We had done hike to Little Devil's Stairs on 20th June 2021 . It is located in Shenandoah National Park, Virginia State.
Hike Location
Name: Little Devils Stairs
Distance: 102 miles from Henrico (approx.)
Total hiking distance: 6.0 miles
Elevation Gain: 1480 ft.
Hike Team: me and my wife.
Hiking Experience:
We woke up at 5:00am. We tried to get up at 4:30am but could not do it. We got freshened, packed lunch and breakfast nd started around 6:40am. It is two hours distance from home. The weather was cloudy and the temperature was normal.
On our way we saw so many horses and cows grazing. As we have taken country side road, we saw so many green farms and fields all the way along. It was very pleasant to watch these sceneries in the early morning. We were about to reach the parking lot then we saw a deer. We reached the hiking place around 8:48am. We started the hike around 8:55am. We followed the blue blazed trail to the left of the parking lot. Initially there were some stairs going down and then there was a stream with many rocks and less water. As we hiked further the trail was so narrow only one person can walk and it was surrounded by many huge trees on either side of the trail. It was a muddy trail and got steeper. There was a water stream flowing down besides the trail. We crossed this stream several times to follow our trail. It was like a zig zag crossing the streams. There were huge rocks on the trail and we climbed on the rocks to proceed further. It has been long time climbed such huge rocks. The slope of the trail is also very high felt like almost we are crawling on our knees. It was quite challenging but we enjoyed it as there was stream flowing beside us. The sound of the water, birds chirping, green trees made us feel as though we are in jungle and adventurous.
The trees are very tall and wide. Many a times we used to lose our trail and search for the blue mark to find it again. Almost for 2 and half miles the trail is covered with rocks. Sometimes we need to climb between two rocks to move further. After hiking for about an hour we had our breakfast on one of the rocks beside small waterfall. Around 10am we continued our hike. There were many fallen trees besides the trail but did not block it. The water in the stream is very cold and it was fun crossing it though it was slippery. There were many earth worms all over the place. Some of the rocks were very slippery because of the streams, so while we were climbing we almost have to walk on four legs like an animal. At one point we were climbing a big slippery rock and there was no place to put our hand and push our self to go up, the rock was so soft that we just have to give pressure with our feet and climb. I crossed that easily but my wife was too afraid to climb that. There was another rock to the left of this slippery rock. My wife decided to hold both the rocks and climb between them. She got half the way and reached her left hand to top of the rock to pull herself.
She was holding the rock and coming slowly and suddenly she was about put her hand on a SNAKE...!! She started shouting and climbing down instantly. I did not see that snake and I don't know what is happening and why she was shouting. She ran away so fast 10 steps down and then she told me. Obviously, now she had only one way to come up even though it was difficult for her. Now she is no more afraid of the rock, as her fear of the snake was much more. She was so frightened at that time, but later we felt it was so funny her reaction. After that we continued climbing, crossing the stream many times. Small plants and stream were glittering with thin rays of sunlight which escaped the leaves of the tall and wide trees. It was very beautiful scene to watch. After sometime we saw big waterfall. It was pretty far from our trail. There was no any proper route to go near that waterfall. We saw it from our trail only and we moved on. We were traversing the hill and now our trail got separated from the stream.
We continued further and no more rocks on the trail and no more climbing just walking on the narrow road. Soon we reached an intersection with the fire road with yellow blazed trail. We have to continue our hike on that road for almost 4 miles. So we took another break around 11:16am, had some food and around 11:25am we started again. So far we have hiked uphill and now this trail is complete downhill and it is covered with small stones making it hard to walk. There were no more water noises of the stream, no huge rocks and no snakes along this trail. Being wide we did not feel like it was hike and was not enjoyable. we sung some songs and remembered our way uphill and incident with the snake. Around 1:05 pm we reached the parking lot. We had our lunch on the way to home and reached home around 3:00 pm. We really had a great time compared to our previous hikes we have done and still cannot forget those memorable moments with waterfall, rocks, streams and all. We enjoyed this hike a lot. All is Well.
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