Hiking Old Rag

A little while ago, I achieved one of my goals for 2009 which was to hike Old Rag mountain in the Shenandoah National Park with Jason. Three years ago, we had hiked up Old Rag and set a personal speed record for reaching the summit. This year the circumstances were a little different as both Jason and I would be hiking after three nights and two day of intense swing dancing as part of Charm City Swing’s Lindy500 weekend. We would be hiking with tired and possibly sore legs. This was a good thing as it allowed us to have a more relaxing hike. The trip was made more special as we would be hiking with Jason’s parents, two of his sisters (Heather and Tracie), Bill, Heather’s friend and Jason and I. We all assembled at Jason’s place at 7:30 AM and were headed south a little after 8:00 AM. At around 11:30 AM, we started the hike from the upper parking lot and hiked for about an hour before stopping for lunch. The terrain is a gradual climb. Over the course of the hike, we would climb 2,286 feet and hike just under nine miles.  For this trip, I decided to pack along some new technology which I am still experimenting with, a Garmin Forerunner 305. Every couple of seconds the watch would record a GPS reference point. The next two pictures are the route we took courtesy of the GPS watch.

By early afternoon we would all reach the summit and it was time to rest our legs. As the hints of a sunset started to appear we took some pictures and started our descent. But before doing so Jason and I had to have a picture taken close to where we were photographed a couple of years back. It was good to record this moment. The descent was a little slower than the ascent as we were hiking with tired legs. By early evening we were back at the van. Bill, Heather, Jason’s mom and I headed down to the stream to dip our feet into the cold water. It felt refreshing. I’ll close this point with two pictures  courtesy of the GPS.