Shenandoah Backpacking Day 3: The Capital W

Day 3 began at 2:30 in the morning. Today was the day we were about to learn why the W in Wilderness was capitalized. In the deep dark of the forest, the breathing of a nearby bear woke me up. After a moment to confirm what I was hearing, I woke up Seningen with a nudge and my saying “Hey Bear” announcing our presence. We went back and forth for a while saying “hey bear”, eventually getting our lights on, bear spray out, and slowly emerging from our tents to get big. Similar to the night before, this bear was a little determined in its path. It took us every bit of a half hour until its footsteps faded and the alerts of the whippoorwills (whose call alone will give me anxiety at this point) stopped.

As we crawled back into the tent, we hoped that would be the end of the excitement for the night. We would soon have those hopes dashed. 4:30 in the morning I was again woken up by the sound of yelping and something brushing the tent. We had coyotes. I woke up Seningen, yelling “hey ” out into the dark surrounding our tent. From what we could tell there were 3 coyotes outside the tent and they seemed unwilling to back down. Aggressively barking and yelping. This was not normal. They should have left immediately.

Seningen turned to me and asked “what do we do?” and honestly I didn’t know. This situation was not supposed to happen like this, coyotes are supposed to be easy to scare. A quick thought of “What do bears do” went through my head and I slammed my fists down on my sleeping mat and yelled. That did the trick. After we got back, Falker, our local wildlife expert, believes that two pups wandered into our camp and mom tried to get them back. That is what led to the accidental stand off we found ourselves in. Regardless, the night was LONG and the Wild was really coming out.

Little did we know that this was just the beginning of this very wild, no good rotten day. The sun coming up was a true blessing, but it came with it its own challenges. We soon realized that we had become victims of our own success. Our speed of movement so far had made it so we only had two options: Get an early extraction or take a chance camping away from water and on Rocky top trail. As we discussed how to make contact home and tried to get through our routine to do it, we had our next wildlife encounter. This Eastern Timber Rattlesnake was so well camouflaged, I could have stepped on him if not for Seningen’s keen eye.

A nearly sleepless night, the anxiety associated with needing to make contact with the extraction team to change plans, and our continued wildlife experiences that morning had created a bad headspace in which to make decisions. Overly focused on those things, we made a lot of mistakes preparing for the actual hike we had to do that day. We only filled our camelbacks and not our water bottles. We didn’t put on our sunscreen nor long-sleeved sun protection hoodies. This was the beginning of the bad decisions. But they would not end there.

After making contact with the extraction team, we felt some relief, but didn’t take into account how under prepared we were. We started the hike up Brown Mountain. Unlike the rest of the trails we had hiked, this mountain had suffered a wildfire in 2016 so was completely exposed to the full heat of the sun with a heat index of 103 degrees. We ran out of water with more than half of the hike remaining.

With dehydration and heat exhaustion adding to anxiety, we moved at a speed that was exhausting. We also didn’t pay close enough attention to our surroundings… naturally Shenandoah’s Wilderness had a plan for that. As we walked, suddenly Seningen stopped and swung his arm out smaching me square in the chest. “Bear” he said with an extreme seriousness. About 30 feet off the trail to our right was a big black bear. We quickly began saying “Hey Bear” and pulled our bear spray. Fortunately, despite surprising the bear (which is always a bad idea) he opted to run up the ridge- fast. This picture of Sully Rock shows him still looking at us, just as surprised by the encounter as we were.

We had some rather strong feelings about this trail as we escaped our bear encounter and thunder began to rumble behind us. When we made it back to camp, we sat down and really focused on recovery. Sipping water, getting food, and talking all of our mistakes through. We cooled off in the creek and then began the bloodbath of a hotwash for the day. We went over every mistake, reworked our plans for the next day, and actually began to make good decisions again. This was a day with many many lessons. It was rough. Despite this we managed to talk things through and grow from it. As the storm rolled in that night, we were grateful for the chance at some wildlife-free sleep.