Appalachian Trail Section hiking: Seely-Woodworth Shelter to VA 56/Tye River

Seely-Woodworth Shelter to VA 56/Tye River
Day Four - Thursday, April 2, 2015
11.4 Miles

We set an alarm for 6:00 this morning, so we could get an earlier start. The added bonus is that we got to see the sunrise. We were finished with our breakfast, packed up and on the trail by 7:20. Everyone else was still in bed.

The walk through the forest again was pretty easy to begin with. At 8:20 we reached the trail to Spy Rock, which went almost straight up. At the top of the hill the trail split and pointed to the right to Spy Rock. We followed it and saw two hammocks set up close to the edge of the mountain. The wind was blowing hard across them. They appeared to be sleeping, so we walked on by and continued to follow the trail, leading up Spy Rock. But there were no white blazes on the rock, so we began to question whether the AT went this way. Wait-up went back to try to find the white blaze. One of the men in the hammock told him the trail went back the other way away from Spy Rock. He also said that they had been very cold last night sleeping in their hammocks on the edge of the mountain.

We back-tracked to the Spy Rock sign and saw that the AT blazes went to the left away from Spy Rock. Now we are on the right track.

We had lunch on top of the Priest. This is a Virginia mountain, famous for it's difficulty. And it is difficult enough coming from the south, but would be murderous coming from the north. As we made our way down the mountain, I was VERY glad we were going down and not up.

At 12:30 we called Oma to let her know we were on our way down the Priest and should be at the bottom by 2:30. It is about 4.5 miles down the mountain. Just when we thought we were at the bottom, we crossed a spring with a another mountain in front of us. I was sure hoping we didn't have to cross the mountain and, sure enough, after we crossed the stream the trail turned and went down alongside the stream and around the side of the mountain. We crossed two more streams before we reached the bottom.

I thought we never would get to the road. There were lots of rocky areas to walk on. And I never did see the Tye River. Those 3 streams had to go somewhere though, so we trusted it was there. We finally came out to the parking area at 2:35. It was sunny and 72 degrees, we were pretty hot by then and my ears were sunburned. Oma was waiting on us. We went back to the hostel, got our car and headed to Waynesboro to spend the night and regroup.

We found the interstate Waynesboro and thought that was it. We found out later that there is a downtown Waynesboro of which the locals are very proud. We checked in to the Comfort Inn and went to Logan's for a huge 1/2 slab of ribs with all the trimmings - a very good value.