The fourth wave of covid hitting the city starts to play tricks on my mind again. Though I do not miss the traveling, I feel deflated from limited mobility, especially in such glorious weather.
During my run this morning, my mind took me back to the Old Rag hike at the Shenandoah National Park.
It was a strenuous hike with several parts that put your body and mind to the test.
- Jump atop a ten-foot rock
The trail is famous for its mile-long rock scramble, which for the most part, I was able to overcome with relative ease until I came upon a tall rock that was just beyond the grasps of my stretched arms.
My husband ascended with the grace afforded by his upper body strength. On the other hand, I have the upper body strength but lack the length to do the job.
There was a three-feet stretch (if one can call it that) that I could run and give myself a little boost. I ran and ran and ran some more. I still found myself at the foot of that rock.
Next, my husband tried to pull me up with so much force that I thought he would succeed in pulling my arms out of their sockets and land them atop the rock. Unfortunately, my “disarmed” body would remain at the bottom.
Determined to move forward on this trail, I scoured around for other resources that might do the trick. I found nothing.
We spent more than thirty minutes at that juncture, trying out different ways to get up, but to no avail. If I couldn’t get past this rock, the only way to go is back. I was bumped by that option (or the lack of). I decided to give it one last try. This time, I ran, but instead of trying to launch myself at the tall rock, I set my right foot on the wall next to it. It wasn’t much of a boost as the wall was pretty much vertical. But it was enough for me to grab the top of the rock. I then try to pull myself up like getting out of the swimming pool wearing a complete set of thoroughly soaked winter attire.
My vented frustration paid off. We could proceed to the peak.
2. Chimney down a rock crevice
Before we could climb up, we had to climb down first. This time, it was about a two-story-high rock crevice that we need to pass through. I chimneyed down it easily. But not quite so for my husband. The passage was too narrow for him to have sufficient hold doing the chimney and too high for him to jump down. It took a passer-by offering us advice on alternative maneuvering for my husband to descend the depth safely.
3. Traversing split rock plains
The peak is just beyond the rocky plains. I saw many hikers with their long legs leaping past the cracks. On average, it took no more than 10 minutes for the hikers to cover the distance from my observation.
I’m not an average hiker.
When I came to the first split, it was more than three-feet-wide and eight-feet-deep. My husband lept past it, with the agility and grace of an average hiker.
I surveyed the forks and plains and calculated my odds. I do not aspire to be Tom Cruise in MI that he jumped and only landed on the side of the building. Descending into the cracks and climbing back up, though very uncool, is a more appealing route to me.
I successfully crossed a couple of those cracks using my method. Then I came upon the last one, which was a tad bit too high for me to climb. The face of the rock was very smooth, which didn’t offer much hold. I tried to jump a few times but failed to pull myself up. I looked around and found a slanted surface connected to this rock plain. It was still a bit too high for me, and its surface is even smoother than the one that I attempted. But the advantage it offered was the slight downslope.
I walked as far back as the surroundings would allow. I then ran and launched myself at the smooth downward sloping face. It was a half success. I managed to get my waist-up onto the surface. The remaining half of my body was still dangling over the crack. With its weight and the lack of hold, I noticed myself starting to slide down. Hypothesizing that by lying flat, my upper body would create enough friction to remain in its place.
The question now is how to get the rest of me up.
There was absolutely nothing to hold onto around me. And I needed to increase the friction to get a better hold to pull myself up.
I began to roll myself as you would roll out of bed, except, in this case, I was trying to roll up the bed. I could see the bewilderment in my fellow hikers’ faces (my husband’s included) as I spun myself around and around on the smooth surface of the rock. It took a good number of full rotations before I managed to get my whole body up.
My performance was met with applause and laughter. I was glad that it worked, and I provided some amusement to others on the trail.
We lost a lot of time overcoming these obstacles along the trail that we realized we would start to lose daylight. Luckily, going downhill from the peak was easy so that we could run most of it. We managed to get to our car before sundown.
Hiking the Old Rag was a good test of my abilities and a memorable one too. I’ve been training for the past few months in much the same way as I did before going to Shenandoah. I wonder when and where I would hike another Old Rag to put my body and mind to test once again.
