We spent the mid-August weekend up at Dolly Sods, WV.  This designated wilderness offers a taste of the far north, right here in our own backyard (only 3 hrs away).  Since my last trips there, I'd spent a few months exploring Russia, and the landscape and plants of the Sods certainly echoed what I'd seen in that land. 

We knew it would be a rainy weekend, and came prepared with synthetic clothes, some warm layers and rain gear.  We hung a tarp up high, so we had a dryish space for our fire, plus a kitchen and living room, so to speak. 

For most of the weekend, seemingly, we were wrapped in clouds.  The rain was fairly persistent, but gentle and fine, the air warm (60s).   

Blueberries were plentiful, and appeared to be in mid-season (with many unripe berries left on bushes).  I was amazed at how many other fruiting shrubs and trees were there too.  Hawthorns, crab apples and mountain ash had heavy crops, albeit not ripe yet, and I discovered another edible member of the Rose family: chokeberry (Aronia), not to be confused with its distant cousin chokecherry (Prunus).  Aronia has a bland astringent taste, but is apparently widely used in cooking and considered to be very healthy and perhaps even therapeutic. 

I was psyched to find red currant growing among the boulders of bear rocks, even if I was several weeks too late.  Hopefully I'll be there at the right time next year for those. 

Elderberries were still green up there.  I didn't make it into the bogs to look at the cranberries, but those ripen later anyway. 

We'll be back.

Congratulations to everybody who attended my first ever West Virginia Survival Adventure.  We covered a lot of skills, had a great time, and it was definitely an adventure.  Here are just some of the highlights that stand out in my mind.  Also, special thanks to Josh for helping out as a guest instructor for the first two days.

DAY 1:

The Rt. 55 Roadside Spring

On our way west, we stopped at the Rt. 55 Roadside Spring, and filled our water bottles.  This spring is well known to locals, having been used for years and years.  I first found it some 14 years ago.  You pull off the highway and fill up your bottles from a PVC pipe that drains water from the mouth of the spring.  Be sure to stop and fill up here whenever you travel this way.  See map link below.

 Setting up camp

For the campers, it was their first time to either pitch a tent at all, or if not, to pitch the one that they used.  Tents these days go up easily.

Hazards

After the tents were up, we talked about some hazards present in nature, most especially ticks, wasps, venomous snakes and spiders.  Learning natural hazards is key to good safety habits and to having confidence in nature.  Thanks to good luck and to measured, careful movement, during our trip we found two underground wasp nests without anybody being stung, and found no venomous snakes or spiders.     

Firewood

A campfire cooked our breakfasts and dinners; this required much wood.  We did not buy or bring wood, we gathered it from the woods.  Learning to gather, haul, and break up suitable firewood is a skill in its own right, one that we practiced daily all week.   We mostly used red maple branches and dead chestnut saplings.  The chestnut made for great fuel, but it was sad to think that these were the last dead root-sprung shoots of the once dominant chestnut trees of the area. 

After gathering the night’s firewood it was time to swim; the weather and water at the lake were perfect.   

DAY 2

Rain and Newts

To our surprise, it rained throughout the first night of camp.  We weathered it alright, although some of the bedding did get damp in the boys’ tent.  In the morning we were unsure of if and how  long the rain would go on.  So we moved to the large group shelter to prepare our brunch, and to work on skills there in case of rain.  The damp weather brought out the Red Eft newts, and very small toads.  So the kids had many pets for a while.  We also found a bat hanging on a rafter.  The rain cleared out though, and we decided to go exploring.

Debris Hut Shelter part 1

Partly in the interest of scouting out good back-country campsites, we drove out into the National Forest to check out an area that looked promising on the topographic maps.  Using our maps and compasses, we navigated our way down to a shallow ridge where we decided to work on building a demonstration debris hut type emergency shelter.  By the time we got the basic framework built, however, the sky had grown very dark and was beginning to drip.  We donned our emergency ponchos and headed back through drenching rain, which ended before we reached the van.   

This was an invaluable lesson on how easy it would be to get soaked and hypothermic even on a summer day, if not prepared with rain gear or a suitable shelter. 

DAY 3

Debris Hut Shelter part 2

We returned to our debris hut in progress, and built a bedding of sticks and leaves, which proved more comfortable than anticipated.  Despite the sparseness of the debris, everybody brought at least one giant pile to the shelter.  We were able to cover about 1/10 of the shelter with enough leaves to be water proof- making a roof that would be enough for one person to huddle under.  If we had more time, we could have finished the shelter by hauling leaves for another hour or two, but we decided to go check out the spring that our map indicated half a mile away. 

Using our map and compass, but also establishing a chain of landmarks as a back-up, we descended the ridge for a ways and then dropped down the slope and through two rocky gaps, finally hitting the floodplain of the Lost River, where we followed the double yellow blazes to the spring. 

En route to the spring we saw the two ponds which I had noted earlier on satellite imagery.  The second pond, an opaque turquoise from algae, decorated a large lawn surrounding a cabin, on property that was almost visible from the spring. 

The Spring and the Sprain

Finding a wild spring is always special.  Most of the springs that I find are perhaps more properly called seeps, although four that I’ve found had already been dug out and developed for water harvesting in times past.  None of these four were indicated on USGS topo maps.  The website findaspring.com is worth a look, but has only a tiny fraction of our area’s springs.     

This spring was on the map, and was bursting with water.  Limestone gray translucent water burbled down a rocky slope, veiled by a network of moss-covered roots, logs and vegetation.   I was impressed by the flow rate (though I later learned that the usual volume was even higher!)  We made our way up to the source, reaching a solid wall where somebody had dug down to form a small still pool (see photo) – the actual water flow emerged somewhere lower and less accessible.  This place had a unique magical feel to it unlike anywhere I’ve been; if fairies exist, this is where you’d find them.

Some of the boys were anxious to take a dip in one of the deeper little holes of the spring-fed brook, but it was already time to head back up the hill.  As we were leaving the brook, some joked that we should go ask the cabin-dwellers for a ride back to the van.  Apparently this was a dangerous thing to say so near a magic spring.  Having carefully made our way down slopes, rocky areas, and along mossy logs, we started our way back moving somewhat briskly down the double yellow blazed trail. Still within ear-shot of the brook, G, who’d been following behind me, tripped on a log and collapsed onto the ground with cries of pain.  G had sprained his ankle, and was unable to put weight on it.  Sure enough, we got a ride back to our van, from the very kind, soft-spoken woman who, along with her silent, Gandalf-looking husband, was a caretaker of the hunt club by the spring.   

The ankle sprain was painful, but not serious according to the doctor at Winchester Medical Center, where I took G after dropping the other campers off at camp, bringing N and my older daughter for company.  N had a blast moving G around in the wheel chair.  We were released after midnight, and although the very friendly manager at the forest service campground, Larry, was staying up and ready to open the park gate for us, I had to call and let him know I wouldn’t make it back that night.  It was all I could do to make it as far as Wardensville, where I took a room at the See’s Motel so we could get a little sleep. 

This was the first motel I’ve been to that operates on the honor system – you pick up a key from under the mat by the door, sleep for the night, and leave a check in the envelope (or call back later and pay by credit card, during business hours).  Nothing fancy, it’s $56/night, with taxes.  Our room had two beds. 

DAY 4

The Lost River

This was our river day.  For more on the Lost River, see my earlier post on Rockcliff Lake.  The water-level and current were much less then on my last trip out there, about half of what it had been a month earlier.  This worked out well for tubing, in that the kids could move up or down stream easily, whereas at higher water level we would have been swiftly borne away, and would’ve had to either hike back upstream, or put in a mile or two upstream of our take-out.  Given the ankle sprain, it worked out in our favor.  G soaked his ankle in the cool waters of Sauerkraut Run, and then joined the others in paddling around.  May Joy tried her luck at fishing, but the fish had probably moved off to deeper parts of the river.  After the rain and clouds of the previous days, the sun and water play gave a welcome relief.  It wasn’t exclusively fun and games, we also tapped into the river rocks for an introduction to stone tools; some of the quartzite yielded sturdy, sharp flakes and cutting edges.

DAY 5

1-Match Fires

Last but not least, on Friday we packed our gear and tents, and campers took some time to take notes on some of the week’s skills in journals.  After demonstrating a 1-match fire that I lit right at the 5 minute mark, using kindling from the picked over area around our campsite, it was the kids turn to try.  They had worked together to build the cooking fires, now it was time to go solo.  Few adults can light a 1-match fire without using paper, and it often takes kids years to get this skill down, but this group did very well.  Everybody got a fire to light eventually, some quickly, and some were able to keep theirs going.  A big part of fire-making is learning what plants to look for, and how to recognize and find them.  In this campground, we had a variety of good options: abundant blueberry and mountain laurel, and patches of green briar, spice bush, red maple and sassafras.

As on the first day, so on the last, we hit the lake before leaving, and filled up at the roadside spring as we passed it.

The Rt. 55 Roadside Spring (if you know a better name for this spring, let me know in the comments).  I didn't take any pictures of it, but Peaceful Warrior Girl, who apparently lives in yurt nearby it and posted some shots on her blog, which I just happened across by accident.  Also, if you look at the map in satellite imagery mode, you can see a vehicle backed up to the spring (you want high clearance for this), and another one waiting in the parking area.

It was a great week at the Ancestral Knowledge Wilderness Experience overnight program.  Two people lit their first bow drill fires.  We found a bear skull and partial skeleton.  The river was great, the crawdads were plentiful.  We ate some good crappies.  Our exploration was rewarding.  The weather and bugs obliged.  Nobody wanted to go home.  See ancestralknowledge.org for more great programs.

What a great destination, and so close!  The Elizabeth Furnace Family Campground is a mere 1.5 hours from DC, and features great swim holes and good hiking, trout-fishing and rock-climbing.  The campground sits along Passage Creek, which drains a valley formed by the two major ridges of Massanuten Mountain, which runs south from the far western end of I-66 through the George Washington National Forest.

Swimming
Passage Creek features clear, clean water, relatively unfertilized by agricultural run-off.  The swim hole at the campground was excellent, with a great jumping log as pictured below.  There were a few other families there, but it was not overly crowded.  I don't know if the 50% chance of T-storms was lowering turnout, but the camp host said the place was pretty full by his standards.  There was still a bunch of sites available when we got there on Saturday evening.

Fishing
We did see some medium-smallish trout and sunnies swimming around - the creek is stocked - and will probably get a fishing license next time we go.  For a VA resident over, its $23/year for a fishing license, plus $4/year for a National Forest Stamp.  The VA license is $47 for nonresidents.

Rock-climbing
Just after entering the National Forest, lookout for some cliffs on the right, and then park on the right at the large lot in 200 yards.  There is also a small pull-off area opposite the cliffs that I used to drop off the people and gear.  May Joy and the kids played in the water while I hung a top-rope on I Love Big Jugs, a 60' climb that starts off as 5.5, and ends with a steep, pumpy 5.8 section.  This area is known as the Roadside Crag/Talking Headwall, and is a very family friendly place to climb.  There is another climbing area about an hour up the hill called Buzzard Rocks, which I did not check out yet. 

Campground
I liked the campground.  We took site #2, next to the host's RV and the bathroom, which includes 4 showers with private, lockable entrances. There are 30+ sites, and they have good privacy, thanks to the dense vegetation, which included lots of black haw viburnums that were loaded with yet-green berries.  Poison ivy is lush though, so you need to be wary, especially at night and with kids.

Bugs
We did not find any ticks throughout our trip; however, we did not do much bush-wacking either.  No mosquitoes.  There were some tiny biting gnats that were a minor nuisance on legs and arms, although the kids never complained.