Weaverton Road to Garvey Shelter

This Saturday we hiked the Appalachian Trail from Weaverton Road to the Garvey Shelter (3 miles), unfortunately we do not have two cars, so it was an in and out hike (total of 6 miles). The guide book that I have for the Maryland section of the AT says that this section of the trail has an elevation change of 576 feet that is comprised of 16 switchbacks. We only counted 15, but we were tired by the time we got back to them. After you have hiked the initial 576 feet you get this view:
This is the Potomac River, Virginia to the left, West Virginia to the right and Maryland in the foreground. The last time we were in this area, the river was much more turbulent, but this time it is really calm and pretty low.

After the side-trail to the view over Weaverton Cliff we continued on to the shelter. There is another 200 feet of elevation, but it is over about 1.5 miles, so it is pretty gradual. About half way, we felt like we had enough of this dang mountain! But like good hikers we took a break and soldiered on.

At three miles we came to the Garvey Shelter. It was an impressively nice place. There is a loft, a fire pit, a water source that is down a steep slope and an outhouse! This place was like the taj mahal of camping shelters. Inside there is a log book that people sign and write stories in. It was pretty interesting to read. Some people had seen bears, others wrote about where they had come from and where they were going.

After a little break we headed back to the car. We ran across a lot more people on the way back. There were quite a few boy scout troups and groups of people enjoying the lovely day. As a reward we drove into Harpers Ferry (3 miles) for frozen custard (I had vanilla and pumpkin twist) and a shake (John had peanut butter cup/vanilla).

We are slowly, but surely attacking the AT. Right now we have gone 3 miles on the southern end of the Maryland section and 3.1 miles on the northern section. One day we'll meet ourselves in the middle!