Well, you see Casper wanted to get his truck, his trailer and his wife all "off grid" being the kind soul that I am, I agreed to lead him to the wilderness where he could test his set up for a weekend and finally eschew those dreaded campgrounds.
A few thoughts came to mind:
It was a long weekend for Beth and I but they only had Saturday and Sunday.
The Perseid meteor shower was Saturday night (well, more than Saturday, but that's a meteorlogical thing)
And last year when we did our 9 days in GWNF, I thought it would be cool to photograph the trailer on the peak with the great view in the background.
With the truck and trailer loaded Friday evening we got out to Casper's house on Saturday morning and headed out for Harrisonburg.
The plan was to take Dunkle Hollow Road. I knew we could get up that route with the trailers, and I didn't want to beat our stuff up going the Union Springs route.
So, up Dunlkle Hollow we went. As you know the left turn off 33 can be interesting if traffic is bad, but after that it's an easy gravel road until you get past Skidmore lake. After that we were able to let Casper get his feet wet, so to speak.
The road gets narrower and a little rougher (and muddier with the rainy weather) without being too challenging. That is until nature throws you a curve. In this case that curve was shaped like a tree. Casper and I put our heads together and came up with a plan. The tree was partially rotted and wedged between to others, with the winch we could break it and move it off the road.
Once the trunk broke we all four picked up the end of it and rolled it out of the road. I thought Dunkle was a well traveled path but obviously we were the first in more than a couple of days.
On up the road we went.
Everything is beautiful, in its own way and on the last real tight switchback the beauty came in the form of washout with a boulder in the middle and a tree along the side. I surmised that I could roll my left front tire over the tree leaving me enough room to drive around the boulder. My 53,000 mile BFGs had other plans. They didnt want to climb the tree. No forward progress. I backed up and moved to the right. The washout was deeper but I thought I could climb it. Again, no bite from the BFG's.
So I backed up and parked. We cut the tree with the bow saw (while Beth stacked some rocks in front of the boulder) until we could all heft it off the road. Taking my original route sans tree, and I was able to get up and around the switchback. The tires didn't like it but the ATRAC made them work it.
After parking my truck, I walked down to Casper and we did the smart thing.....we aired his tires down. You know how hindsight is 20/20? Now his tires were 20/20/20/20. It would've been easier for me I'm sure if I'd had the foresight to do the same. Alas, he made it look like a cakewalk.
We finally reached the summit, and my beautiful picture I had in my mind was obscured by pouring rain and fog.
Eventually though the rain let up and we set up camp, ate some wonderful chicken and a squash casserole, got to see a few meteors and had a great evening.
