St. Mary's Walk/Work-thru
April 11 – 13, 2025
St. Mary's Walk/Work-thru
April 11th to the 13th, 2025
Starts and finishes at the St. Mary's Falls Trailhead.
Limit to 10 Participants
Online Sign-Up: https://www.signupgenius.com/go/10C0F45A5AE29A1F5C61-55175752-backpacking
Are you wanting to participate in the Spring walk-thru, but are not confident you are ready to tackle the elevation and length of the Three Ridges - Mar-Har Trail loop as a weekend backpacking trip?
Well, then you might consider joining us on that same weekend while we go into the St. Mary's Wilderness. We'll be meeting Friday afternoon at 3:30 pm at the St. Mary's Falls Trailhead and walking about 3 miles (with one roughly 400 ft of elevation change). There are, however, 3 or 4 stream crossings (so bring a pair of shoes or sandals to wear while crossing!). We will be camping near the St. Mary's River Trail on Friday night. We will have access to river/creek water but not privy. This trip is for folks that have done at least a few backpacking trips and is not appropriate for people without experience. Also, if you cannot make it to the trailhead by 3:30 pm on Friday and are an experienced backpacker, you could come whenever you wanted on Friday but would need to plan on hiking it solo.
On Saturday, you will have two options -
1) The first is doing a loop hike (that you won't need to carry your backpack on as you can leave your tent and gear where we camped on Friday night, and hike the loop that includes the Mine Bank Trail, the Bald Mountain Trail, walk along the Jeep Road until it meets the St. Mary's Falls trail at Green Pond and then complete the loop back to our campsite. This will be primarily just a walk-thru, taking note of where we need to do work during Spring Maintenance weekend. This is about a 10.5 mile loop with about 2100 feet of elevation change (it's rated as "hard" in AllTrails). It's a strenuous hike, but it will be with a day pack not a full backpack. Randy Smith will be leading this option.
2) The 2nd option is notably less strenuous and involves doing trail maintenance on the St. Mary's River Trail. We'll provide tools, but you will need to help carry them in! This section of trail is too far from Sherando for us to get to during the Spring Maintenance weekend so we're going to tackle it as part of this trip. We'll be covering about 2.5 miles of mostly flat trail between the base of the hill that goes up to Green Pond back to top of the hill we climbed to get to our campsite. If time allows we may start working our way up the Mine Bank Trail (but that is dependent on what we need to do on the St. Mary's Trail. Andy Grayson will be leading this option.
When we get up on Sunday morning, we'll head back to our car's with an optional detour to see the St. Mary's Falls (an extra 1.5 miles).
You can also contact Andy Grayson at apkandm1@gmail.com or Randy Smith at rzgeneral@gmail.com to sign-up.
