Hiking to the Raven Rocks overlook wasn’t too bad.
How bad could it be? The overlook is less than three miles from the trailhead.
Getting there wasn’t a problem.
Getting back?
That was a problem with the hiker, not with the hike.
The hike
Hiking upward.com is my go-to for finding mountain hikes in my area. Click this link for their profile of the Raven Rocks hike. This hike is middling-difficult (3) on their five-point scale. Total distance (out and back) is 5.4 miles, with an expected total hiking time of four hours.
The hike starts where the Appalachian Trail crosses Virginia Route 7, at Snickers Gap. This is right where the scenic Snickersville Turnpike ends at Route 7. The trail-head parking lot was empty when I arrived at 8 AM on a Friday, and was completely full when I left around noon. (The hiking upwards writeup tells you where to go if the trailhead parking lot is full.)
There’s a fair bit of up-and-down involved, though the elevation profile greatly exaggerates it.
Source: hiking upward.com, annotations in red are mine.
It’s a nice little hike. You walk across two ridges, to near the top of a third, where the overlook is. In so doing, you cross two fairly deep stream valleys (hollows) and their running streams. At first, you can still hear the truck traffic on Route 7. But by the time you’re on the far side of the second ridge, there are no man-made noises at all. It’s quite peaceful.
Commenters describe the trail as “rocky”, and I’d agree with that. It’s the sort of hike where you spend a lot of time looking at where you’re putting your feet, and spend some of the time stepping from rock to rock. But that’s typical for mountain hikes around here. I heeded the on-line advice favoring boots rather than sneakers, due to the rocks.
But if you don’t like walking around rocks, what are you doing hiking in the Blue Ridge? Plus, all those rocky sections make you appreciate the scant sections of level dirt path all the more. Plus, if you’re the sort of person who conflates “hiking along” with “striding along” or even “strolling along”, this trail will teach you the difference. You pretty much had to mind where your feet went (almost) all of the time. Plus, steep uphills and downhills, because it is, in fact, a mountain trail.
All told, between the rocks and the grades, I’d say I did relatively little striding or strolling on this hike. But I’m old, and haven’t hiked in a while.
So, rocky. Yes, this is a rocky walk. Not much can be done about that.
There’s not much to see, until you get to the overlook. But the view from the overlook is nice, as these things go in the Blue Ridge. That’s it, above and at the top of this posting.
The hiker
The hiker, aged 66, with significant recent weight loss, made a major miscalculation.
I didn’t eat breakfast. I took only a light snack, consumed at the overlook. I didn’t bother to look up an estimate of how many calories I needed to get to the overlook and back. Because, hey, it was just a little out-and-back day hike, right? And back in the day, when I was younger and fatter, I never had to worry about being fully-fed before I started out on a hike like this.
I ran out of energy halfway back. At which point, I slowly turned from being a senior, out for a hike, and became a doddering, slightly confused old man with balance problems, wheezing his way up and down the trail.
It wasn’t muscle fatigue. I ran out of energy to burn, hence the mental fuzziness — brain fog? — which, dangerously enough, is something that you typically only recognize in hindsight. Because, at the time, you are confused.
For me, that’s the sort of thing that’ll happen when you get too weary from physical effort. You keep on doing what you’re doing, you make bad decisions on the fly, and so on, possibly lose track of time.
But this time, it wasn’t muscle weariness. This time, I ran out of fuel.
At some point, it dawned on me that I was, in fact, carrying a pair of trekking poles. They were kind of a pain, actually, because even collapsed, they stuck out of the top of the knapsack.
I pondered taking them out, setting them to length, and using them. But kept walking, in the meantime. At the top of the final descent, reason (and a nice flat spot on the side of the trail) prevailed, and I took them out, set them up, and used them, hoping to avoid face-planting on the rocky trail down to the final stone stairway at the trail head. Nobody had passed me on the way up to the overlook, but several hikers passed me on the way down, as I moseyed home.
As an aside,this trailhead should be sued for false advertising. You look at that and think, “oh, a nice tourist trail”. But the “nice” part ends at the top of those stairs, and you end up hiking on the Appalachian Trail. Definitely not a smoothed-and-improved tourist trail.
This is the first time I’ve relied on trekking poles for balance, meaning, specifically, using them to make up for a likely deficit in my ability to balance. First time using them as explicit balance aids.
When I was fat, I used them on downhills to take some stress off my knees. (Which means, in practice, I would trade sore elbows for sore knees.) I’m no longer fat, but I was glad to have them so I could “pick” my way down the final stretch of this trail.
If you ever buy a set of trekking poles, distinguish yourself from 95% of hikers by taking two minutes to learn how to use them. REI has a nice explanation. For me, these poles aren’t worth the effort of using them on the flat, and uphill. But they are sometimes helpful for downhills and sometimes for stream crossings.
Anyway, made it down without mishap. Drove home. And after a bit of internet research, concluded that the hike probably required ~1500 calories. (That, for 3.5 hours of hiking on steep, uneven terrain, but acknowledging that all estimates of calories burned while hiking are necessarily approximate.) That’s about as much food as I eat in a day, normally, so in hindsight, it’s no surprise I ran out of steam on an empty stomach.
Conclusion
This was really a “shakedown” hike. Enough to see if I could do it. See if all the equipment still worked. See if I was comfortable walking solo. Among other things, I learned that Walmart work boots make poor hiking boots. Not unexpectedly.
And that I talk to myself. Perhaps excessively.
But the big surprise is that I now have to pay attention to eating enough, if I’m going to do more mountain hikes.
Which makes sense, I guess.
Back when I was young and fat, that was never a problem.
Now that I’m old and scrawny, it is.
Lesson learned.
Addendum: Extras for Exercise Experts
Source: Clipart library.com
What I got out of this hike, mostly, was a good lower-leg-and-foot workout.
(I had hoped to get “self-confidence about solo hiking”, but that jury remains out.)
In terms of the physiology, sure, I used my thigh/glutes for propulsion. But(t) those muscles get worked out routinely at the gym. Unsurprisingly, they were up to the task.
But from the knee down, that musculature doesn’t get much of a workout at the gym. It doesn’t help that I rely on “low-impact” cardio – bike, elliptical, and sometimes (stair climber, rower, …). Exercise, involving the glutes, during which the feet don’t impact the ground. The flip side is that the feet aren’t very much involved in the exercise.
But ask: Why do I choose low-impact CV? It’s the joint pain I get from either running or walking. Those leave me sore in the hip ball joints, and running in addition leaves me with sore low spine-to-hip (sacroiliac?) joints.
Be that as it may, I don’t get a lot of calf/foot exercise.
And yet all that calf/foot musculature comes in handy if you’re an old guy, trying to stay upright.
Imagination or not, I seem to be outdoor-walking better, today.
Prior to this hike, my lower legs felt “wooden” as I walked. Importantly, they felt that way almost no matter how long I walked. Suggesting that was not merely from lack of blood flow, say.
Post-hike, it’s now as if the lower leg and foot have finally re-learned how to participate in the whole “walking” thing. That woodenness is gone, replaced by more of a feeling of placing my foot, not having the foot strike be the residual of whatever stride I’m taking. Controlling the foot-strike? Yeah. But, ultimately, with noticeably less foot-strike. Which should then, I hope, translate to less hip joint damage from walking.
Maybe that’s permanent. Maybe not. I’m thinking this may have been one more residual of my life-long obesity, and that maybe having learned to walk stiff-legged as an fat person, I now need to un-learn that.
In any case, the hike amounted to 3.5 hours of pounding around and over rocks. To the point of exhaustion. It was, unambiguously, an excellent calf/foot workout. Walmart work boots or no.
But it’s not a prescription you’re likely to get, for stiffness in your legs. And one with some bad side-effects, clearly including damage to my hip joints. With some significant potential for serious acute injury. Such potential greatly increased by running out of energy reserves and slowly kicking over into shutdown mode, while hiking on rocks.
That last part was, unarguably, operator error.
Carb-loading of some form is now required, apparently, because my normal-weight self does not maintain enough reserves / cannot process fat fast enough to produce a day’s worth of calories of effort, in 4 hours. (By contrast, I would never think of eating before going to the gym. Now I know better, for hikes.)
At any rate, whatever energy reserves I’ve got, I hit the bottom of them yesterday. In a more controlled environment, that might be a good thing.
And on the bright side, I seem to be able to stride a lot better. I’ll see if that sticks, or not, or perhaps was solely a matter of misperception. If it sticks, it’ll have been worth the hip pain.
