The Priest to Spy Rock (and back) 5/3/14--5/4/14

One of the main reasons we started our foray into backpacking was our desire to go up and camp at the beautiful Tye River above Crabtree Falls. With that in mind, we decided to hike up to The Priest from there. Then Dave read about Spy Rock and decided he really wanted to hike over there, as well. By the time we actually set out, we'd decided to skip camping above the Falls, and head up above the top parking lot to hike up the AT and camp at The Priest shelter.

 

We set out on a glorious Saturday morning and were soon up in Nelson County headed up Rt. 56. Even the drive is beautiful.

 

Once you get into those mountains, the road closely follows the lower Tye as it cascades down. Simply lovely, and how I wish I could bottle that sound!

I was under the very mistaken impression that an actual road led most of the way to the upper Crabtree Falls parking lot. I was definitely wrong. There was a small sign pointing out the turn onto a rutted dirt road, and this notice. Yikes.

Fortunately, we'd deliberately drive the truck because we'd planned to go up above the parking lot, and we KNEW what that "road" was like. If you can call it a road. But we weren't really prepared for several miles of....this.

 

 

This is the road.

 

 

The "road" is full of holes, rocks, unbelievably narrow turns around jutting rocks with sheer drop offs on the other side, and in three places the stream runs through the road and down the mountain on the other side. There is definitely only room for one vehicle at a time. Scared the daylights out of me.

Then we got to the parking area, and went up the REALLY bad road. Dave got out twice to see if we could actually drive over the boulders in the road. No kidding.



This is NOT our vehicle, or even the actual road--but this IS what it looked like up there

Finally, we decided we couldn't go any farther, and found a place wide enough to back the truck into the trees. Conveniently enough, it just happened to be next to the AT, although we didn't know it until we saw some hikers coming through. Great luck there!

The climb up The Priest is a slow vertical (my favorite!) and had me gasping. At one point I was literally counting 50 steps before I'd allow myself to take a breather. Yes, I'm fat and out of shape. Thanks for pointing that out, mountain.

There were some very pretty parts.

 

 

 

This rock formation is at the junction of the AT and the spur trail to the shelter. Pretty cool!

The Priest Overlook. Made it!

From the overlook we hiked back down to the spur trail and turned downhill to the shelter. We we arrived, there was a group of young thru hikers who had just arrived and were spreading out at the shelter itself. While the idea of sleeping in the shelter sounded good in theory, we decided we were more comfortable in our own space. We chose a campsite and began getting our stuff organized. (As it turned out later, there were about six people using the shelter and at least five other campsites set up by the time dark fell.)

The main reason we picked this particular campsite--other than proximity to the privy for my probable 2:00 a.m. visit--was this fire pit. It's built onto the side of a huge flat topped rock, so it had a great natural windbreak and lots of "shelves" to set pots and cups on while I cooked. And it looked cool.

I absolutely positively LOVE this shot.

After we put up the tent, we went and collected water from the spring and took it back to our rock table to treat. That water was REALLY cold. Oh, and we hung our first ever bear bag. Of course, I don't know the fancy dancy way to do it so I did the version where the rope hangs down for the bear to chew through. As luck would have it, however, there were apparently no bears in the vicinity. And in fact if there had been, NO ONE ELSE hung a bear bag, so they would've just eaten their stuff anyway!

Dave was completely enamoured of the little creek that started at the spring, and took a bunch of photos of it.

We had a delicious dinner of Mountain House freeze dried meals. Dave had the chili mac again, and I had the beef stroganoff. I really liked it a lot. We had some hot chocolate, cleaned up, and read for awhile next to a lovely fire in our ultra cool fire pit. Then we crawled into the tent and settled down for the night.

Dave was trying out his new sleeping bag, and we were both experimenting with extra "pillow" height created by blowing up a 2.5 gallon Ziploc bag. (It didn't work, by the way.) As it turned out, I never did need to get up to use the privy. I slept as well as could be expected, and Dave loved his new bag.

On Sunday morning we heated up some water to make coffee and the oatmeal I'd prepacked with nuts and craisins. Yum! I waited until everyone camping behind us was gone, and stepped behind our huge rock to wash up a bit and change clothes. Then we packed up our gear and headed back to the truck.

The view on the way back.

One of the nice things about parking at the trail junction was that we could dump everything we didn't absolutely need for the day hike out to Spy Rock and back. No need to carry the tent and sleeping bags! We stripped those packs down to water, lunch, and band-aids, man, and it was a good thing. The hike to Spy Rock was a beotch.

 

 

 

 

 

 

At one point I counted and I believe it was five ups and downs of peaks in between, and I wasn't having much fun with the ups let me just tell you. The scenery was lovely, and there were some very cool spots on the trail.

 

 

Gorgeous view here!

 

 

 

Eventually we reached Spy Rock--I had NO IDEA how big it was--and my first thought was "Nope, not getting up that!"

 

This is what I thought of that hike. Man.

 

We did manage to climb about half way up, but that was far enough for me.

 

We rested a bit, and then headed back.

After finally reaching the truck, we had the fun drive back down to the parking lot and out to the main road still ahead of us. All in all it was a great two days and I enjoyed it!