Halfmoon Mountain Revisited, Tubing on the Cacapon, West Virginia

The weather called for rain and thunderstorms for this weekend, I felt confident anyway because I finally broke down and spent the $4 for a rain poncho. I decided to craft another backpacking loop out of Halfmoon mountain in the George Washington National Forest.I had a bunch of reading to do so I put all my gear and magazines in the minivan and left late Friday. Somehow I managed to find the trailhead off of Trout Run Road (P2)in pitch dark and spent a very pleasant night in the van. It's very dark and quiet in that spot. The next morning I headed out confidently on the trail with the map in my pack. The map would have helped a little more had I bothered to look at it because I went the wrong way, I ended up hiking up on what I had planned to be my return segment. Flexibility is the key to life.

The Bucktail trail doubles as some sort of forest Road, I don't much care for hiking on roads, I don't like the surface. But my attitude completely changed when I hit a trail called German Wilson, this beauty rises 1200 feet in 1 miles, all on a miserable slippery rocky surface....pure heaven. I became enchanted with all the pretty mushrooms and one lizard which I saw on my way up. I took a bunch of pictures, I'll call this my mushroom study.


Even though I had dilly dallied with the mushroom fascination, I managed to summit on Half Moon in 4 hours. I spent the afternoon catching up on all my reading.

Since I hadn't met any other hikers on the way up, I figured I was safe to camp at the very summit placing my tent at the top, directly on the trail. Fortunately, nobody came by to complain and I had a beautiful view. I made a fire and burnt all my reading material. It rained for some of the afternoon but the poncho kept my dry.

Sunday, it was cool for once when I woke up. I hiked down part of the Halfmoon Trail which was very gentle, I would say it would be ideal for beginning hikers, I then returned to the trailhead via the Bucktail Cutoff Trail, also very nice. This area seems to be very popular for horseback riding, as I saw a bunch of horses and riders at the trailhead. It only took me 2 hours to get down so I had most of Sunday left to do something else. I decided to go tubing. Tubing on the Cacapon near Yellow Springs

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I've been a little fascinated with the Cacapon River so I decided to find a place to tube on it. I followed route 259 northwards and decided to tube the stretch between Capon Lake and Yellow Springs, about 2 miles.
The first mile was a great deal of fun but the last stretch was a little slow. I used my bike which I had locked up at Yellow Springs to get back to my car.

Update 9/13/09 Someone asked me about the parking area for the Halfmoon Hike. I created this map with associated coordinates for the parking areas. I used parking area #1 for this hike. Slap those coordinates into your GPS and you are so there.

Tubing on the Gunpowder, Monkton to Glencoe, Maryland

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Directions to the Monkton Parking lot: Take exit 27 on 1-83. Head East on Route 137 Mount Carmel Road. Travel .6 miles. Take a right on York Road Route 145 going south. Travel one block. Take a left on Monkton Road, Route 137 heading east. Travel another 3 miles. At the bottom of the long hill you will see the river, the train station and the parking lot, as well as the tube rental store.

This year I decided to make a tubing trek from Monkton to Glencoe a Mountain Club of Maryland trip so I could get some more detail and pics for all of you who have interest. I didn't do much to advertise this event and only one kind soul showed up to go with me. After making these big plans to get better pics, I ended up leaving my dry bag and good camera at home. So these fuzzy low-resolution pictures taken with my PDA will have to suffice. My apologies!

I had never tubed from Monkton to Glencoe although I have tubed several other stretches of the river. Luckily we had much rain recently and somebody decided to open up the gate up at Pretty Boy so the Gunpowder was flowing fairly fast. The river was still pretty shallow though so we didn't need to worry about drowning. My cohort, Ellen, rented a tube at Monkton Bike Rental, it was a truck inner tube with a really nice cover on it as well as a mesh bottom. Ellen is a MCOMD member who recently moved here from Tucson.

The Gunpowder water was cold as usual. A bird followed us down river and Ellen managed to get herself bit not once, but twice in the same area of her elbow by bees. Her arm puffed up a bit but we were having too much fun to be concerned. I hope she doesn't end up in the hospital tonight.
The river twisted and turned, it took us about 3 hours to get down to Glencoe. We returned to Monkton via the NCR trail.
UPDATE June 2008 For another post about tubing on the Gunpowder River at Big Falls, north of Monkton click on this link I've got directions, map and video for you.

UPDATE July 13, 2011 I went down this Monkton to Glencoe route again yesterday. Air temp was 95 degrees and sunny, and by the time I got out of the water at the second railroad bridge after 3 miles, I was blue from the cold water. The river was absolutely spectacular, I can't say enough good things about this stretch. About every 0.2 miles I met a new big blue heron. The riparian area is alive with kingfishers too. I saw one deer. I don't know who is doing what to clean this place up but there seems to be far less sunken tires and debris in the river and I could see the improvement. The tube rental place is offering a "free" shuttle included with the price of the tube rental to take the tubers to a point north of Monkton, so all the tubers seem to be on that stretch of the Gunpowder now. If you want peace and quiet yet a good tube run then Monkton to Glencoe is for you.

Tubing on the Potomac, Harpers Ferry, West Virginia

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I promised myself no hiking this weekend, so I headed out to do more tubing.  I didn’t want a long ride so I headed to Charles Town, WV.  

I spent the night on a quiet street and then headed to Harpers Ferry the next morning.  It was really overcast and after mulling it over I decided to take my chances with an early tube run.  I locked my bike and pack at the C&O towpath and AT intersection at Weverton and then drove ¼ mile north of Harpers Ferry for a put-in. One word about this area, PFDs are required.  I was the only one on the river and was able to get up close and personal with some turkey vultures that were hanging out on the rocks below HP.

The best rapids on the river are about  1/3 of a mile northwest of the Sandy Hook Bridge.  The river moves pretty well but not too fast in these parts.  Good for tubing.  
While near the end of my run some people came by in kayaks, they were taking a beginning white water kayak class.  The instructor was a bit of an pest and tried to start a conversation with me, I wasn’t having any because he was annoying.  The instructor told his pupils about all the safety equipment that was absolutely positively necessary when on the river like helmets and paddles and other useless crap.  One student asked the instructor about me, who had none of the above equipment, and the instructor boldly informed him, “The woman in the tube was most likely a tube guide.”   My already large ego was just expanded, now I am a tube guide!  Who knew?

Feeling pretty good after I returned to my car I drove back to Charles Town, jumped on somebody’s Internet connection to see if there was any live music playing.  Charles Town is a bit of a dud when it comes to night life and the only band I could find that wasn’t at a country club was at Charles Town Raceway and Slots.  I figured, “Why not?”

So off to the casino I went.  Mind you, I don’t drink, smoke or gamble and I had already eaten but I didn’t have anything better to do.   I ended up walking in the wrong door and couldn’t find the casino.  A security guard saw my confusion and asked what I was doing there.  I tried to look like I belonged there and said I was confused about how to get upstairs.  He said to me, “What are you, a horse trainer?”

I got demoted from tube guide to horse trainer in a span of three hours.  I realized that maybe I did look like a horse trainer, I was still wearing my Wal-Mart river clothes and a bird had defecated on my shoulder during my tube run, I hadn’t done such a good job of cleaning the mess off I guess.  

The slots casino was a happening place, think Las Vegas but with maybe 1/100th of the budget.  The bones of the structure were definitely a large warehouse gussied up with plenty of flashing lights and thousands of slots machines.  It was filled with people from the Mid Atlantic area.  Mind you, nobody at this place would ever be accused of styling and profiling.  This was a shorts and tee-shirt type of crowd.  I saw a couple of the horsie races. The jockeys looked like they all came from the same Latino country, they were cute, and I am wondering if somebody could clue me in to where they are from. The featured band, Quiet Fire Soul Show, was set up in the middle of rows of slot machines and people gathered around to here its soul and disco music.  Pretty soon we were all dancing happily in the rows of slot machines.  A word of advice, don’t order the Brownie Sunday at the casino food court.  The brownie tastes like regurgitated cigarette butts.

I spent Saturday night in another quiet neighborhood in Charles Town.  I woke up and it was raining so I decided to drive home, not willing to find something to do in the rain.

Tubing on the Potomac near Paw Paw and Western Maryland Rail Trail

Tubing on the Potomac near Paw Paw

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Ever since I bought my tube float a few weeks ago I wanted to think if there was a way to incorporate a bike ride with a trip down a river. I also wanted an excuse to explore the Green Ridge State. I had had such a good time at Paw Paw, WV 2 weeks ago I wanted to return and spend some more time in that region. I left Saturday morning with a couple of day’s worth of food, my tube, my bike, a tent and minimal gear.

The forest is a set of small hills and valleys with a labyrinth of logging roads crisscrossing it. The ride through was a little treacherous. Even though there were lots of official Maryland State campsites sprinkle among the trees, almost nobody was camping. I decided Paw Paw was to be my tubing endpoint destination and I dropped my bike off near the tunnel and proceeded up the road about 6 miles at a place called Town Creek Aqueduct.

Within seconds of my arrival I had locked my car and popped my tube in the Potomac and I was off. I waved to some local boys who had set up camp. It took me 3 hours to go 6 miles in the river, where I hit about 3 sets of Class I&II rapids otherwise my trip down river was pretty uneventful.

I found my bike and switched the lock to the tube and PFD. This is where it gets interesting. For some reason I got it into my head that the Paw Paw Tunnel was north of this point, so I strapped on my headlamp and headed through the tunnel without thinking. It took me about two miles after I left the exit of the tunnel to ponder why the canal was on the left of me and the river on the right, this didn’t make sense. After I thought about it awhile I concluded I was going in the wrong direction. This snafu necessitated a U-turn and a trip back through the tunnel, and then 6 more miles in the right direction. Mind you, I dislike getting anywhere near the C&O towpath, it looks to me like a 184-mile long malaria breeding pit.

When I returned to my car the local boys whom I had met at the put-in offered me to share their stealth camp-site off the river. I thought about spending the night at the river but I knew it would rain hard so I politely declined. I drove the minivan back through the Green Ridge Forest via a cumbersome but fun logging road. I found myself motoring through a ravine when the sky broke loose with thunder and lightening so I drove under a set of trees and spent the night there.

The next morning I decided to take a bike ride and drove to Hancock, MD which is home to the Western Maryland Rail Trail. I ate a hearty breakfast at Weaver’s Restaurant and the kind waitress pointed me in the direction of the trail, which turned out to be directly in back of the restaurant. Duh!

To all bike trail users: The western half of this trail is one of the nicest I have ever ridden, it’s wide, freshly asphalted, has beautiful views of the Potomac and you enter and exit the road gates centrally which is really really nice. Also, instead of having the usual Civil War signs (At this site in 1863 General Stonewall Jackson looked at General George McClellan sideways blah, blah, blah) or environmental signs (Pond scum is the dominant plant-life here in the canal) the trail has informative descriptions about the little businesses that happened along the canal and railroad like apple farms, concrete and sand companies. It is worth stopping and reading.

After I got done with this portion I headed south and did an up and back of 20 miles on the southern segment. This segment is directly adjacent to I-70, it is forgettable and should be avoided unless you are very interested in Little Pool.