Old Rag Mountain (Shenandoah National Park, Virginia)
You know you are in for some serious hiking when you walk a mile from the parking lot to the trailhead. After completing this 10-mile hike, I now feel like a rock climber . . . just kidding, I know I'm not a climber but I can still pretend to be. The trail to the summit takes you through a mile long (what is called) rock scramble with narrow passages like this one, requiring some serious climbing, or is my case, lifting up, pushing and pulling up by my husband. We had to jump down into several narrow passages and then we had to climb back out. There were no stairs and there were no cables to hang onto. Plus it rained while we were hiking and the rocks were wet and slippery in spots. This 12 foot deep narrow passage was our first challenging part of the hike. After we made it through this passage, we looked at the trail before us and saw where we were going. We could see two guys (a lot younger than us) up on the ridge. Following the blue marks on the rocks, we pushed ...