Take a Hike!

Old Rag is something of a legend around here: it’s an 8-mile hike (10 if you count the mile-long walk from the parking lot to the trailhead) up the side of a mountain, right to its rocky bald top, and back down again in a winding loop. I’d heard about it many times from friends and colleagues here, but after living only an hour’s drive away from it for more than five years, I had never hiked it. Until last Sunday.

A dear friend of mine was able to take some time out of her busy schedule to visit town on her way from Florida to DC, and since Old Rag was on her “bucket list” as well as mine, we teamed up and made the hike together. It was perfect weather for it, and the trees were just turning colors. (When I was younger, I always thought it looked like someone had spilled a giant box of Trix cereal all over the hills in the fall. The impression hasn’t changed, though the comparison is a little less apt since Trix went from being round to being fruit-shaped.)

When we checked in with the Park Service folks, they gave us a map and said, “Now, you know about the rock scramble, right?” We did—it’s part of the legend, though I must admit that I had only the vaguest notion of what a rock scramble actually was. The rangers said no more and pointed us on our way.

The first part of the hike was leisurely, through cool, shady woods on a nice, gently sloping path. Then it started to get a little rocky, to the point that we were crawling on our hands and knees up steep stretches of smooth stone. Having gotten past that hurdle with only a bruised knee or so, we said to each other, “Was that the rock scramble?”

It wasn’t. When you hit the rock scramble, you know it. The trail disappears into a mass of Mordor-like standing stones marked only by laconic blue paint swatches (some of which helpfully have an arrow, most of which do not). It really is rightly called a scramble, since one traverses it by slipping and sliding down narrow crevices, scooting on one’s backside down boulders with no footholds, and scrabbling up rock walls like clumsy cat burglars trying to reach the second story. At one point, the steady stream of hikers bottlenecked to a standstill as, one at a time, we all had to find some way of getting ourselves up a six-foot wedge in the rock to where the trail picked up and continued climbing.

I am not six feet tall. Nor is my friend. There was supposed to be a rope anchored into the rock to assist the vertically challenged, but it was broken, and only a frayed stub of purple cord gives witness to the Park Service’s efforts at accommodation. Neither of us would have made it if it hadn’t been for a couple of taller, burlier hikers who were willing to climb up ahead of us and drag us bodily by the arm up to the top of the crevice. Even the tall folks had trouble: one fellow managed by taking something of a running start, pushing off one rock, and catching himself, splay-legged, between the two boulders at a height where he could hoist himself up the rest of the way with his arms. This feat of acrobatics was even more impressive given the fact that he was toting an infant in a papoose on his chest.

It was quite the adventure, really—a harder hike than Mount Esja in Iceland (though we had the distinct advantage this time of not hiking in a gale) and an honest-to-goodness full-body workout. Other folks who are more outdoorsy than me will laugh at how shocked I was to find boulders so inconveniently positioned as to necessitate crawling, jumping, and being boosted by strangers, but for a born-and-bred suburbanite, I think I can claim some credit just for making it to the top! And the view was worth it, let me tell you.

I’d even do the hike again, in fact (as soon as I can once again forget about all those muscles that are currently crying, “Abuse!” every time I move). I enjoyed every minute of the ungainly scrabbling and slipping and gasping for breath—honestly, I did! But next time I’ll bring shoes with better traction, a backpack that’s less likely to get wedged into the narrow places, and a spare camera battery. Oh, and somebody really tall.