Loop Hike: Old Rag Mountain and Corbin Mountain Trail, SNP, VA (~1000-3500')

If you've been following this blog, you may have noticed that I've been hiking a lot more this spring than I did last year. There's a reason for this (and it's not that my work schedule has eased up--haha, that'll happen when I'm dead): I'm heading west again this summer to pick off a few more highpoints! The Southwestern ones are all snow-free by July, but they're still serious ascents involving several thousand feet of gain, moderately tricky terrain, and high elevation. I might not be able to train for the last two of those here in Virginia, but I've mapped out some loop hikes along the Blue Ridge that will at least approximate the first.

And so I headed out this Friday for the first of them, which would take me back up Old Rag Mountain and some of the nearby trails in Shenandoah National Park.

As you might recall, Old Rag is one of the few genuine Class 3 scrambles I've seen in Virginia. The top quarter of the mountain is covered in huge, smooth granite boulders, which the trail to the summit takes you over, around, and through. The mountain's unusual terrain and proximity to the DC metro area leave it quite crowded in warm months, so if you prefer to hike without a bunch of randoms breathing down your neck, I recommend you get there early. By the time I arrived, at 9:30 a.m. on a Friday in late May, the (huge) parking lot at the base was already two-thirds full.

The first few miles of my ascent were uneventful, though much greener than the last time I'd been there:

Side Trip: PANIC! on Lake Champlain, NY/VT (100')

The only problem with my pizza-plan, you see, was that there was no civilization within fifty miles of the Adirondack High Peaks.

Though I pulled over in each tiny hamlet I encountered on my way out of the park, none of them had a reliable phone signal, let alone 4G for maps. I had no idea where I was going at this point--all I knew was that Mt. Mansfield, my next high point, was east of here, and that the bridgeless expanse of Lake Champlain lay in between--so getting that data signal was my first priority. But there was none to be had all the way to the interstate. I got on I-87 southbound, thinking I could just head back to town where I'd lunched on the way up. After a few miles I pulled into a "text stop" to confirm my hunch.

Just your typical rest stop... except with French truckers.

While I fired off the usual "Hi Mom, I'm still alive" texts, several emails popped into my inbox. I flipped over to see what they were: spam, spam, newsletter, spam, and holy cow my Gmail account had been hacked. Google had blocked the illicit access, they informed me, but whoever it was had still cracked my password, so I had to-

The data signal blinked out of existence.