Shenandoah

Shenandoah National Park in northern Virginia is the second major park for northbound AT hikers. 101 miles of the AT run through the park. It differs from the first major park, The Smokies, in several ways which would affect our experience.

There are few park-wide regulations in Shenandoah in addition to the usual rules of the AT. The most relevant one to us is that burying toilet paper in cat holes is prohibited. Dispersed camping is allowed, as long as it is not within half a mile of park infrastructure.

And there is a lot of park infrastructure. You are never very far from Skyline Drive, the two lane highway running through the middle of the park and parallel to the trail, so there is often road noise in the backcountry areas. Almost every day we had opportunities to buy food at camp stores, wayside restaurants, or lodges. One day I set a personal record by eating about 4,500 calories total, including trail breakfast, two restaurant stops, and a high calorie dinner at camp.

Parking lots and trail crossings are frequent along Skyline, so weekend hikers and tourists are abundant. Some thru hikers choose to walk on the road instead of the AT. You might expect trail magic due to the road proximity, but we only encountered it once on our way through.

Wildlife is abundant in SNP. We were surrounded by deer at many of the shelters and in the trail, and they barely minded us. Rabbits, squirrels, chipmunks, grouse, snakes, frogs, and plenty of birds were spotted. We even had an encounter with a notorious young bobcat on the trail.

Overall, I appreciated how easy and well maintained the trail was in Shenandoah, but it felt like the park is made for tourists in cars and we were just part of the scenery; the smelly hiker cryptids hobbling out of the woods to dump trash, refill water bottles, and inhale burgers. The Smokies felt like a much more wilderness first park, with all of its tourist infrastructure contained down in Gatlinburg.

In fact, we hit one of the best sections of the AT (so far) immediately after we left the north boundary of the park and were ambushed by more ripe black raspberries than we could eat. We tried.

Harper's Ferry, the traditional halfway point of the trail, is coming up soon. By now we feel as ready as we may ever be to finish this thing.