Day 111. Ice

Mile 1248 – Luray To Mile 1258 – Stealth

Rocket helped clear the driveway at the hostel this morning while I helped scrape the three inches of ice off the van. We noticed a few limbs were down in the yard. A report on the news told us that there were widespread power outages farther south – right where we are heading. We started to realize this storm was worse than we expected.

When we got back to the trail it had completely transformed. Everything was coated in ice.

Ice covering the trail

Ice coating the trees

Ice becoming thicker at higher elevations

We could see the ice coating the branches of the trees was about 1/4 inch thick. As we climbed higher, the ice became thicker; up to about 3/4 of an inch. It turns out that trees really don’t like that much weight. There were limbs and entire trees down everywhere.

The trail was not impassable, but in many areas that we walked through today, it was almost impossible to make progress. It was slow-going all day and we did not go as far as planned, but we made some progress. We knew the ice could slow us down so we packed a couple days of extra food for this section between Luray and Waynesboro. It looks like we are going to need it.

Ice covered blaze

One interesting aspect of this is that Skyline Drive is closed and the park is empty. The trail passed through several picnic areas and overlooks that I’ve only ever seen before completely packed with park visitors. Today was a completely different experience.

Picnic area