This approximately 3.25 loop/linear hike took place on Friday, November 24, 2023. It was only me on this one.
This was supposed to be a 5.6 mile loop hike. This is the third time that I have attempted to hike this trail. Two times I have gotten lost and one time I got sick. This is a tough trail to hike. Lots of rocks and roots. The blazing has gotten better. However, this trail is rolling so you are always going up or down and seldom level. This is a horse and hiker trail. Hence, the horseshoe blazes.
I left Manassas, VA around 8:15 AM and made it to the trailhead by 9:00 AM. I got situated and then started the hike. I originally wanted to hike the blue and orange trails and follow the georeferenced map on the AllTrails app. It was about 41 degrees when I started this hike. Someone had blown the leaves on a short section of the the blue trail. Nice.
When I got to the .4 mile mark I decided to take the .8 mile Hampton Loop. Why they also blazed this loop blue when the main trail is also blue is beyond me. Getting lost here would be easy. And it had also had the leaves blown off of it. I had never hiked this loop before. I enjoyed it.
When I got to the end of it I turned left onto what I thought was the main trail. It wasn’t. I was going around the loop again! After about .25 miles I came to a tough up. It looked familiar as I had a tough down along this stretch just recently. I yelled an expletive, turned around and headed back to the main trail.
I passed a couple after a few hundred feet going the opposite way. I joked as I passed them that this was my second time around the loop by mistake. The guy said “No, this is the main trail”. I said that I didn’t think so. So we both looked at our AllTrails app and he exclaimed “You’re right, we are on the loop trail”. So we all turned around and walked back to the main trail.
What threw us all off was that the people that blew the leaves off of the trail only got to the Hampton Loop. The rest of the trail was now covered in leaves. You could see the indentation of the trail and see where people had tramped down the leaves so, along with the horseshoe blazes, it wasn’t that hard to follow. But you still had rocks and sticks inder those leaves, which made it a challenge.
Once we got on the trail I told the couple to go ahead since I was a slow hiker. They were out of site within five minutes. I had only wanted to spend three hours on this trail and I had already wasted one of those hours going around the Hampton Loop 1.25 times,
So I decided to hike to the orange trail intersection or until it hit 10:30 AM. I would then turn around and head back. I hit the orange trail intersection at 10:35 AM. I sat down on a log and ate some of my Robert Irvine Fit Crunch bar. Those things are good! I then started back around 10:45 AM.
When I passed the intersection with the emergency vehicle trail I noticed that the trail marker for the blue trail was incorrect. The arrows shound have been up and down. Instead, one was up and the other was pointing left. If someone weren’t being attentive, they could easilly get lost. I will mention this in my email to NOVA parks about this trail.
I got back to my vehicle at around 11:30 AM. I wanted to see if there was a parking area on Hampton RD or VA 647 so I could easily get to the yellow & orange trails. There wasn’t. So I’ll have to come back again, hike the blue trail and then get on the orange and/or yellow trails. Like I said in the beginning, these trails are not easy to hike. But all that I have left to do now is the yellow and orange trails.
Mike C
PS- Use the hikingupward.com map for hiking here. IMO, It is much better and more accurate the the NOVA Parks map. And either download a map to your phone or take a paper map as cell service is so-so here.
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