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| Chestnut Knob Shelter. |
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| Beartown Wilderness sign next to our shelter. No trails into the wilderness, just this sign. |
Outside the Chestnut Knob Shelter overnight was windy and
cold, but we were protected from all of that as we were in one of the rare 4
walled shelters on the A.T. We closed
the door and kept all of the weather problems outside. This is a really nice shelter - made all the nicer by having it to ourselves - and we recommended an overnight there to all of the southbound section hikers we met over
the rest of our trip. None of them
planned to stay there, however, as all were planning to continue on to the Knot
Maul Shelter – a standard shelter indistinguishable from a hundred other A.T.
shelters. Why stay in a Motel 6 when you
can stay at the Ritz? Timetables rule most hikers on the trail.
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| 7:41 AM photo of Burkes Garden from Chestnut Knob Shelter. |
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| 8:58 AM photo of Burkes Garden from Chestnut Knob Shelter. |
The Chestnut Knob Shelter is on the edge of an open field,
with the woods just to the north and east of the shelter. Sunrise over Burke's Garden was spectacular! I took multiple photos that did not do justice to the view. After taking several early dawn photos down
into the valley, we packed up and moved north on the A.T. For the first 1.4 miles, we dropped quickly
in elevation, going from 4417 to 3506
feet, according to my GPS. After that,
we generally climbed for the next 1.2 miles before hiking at a pretty steady
elevation for 5.75 miles, along the crest of Garden Mountain – never going much
more than 100 feet in elevation on either side of 4000 feet.
There were actually relatively few views into Burke’s Garden
during the hike, though the views we did have were absolutely the highlight of
these three days. Burke’s Garden is one
of those Virginia places I had never visited but had been on the list almost
since I moved here 22 years ago. Legend
has it that Cornelius Vanderbilt wanted to build his mansion here instead of
Asheville, but the folks owning the land refused to sell.
Burke’s Garden is completely surrounded by mountains, and
referred to in travel materials as “God’s Thumbprint” because of how it looks
from the air. Geology explains how it
came to be – softer limestone eroded away over the eons, leaving the sandstone
layers as high mountains and creating very fertile farmland in the valley. There isn’t much other than farming that goes
on here – no businesses other than a store (and farms) in the valley, and no overnight
accommodations to be found. Only one paved road into the valley, with a dirt road requiring many switchbacks on the opposite side of the oval heading out. The seclusion contributes to the unique nature of this hike.
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| Burkes Garden from the air. The A.T. follows the ridge on the left in the photo. |
We crossed a couple of dirt roads with parking areas along
the ridge, but I have heard that both of these roads are really difficult to
get to and pretty rough on the car, even though they have parking areas where
the trail crosses. Keep an eye out near
these crossings for rocks providing views into the valley – they aren’t always
obvious, but are worth the effort to find.
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| View from one of the few overlooks. This one at N37° 04.567' W81° 18.593'. |
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| My hiking partner Pete, in a panorama from one of the viewpoints. |
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| Walking along the ridge. |
Before the second road crossing we had been hiking on the edge of the Garden Mountain Wilderness (Map), while on the ridgetop. This
area was designated federal wilderness only in 2009, making it one of the newest wilderness areas in the state - it did not even have a
sign. The A.T. is inside and along the wilderness's northern boundary for 2.5 miles.
We crossed the 2nd dirt road, called Sharon Springs Road (Rt 623), and entered into a second Wilderness area. This is the Hunting Camp Creek Wilderness. This one actually had a sign, on the north end of the Appalachian Trail, so we passed it when leaving the wilderness. Hunting Camp Creek Wilderness is also over twice the size of the Garden Mountain Wilderness, and the A.T. continues for about 7.5 miles through this wilderness - until the next road crossing. The two wilderness areas would be a single area except for Sharon Springs Road - no roads allowed in the wilderness.
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| The sign still looks brand new. |
After 8.6 miles we started dropping off the mountain. Dropping off of the ridge
crest, we started to see water sources after hiking a dry trail since the
Chestnut Knob Shelter at the beginning of our day. At 10.7 miles is an exceptional stream
crossing, and we refilled here. (N37° 05.521' W81° 15.493')
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| Pete refills before we continue to the Jenkins Shelter. |
At 11.8 miles we reached the the Jenkins Shelter, which is
just off of the A.T. It was a pretty
standard shelter, with a couple of southbounders settling in for the
night. Even though it was only about
3:30 PM when we visited, this made sense because it had taken us nearly 8 hours to get from the
next shelter, and we were going downhill.
We stayed here for a few minutes talking to the other hikers, and I
changed my GPS batteries but forgot to turn the unit back on, losing about 0.8 miles
of data.
Leaving the Jenkins Shelter, we crossed Hunting Camp Creek
and started climbing again. Jenkins Shelter was at about 2500 feet (down from 4400 feet at the start of the day), and we climbed to 3150 feet over the next 1.5 miles.
At the 13.4 mile mark on the day, a trail called the Low
Water Trail splits off from the A.T.
There is no sign here, but this was the A.T. alignment until relatively
recently. Apparently the Low Water Trail
had high water too often when it was the A.T., so the former High Water Trail is now the A.T.
alignment. The hiking was very easy and
fast through this section, as we were on an old woods road that was very level. It was great to be on this section even
though we were tired from a long day.
For 2.2 miles, the trail did not deviate more than 100 feet in
elevation and we made good time in the waning daylight.
At 15.6 miles, a blue blazed trail heads off to the
left. This is described in my A.T. Guidebook
as the A.T. route – I think this is because a bridge had to be rebuilt
down trail. Before the rebuild, the trail
to the left took the hiker to the next road, and there was a mile road walk. Now there is a nice bridge crossing Laurel
Creek. I did not see the Low Water Trail again meet up with the current A.T. - it was somewhere around this bridge.
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| New bridge crossing Laurel Creek. |
On the north side of the bridge was a road crossing - the first paved road we had seen since we started on Rt. 42 28.4 miles and 15 3/4 hiking hours before. North of the road are
several nice campsites, but the area was surprisingly crowded with section hikers camping and smoking, so we kept moving up the trail a few hundred yards until we
came to a streamside area where we squeezed our tents under the trees. We did not want to climb another mountain before camping
For the day we hiked 16.7 miles in just over 10 hours. Total ascent was 3100 feet, and descent was
4792 feet. We stopped hiking just before 6 PM, which gave us enough daylight to set up camp and cook dinner before darkness set in. It comes early in this area, as we were in a valley between several mountains. It had been a long day, so I slept well!
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| Laurel Creek from the A.T. bridge. |
Hike details, from my GPS:
PATC Difficulty Factor: 399.5 (one way)
Total Distance: 16.7 miles
Total Time: 10 hours, 10 minutes, including stops.
Low Point: 2505 ft.
Highest Point: 4429 ft.
Elevation Difference: 1924 ft.
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