Sat.&Sun. Oct.15&16, 2011 Peak Colors Peak Crowds

Colors at mid-elevations were probably peak this weekend.   On the Old Rag summit we already had some trees with all their leaves gone.   Of course the rains early this week and the gusty winds of the weekend accelerated leaves dropping off their trees.   My guess is that there is still one more week of what I would call peak colors at mid elevations.

Notice how on the valley floor the leaves have hardly turned at all.

With peak colors and nice Fall weather you can be guaranteed that Old Rag will have a crowd.   Lines several hundred people long (sometimes as long as an hour wait) formed at choke points.   Here you can see part of the line on the first false summit waiting to enter the rock scramble.

This next picture is of the line at the Chute in the middle of the rock scramble.

Below is a picture of a very young lady topping out on one of Old  Rag's rock climbs.  Maybe she will be an ORMSer some day.

Since there was not a cloud to be seen the Old Rag sunset was not all that spectacular but still nice.

Since I camped near Byrds Nest Shelter overnight on both Friday and Saturday it allowed me to be on the summit before 8AM both mornings.   This gave me a couple hours of solitude before starting my duty near the chute a little after 10 AM.  

The various contingents of Sunday's Old Rag Mountain Stewards met on the summit.   After taking a short break from doing stewarding outreach we headed down for our days training on splinting.     We were very fortunate not to have had any needs for medical response on either Saturday or Sunday.    There were plenty of opportunities for providing outreach, and interpretation.

Make note of the trees with no leaves behind the Stewards in this picture.