St. Mary's Falls

This weekend, David, Tracy and I took a backpacking trip to St. Mary's Falls, in St. Mary's Wilderness, off the Blue Ridge Parkway in the Appalachian Mountains. There was forecast of storms, and as we drove down the parkway, rain was falling, but we had borrowed the backpacks (we're buying the equipment incrementally, to try to keep costs down), we felt like we ought to use them since we had them. Pressing on was a good decision: not a drop fell on us.

It was Tracy's first time backpacking (though she'd camped before), and since David and I hadn't backpacked for three or four years, we decided to take it easy and do an overnight trip. We headed out Saturday afternoon, got the parking area about 5:00, and headed out in warm, sunny weather. It's a rugged trail - difficult in several places, with a pack on - mostly due to damage caused during the floods following Hurricane Katrina. It's not steep, though, and follows the bed of the stream all the way up to the falls, crossing and recrossing several times. And all along the way, there are small falls, many of them very pretty.

We reached the falls after about two and a quarter hours. It was getting late, the light was fast fading, and there was a couple playing in the water, so we continued on past the falls (following the advice we were given) to search for a campsite. The first one we happened upon had been taken by a couple that started just before us, so we pressed further upstream and found an even better spot at the top of some shallow falls, with a wide pool at their base. Though you can't see it in this picture, the site is above and to the left of the left-most fall. We hurriedly set up the tent, got the stove set up, started a fire in the fire pit, and ate our dinner (chicken fajitas with a chocolate mole sauce!). After washing everything up, we sat around fire for a bit and ate s'mores, before turning in.

Next morning, after a breakfast of pancakes beside the warmth of our rejuvenated fire, we set off to take photos of the prettiest of the falls that we had seen the evening before. I had my new neutral density filter with me, which is used in all but one of the pictures of falls shown here. It works great, but is far too dark (it transmits 0.1% of incoming light - that is, it makes things 1000x darker) for early-to-mid-morning light: the camera doesn't get enough light to let you frame the picture, focus, or use the auto-exposure - I ended up doing a lot of guess and check for exposures. Along the way back to the "main" falls, we happened upon this rattlesnake (which I was nearly on top of before actually seeing for what it was). He was sleepy and, though coiled, wasn't rattling or looking particularly aggressive, so I cautiously set up the tripod and took several pictures.

We spent probably half and hour at the falls, taking pictures - it was still too early for anyone else to be there - before heading back to eat a snack of fried eggs, wash up, and pack up to head out. Clouds rolled in, keeping things cool for our hike back to the car, which was nice, but still it didn't rain on us. We're looking forward to going back - and hopefully when the stream is higher and the falls more magnificent!