We hiked this section on October 18, 2011.
We left Knitting Bull’s car at VA 621 and saw a young hiker who had apparently camped in the parking lot last night. He looked very cold.
We then drove Dirigo’s truck to VA 620. We had to cross a private bridge in order continue on 620 – the alternative was a rather nasty creek crossing. We hoped we wouldn’t get shot at for crossing the bridge – we were all willing to pay a toll to cross.
We started hiking just after 8 am up Brush Mountain and climbed and climbed and climbed. The trail seemed to circle around the mountain instead of going straight up. Once we reached the ridge line, we still kept climbing. We came to a spot where there was a pink tube with a marker on the top that said Witness to Bear and then had coordinates on it. We didn’t know if this was the monument?
The temperature was just a bit cool and there was a slight breeze. Whenever there was a gust of wind, it would start raining leaves – you could even hear the leaves crackling in the wind.
We took a nice long break at the Audie Murphy monument. There were even two wooden benches at the memorial.
Audie Murphy monument
We came across two additional benches along the trail and were grateful to the people who put them there.
We met two section hikers from Maryland who were doing a 150 mile section hike.
We were surprised when we started our long descent because we thought it was at least another mile away.
The descent was long and tough on everyone’s feet. We let Knitting Bull lead the way down the mountain because she is fast on the downhill.
Once the trail leveled off, we had trouble finding the trail because it was covered by leaves and we had to look in every direction to find the blazes.
We then crossed three wood bridges and went across VA 621 to the welcome sight of the car.
