“We better start heading back; it’ll be getting dark before long,” I suggest. “Yep,” says Rocky, as he gazes westward at the lowering slant of the sunshine. His younger brother Jeff is checking out an isolated rock outcropping just down the ridge from the main tooth.
“Let’s go!” yells Rocky. Jeff appears through the undergrowth, we grab our packs and take off – headed back to where we had parked “The Heap” in the morning.
We’re at Dragon’s Tooth, the spectacular sandstone outcropping on the Appalachian Trail west of Roanoke. Having heard about it for some time, this is our first visit, and it’s not at all like it would be in thirty years: an immensely popular hiking destination reached via a well-trodden spur trail from its own parking lot off of route 311.
Access to Dragon’s Tooth at this time is simply from a spot where the Appalachian Trail crosses a road at its closest point to the rock. It’s about a six-mile round trip hike, but we aren’t even quite sure about that.
It’s a bright blue sky, late summer day. I’m fifteen-years-old and Rocky is sixteen. Jeff is twelve. Rocky just recently got his driver’s license and – equally important- permission to drive the family’s old Chrysler station wagon, which as I mentioned before had been christened, “The Heap.”
We started out early on this mid-week day. We may or may not have told our respective mothers where we were going. With the brothers’ mom in particular we try not to divulge too much about our various adventures, both those completed and those anticipated. We’d learned that sometimes it was just better that she not know all of the details. Or any of the details really.
“Here it is, I guess,” Rocky assesses as we pull into the small dirt parking area where the A.T. crosses the road. “Yeah, let’s go!” We head south on the trail, beginning immediately to ascend Little Brushy Mountain.
It’s exciting. A mile into the hike we come to a rocky spine which the trail follows. It pokes into the autumn sky and offers an expansive view to the north. “Is this it?” queries Jeff. “Nah, we’ve got a ways to go. Dragon’s Tooth is up on that ridge just out of sight.” I think.
Onward we climb, and after an hour or so the going gets even more engaging. Following the white paint blazes of the A.T., we scramble along rock ledges and around edgy boulders protruding from the ever-steeper mountainside.
And then we see it: Through the fall foliage the majestic Dragon’s Tooth itself. Wow! We exit the trail proper and scramble along the substantial southeast-facing wall to the base of the main tooth itself.
I’m drawn to the rock; the warm sandstone beckons, hand and foot holds present themselves and I step off the leaf litter and start ascending the face. Rocky follows me and Jeff watches from below. Two-thirds up the face it’s getting a little exciting, but the holds remain good and I continue upward.
It’s an easy climb up but it occurs to me that reversing the moves I’ve made – down climbing would be rather tricky indeed, if not impossible. A few more moves and I reach the safety of the ledge at the top.
Now Rocky is on the exposed upper portion of the wall and he is not happy, a little freaked out about his position there actuallly. I coach him up the final moves, and as he pulls himself onto the ledge with me he yells down, “Jeff, do NOT try that!” Jeff makes his way through the woods and up and around the side of the big tooth and joins us as we calm down from the excitement of our ascent.
Soon we’re exploring the amazing jumble of rock in earnest. The view from Dragon’s Tooth’s summit is 360 degrees of gorgeous-ness, and clambering around the boulders and peering into the chimneys, cracks, nooks, and crannies in the surrounding crags keep us busy. After all, curiosity is our strong suit.
In lengthening shadows we head down the trail back to the car chatting animatedly about our exploratory expedition. Twenty minutes later I notice headlights from the cars on Rt 311 far below us, and something doesn’t look right; the lay of the mountain ridges is different. I get a distinct sinking feeling in my gut.
Stopping to pow-wow we agree that we are indeed going the wrong direction; we did not come this way along this high narrow ridge of Little Brushy Mountain. We are obviously southbound on the A.T. instead of northbound from the tooth.
But where did we go wrong? It must have been right there at the tooth itself where we inadvertently missed the AT intersection and galloped off the wrong way. And now it’s practically dark and we have no light source. Retracing our steps we move as fast as we can, anxious to find the right way. Jeff the youngest shares his whimpers freely. Rocky and I, being older, keep our sobs to ourselves.
It’s completely dark when we get back to the tooth but there’s a half moon above and – after all – our eyes are young and strong. Plus, the pupils of our peepers are no doubt dilated to record dimensions. Thankfully we manage to find where we went astray earlier and get re-established on the correct route home.
We find that negotiating the rocky trail in the dark certainly has its moments, there being a certain amount of groping involved, but as we get closer to the car – on easier ground – we start to relax, and The Heap is surely a sight for sore eyes. We’re dirty, sweaty, hungry, and tired. And happy.
I don’t remember how Rocky and Jeff made out with the debriefing of their mother about our Dragon’s Tooth outing but I guess they did ok. It couldn’t have been any worse than the feelings we had when we realized in the dark that we had taken the wrong trail.
But such is life I suppose – sometimes retracing our steps back to the right one brings the blessing of “instructive experience” in an otherwise unknowable way!
– Johnny Robinson