Signal Knob (GW National Forest, Virginia) August 2014

Confession: this was my first hike in the GW National Forest this summer.  Strange considering that I was down in Shenandoah a handful of other times, and hiking elsewhere in MD/VA on other weekends.  The GW National Forest is nice for its free admission and relatively lighter crowds as opposed to the more popular Shenandoah.

Anyway, I picked this hike because it was a) somewhat long, and b) it wouldn't put me over zipcar's max 180 miles roundtrip (i think the trailhead was about 86 miles from my address in Northwest D.C.).  I have heard from friends who've done it on Saturday that it is fairly crowded for a National Forest hike, but I went on a Thursday (perks of having a free week to chill in D.C. after my internship ended), and only saw two mountain bikers the entire time.  The trail is somewhat narrow so if there are mountain bikers on a busier weekend, I could see that being a bit annoying.

The trail is extremely well-marked, which is saying something because I am terrible at finding trails.  The loop mapped out on hikingupward has you on the Orange Massanutten trail for the first half, and then looping around on the Blue Tuscarora trail.  There are two ascents during this hike-- the first is gradual but sort of lasts forever.  The second is really short-lived but quite steep, and at that point you're 6-7 miles into the hike and are sort of like "whyyyy."  or at least, that's how I felt.  It was a great hike though-- the lookout point at Signal Knob is almost exactly halfway into the hike.  Definitely not as nice of views as Hawksbill Mountain, Old Rag, or some of those others, but nice nonetheless.  Also, even though I was hiking in August, the colors in the forest were still pretty spectacular- trees in full bloom, lots of orange and pink going on.

I finished the hike in just about 4 hours even, far below the hikingupward recommendation of 5.5 hours.  I was moving pretty quickly, which is easier when by oneself, but I'd say you'd be hard-pressed to spend much more than 4.5-5 hours even if you're being more leisurely about the whole thing.  Definitely recommend this hike because it's strenuous but not too much so, and pleasantly quiet (although I can't speak for the weekend).

Trail Name: Signal Knob
Distance (RT): 9.9 according to hikingupward, about 10.5 according to the trailhead map
Elevation change: 2,680 feet
Time: 4-4.5 hours

Difficult Run (Great Falls Park, Virginia side) August 2014

This is going to be my new go-to "want to get out of D.C. for a few hours on the weekend but don't want to commit to the two hour each way drive out to Shenandoah" hike.  Well, I guess it would be, except I don't actually live in D.C. full-time.  So maybe not.

Anyway, Great Falls is amazing, and is only about a half hour drive from D.C. (less if you live closer to bridge access to VA).  Great Falls generally has a bunch of nice and easy hikes, and is split with part of the park in Maryland and part in Virginia.  The Maryland side has the Billy Goat Trail, which is very fun and popular, but loses major points with me for how damn crowded it is all the time.

Difficult Run hit the sweet spot of being an easy to moderate hike (practically no elevation change, although the terrain itself was pretty rocky and difficult at times), with amazing views, and uncrowded except for a stretch of about 0.5 miles adjacent to a parking lot/picnic area.  I picked this trail because I was hiking with a friend who got ACL surgery last year and couldn't do anything too strenuous, and this still felt like a decent workout without giving her any problems.

The hikingupward directions were spot on for the most part-- it's very hard to get lost.  Just note that there are a lot of choice points, and you pretty much just want to keep following the River Trail until you hit the picnic area, at which point you cross back over to loop around on the Swamp Trail and a couple others.  http://www.hikingupward.com/ovh/difficultrun/

There was also one small section of the trail that had washed out when my friend and I went last weekend.  It was easy enough to hop down some rocks and follow the stream for about 50 feet and climb back up, but just a heads up-- not sure if this is a permanent fixture of the trail or what.

Trail Name: Difficult Run
Distance (RT): 5.1 if you follow the loop mapped out on hikingupward
Elevation change: 260 ft.
Time: 2 hrs (takes some time to check out the sweet views)

Hawksbill Mountain Summit Trail (Shenandoah NP) August 2014

This might be my new favorite hike in SNP.  It was really quiet in the late morning on a Saturday (usually peak foot traffic time), there are spectacular views, and the elevation changes are pretty tame, even though the hike itself is on the long side (at least for me), pure mileage-wise.  This reflects my marathon training philosophy.  I'm totally down with a 14-mile long run, but the 4-mile hill training day fills me with dread.  But, I digress...

The first half of this hike is mostly downhill, sometimes steep at parts.  You're mostly on horse trails for the first half, and the second half is a combination of fire road and the Appalachian Trail.  The HikingUpward directions are really good for this one (http://www.hikingupward.com/SNP/HawksbillFranklinCliffs/)

Note that the views don't get good until the second half of the hike, but then they're pretty great.  If you're looking for a place to lunch/hang out, I actually recommend the lookout located maybe 1/3 mile below the summit.  The summit gets crowded, because there's a parking area about a mile down.  I actually think the views from the spot below the summit were superior, for what it's worth.

Overall- well-maintained trail, views almost as good as Old Rag, without the crowds of Old Rag.  Winning.

Trail Name: Hawksbill Mountain / Franklin Cliffs
Distance (RT): 9.2 miles
Elevation Change: 1,980 ft.
Time: 4 hrs (hikingupward is definitely wrong.  it will not take you five hours, given that one of my fellow hikers was carrying a bunch of bricks and we were traveling at a moderate pace, and still finished at just about 4 hours).  

Trail Running in D.C. [June-August 2014]

I live in Somerville, MA now, but I used to live in D.C. (and am in D.C. this summer).  The thing I miss most about D.C. is Rock Creek Park, which is the most amazing urban park.  It runs right through the center of the city up to the Maryland border (continues through MD as well, but I'm not too familiar with that stretch).  There's a nice running path right through the center, and a ton of trails in the park itself.  You are in the city one minute, and then in the middle of nature the next, which is pretty excellent.

There are so many trails that you can wander up and down, so this is more a description of individual trails rather than full hikes, because you can kind of mix and match as you please.  Also, the trails are so well maintained that I normally trail run here rather than hike, but I do see a lot of hikers towards the northern part of the park, and some of those trails are fairly steep, so that's not a bad option.

Western Ridge Trail- Rock Creek Park
My personal favorite, although stretches of it make for a pretty exhausting run.  You can pick the trail up at various points along the main running path, and it's about 5 miles of trail all together.  The trail is green-blazed.  I usually pick it up just north of Blagden Ave. where Beach Drive is closed to cars on the weekends.  The first mile or so is pretty steep and the footing is a little iffy.  The trail gets a lot nicer from there, with rolling up and downs but nothing too crazy.

Valley Trail- Rock Creek Park
I don't run as much along this trail, because it's super steep.  Mostly for hikers.  If you're looking for more of a challenge, go for it.  The trail runs along the other side of Rock Creek and is marked with pink blazes.  It's 5.6 miles total.

C&O Trail
This trail runs many many miles well up into Maryland.  The most well-traveled stretch (at least by runners) starts in Georgetown.  It's a little hard to find the exact start- the Mile 0 marker is basically between M St and K St around where Pennsylvania Ave. comes in.  Or you can just run along K St (where the big movie theater is, etc) and pick up the trail about 1/3 of a mile down.  This is not a traditional running "trail" but it's really pleasant because you get to run along the Potomac.  It's really busy on weekends, and particularly popular with bikers, because the Capital Crescent Trail runs parallel to the C&O for about 2 miles (?) before forking off to the northeast.

There's a boathouse where you can rent kayaks, canoes, etc. near Mile 3.  I've only been up to about Mile 5, but you can keep going up to access Great Falls, which is pretty cool.  That's at about Mile 12.  This would be an amazing trail to train for a super long-distance race, because it's just so uninterrupted (unlike Rock Creek Park where you have to pick up and leave off the trails at various points).

Sugarloaf Mountain (Dickerson, MD) July 2014

This was a hilarious hike.  I am deeply concerned any time I am with a large group of people and I am the most prepared/fit person in that group.  I ended up doing this hike because I had asked my friend if he and his wife wanted to go on a hike, but they were already going with some of her coworkers, so I just tagged along.  I showed up to find a group of people featuring one guy wearing something resembling low-top keds, and two girls in jeans who hadn't brought water.  Yeah. 

Hilarious anecdotes aside, this was actually a really nice hike.  Sugarloaf Mountain has four colored trails that you can follow, to make hikes of pretty much whatever length you want, which I think is a nice feature. 

We parked in the east parking area.  From there, we picked up the White Trail and headed on to the Blue Trail.  We then took the purple trail to the White Rocks, which was a nice view.  We followed the blue trail back all the way around to near the two parking areas, then picked up the green trail to make it to the summit.  We headed down on the orange trail. 

The hike itself was really nice.  It was mostly forested, and the trail was rocky but super well-maintained and mostly flat, which I love.  The summit is at 1282'.  East coast hiking, lolllll.  Some of the girls in jeans without water had a few problems, but so it goes.  I would totally go back here, because it's closer to D.C. than Shenandoah, and is less of a full-day committment.  You can take the yellow trail the whole way for a 7 mile loop- the blue/purple/white trail combo we did was probably more like 5-6 miles. 

The trail map itself is pretty excellent as well.  (http://sugarloafmd.com/images/maps/102709_trailmap.pdf)  All in all a nice hike.