but it was still spring, so they might have not had a chance to grow in yet. The deer was huge!
***Hello, muddy.
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