I am the epitome of unathletic and have never really enjoyed getting up and going. As a teen, I was mostly a "nestle up with a good book", or 'curl over my desk to regurgitate my fantasies onto a page" kinda person. Only recently have I wanted to get more into sports and moving around.
Of course, like many, I got into roller skating and skateboarding in 2020-2021. Only I quickly found out I suck at it for reasons that have compounded from not keeping up with running when I had the chance as a kid. So, I started thinking of something I could do that would be fun, not too hard, but rewarding.
That's when I found Hiking! Which, in retrospect, I've always enjoyed car camping, but I haven't ever wanted to throw on a backpack, walk 5 miles into the woods, eat lunch, then walk the 5 miles back. It sounds ridiculous, hot, and exhausting. Which... it very much is, but when you get too tired, you can just sit down and look at the nature around you!
My first time going for a hike was partially because I wanted to work out in order to skate better, but I also had gotten into a Filmmaking 101 class the spring of 2023. Our midterm project was going to be a documentary, and I knew that at the start of the semester, so I decided to rope my wife into going with me on a couple of practice trails and a 5 mile Appalachian trail segment hike!
We started out really slowly, flat elevation gain; elevation gain is how high you climb over the course of the trail, and low miles. I really hadn't done much exercising, even if I spend all 2020-2022 learning to skate. The trail was basically just a wooded park, go out to your local park, we basically just walked that. It was only a mile and wasn't very tiresome at all. We got a Polaroid camera in order to take photos of ourselves at the trailheads. This first hike really set me up for success because it was very easy, very fun, and even though we walked about a mile more than we anticipated, I was barely tired. This was the beginning of my new hobby hiking.
The next place we hiked was the Cape Henry trail in Virginia Beach, Virginia. That one we did twice cause it's a 10 mile long out and back; and out and back trail is a single line where you hike out the same exact trail you hike back on. These hikes were flatter, but they were also longer. Much longer. My Alltrails app says we did a total of 5.63 miles the first time, and 6.10 miles the second time. While it was very flat, we kept a decent pace, with full backpacks both times. The intention at the end of this experiment was actually to backpack the section of the Appalachian Trail. Backpacking is when you hike out, sleep outside overnight, then go home. As opposed to just a hike, where you don't sleep you go home at the end of your day.
After these three hikes, we ran out of time to do more. So, we were ready to hike the Compton Gap to the Jenkin's Gap trail in Shennendoah National Park! We were going to backpack over 2 nights and 3 days for a 4.8 mile, 1,207 elevation gain trail. I knew this was going to be way too much because we ran out of time to practice, but 5 miles total, over 3 days sounded very doable, especially because we were breaking up the 1200 elevation gain over those three days.
It proved too difficult for us, however. The first mile of the trail was 561 elevation gain. In just 1 mile. We were walking at a 45 degree or more angle for about 2 hours to get to the top. We were EXHAUSTED but we had gotten to Compton Peek, my first mountain summit! I was very proud of myself, and we ended up making camp right there. Which is a no-no, but I didn't know that at the time, nor did I have the energy to care. Our gear sucked and we were cold all night, having used hand-me-downs for the sleeping bags, and my wife didn't tell me she was feeling sick. Until we settled in to eat chicken alfredo that I had prepared the day prior and put into a bag to cook for the trip. This was also a horrible idea, as the food alone was so heavy. I digress, It was a miserable night, very cold, mildly uncomfortable which was a blessing, and my wife catching her death of fever. When we woke up, we didn't even make breakfast, it was freezing, foggy, and my wife was burning up. We threw camp into our packs and hiked straight back down to the car. It was a ton of fun, and while there are a lot of things I would and will do differently next time, this horrid experience made me fall in love with backpacking! I got an A on my documentary assignment by the way.
We have since gone hiking again, our first since moving up to Massachusetts and since we almost died on Compton Peak. It was a doozy, but very pretty and I recommend it for beginners who have gone on 1 or 2 other hikes. The Purgatory Brook loop trail in Mt. Vernon.
I am still not exactly one for sports, but now I do have a few things I find fun and worth the effort. I'm working on going back to roller skating still, so stay tuned for updates on that adventure. Stay tuned for updates on that adventure.
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