Sunday, June 7, 2009 PATC Trail Patrol visits ORMS

Sunday, June 7, 2007 PATC Trail Patrol visits ORMS

(Double click pictures for higher resolution.)
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HEY you got PATC Trail Patrol mixed up with my ORMS! No you got ORMS mixed up with my PATC Trail Patrol!
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Because I went to PATC Trail Patrols pot luck dinner (great food and company) at the White Oak Rangers Cabin and then to the Big Meadows presentation by WindTalker and Mom about their new book, Solemates: Lessons On Life, Love & Marriage From The Appalachian Trail by Randy Motz and Georgia Harris it made sense to sleep about a quarter mile up and off the Weakley Hollow fire road Saturday night.
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Dawn comes early these days and the birds had me up and eating my breakfast in the upper lot at around 6AM. Two parties came out on the Ridge Trail. They had gone up under moonlight around 2AM during the night so they could set up and take pictures of the sunrise. After breakfast I ambled down to the lower lot and provided visitor assistance until the rest of the gang showed up.
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Morning Meeting

On the way up the Ridge Trail we met a man and his wife coming down. They had gone up the Ridge Trail to Old Rag summit. I had seen them in the upper lot while I was eating my breakfast. The gentleman told us that he has climbed Old Rag over a thousand times. While he has probably seen more than half his sunrises, I do not think I would try to race him up Old Rag. I hope he manages another thousand hikes on the mountain he obviously loves. He talked a little bit about the lyrics of Banjo Joe. I have not yet had the time to find renditions of Banjo Joe's music but I intend to. I may share some of the lyrics on a future blog.

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Slips can happen to the most experienced hiker. Below the PATC Trail Patrol provides first aid to one of its members who took quite a slip just below the first false summit.

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A couple of PATC Trail Patrol members having a bite to eat on the first false summit.

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PATC Trail Patrol in the Rock Scramble.

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At the end of the day bear crossing the Weakley Hollow fire road just before the three footbridges.

I saw granddad walkabout dog Toes on the fire road on-leash with his owners. Heard JR was fine even though I had not seen him for awhile.

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Lots of time, distance, nature, and cultural history information provided.

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First aid advice and supplies given to a couple of hiking parties so they could fix minor problems but no major medical assitance needed.

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Lots of used band aids picked up from the trail since sweat and abrasion makes them pop off faster than you can make toast. Either the park has received a prototpe of a DARPA sponsored iRobot that cleans trails or some good deed doer had recently picked up before me or the hikers are doing great with LNT. Other than the band aids and a little bit of micro trash the trail was clean of litter.

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A few LNT lessons were provided.

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LNT AT THE OLD RAG CORRAL

A couple of young climbers met. Asked them to be careful of the rocks, plants and animals and I got the OK-NO-PROBLEM with a tone and body language that my kids trained me to know meant just say yes to make him happy. I added, "If the wrong things happen the park may have to close down some of the climbing areas. " and fast as the words were out of my mouth I got the "THEM'S-FIGHTING-WORDS" look. I quickly added, "No one wants restrictions which is why the park has us doing outreach. " Their body language relaxed as fast as it might after clipping into a bomber placement above a long run out on difficult moves. No gun fight today. Message understood and hopefully taken to heart.
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Pinxters were compeltely gone. The full Moon glowed through the balmy air. Mountain Laurel still not at peak but may be next week. Absolutely great fun filled weekend in the mountains.