Devil's Marble Yard

Devil’s Marble Yard

Born and raised in the tamer parts of Southwest Virginia, I’ve always been drawn to the mountains. Back in my younger days, I traipsed around the rock outcroppings surrounding the Roanoke Valley, and I have made a hobby out of revisiting them. For a while, I lived in Central Virginia, and I became very cozy hiking through the Shenandoah National Park. Yet, despite all of my travels, I’ve never really tried many new hikes. Today was different. Today, I realized one of my dreams, to hike the Devil’s Marble Yard in Rockbridge County with my son.

The Marble Yard is situated just east and upslope from the original Camp Powhatan Boy Scout camp, just to the east of Natural Bridge. To get to the mountain, you have to trek through the ruins of the old scout camp. You can see remnants of old buildings and piled rocks from campfires from the history of Western Virginia scouting. There’s even one stone tower standing marking the old camp.

After progressing through the young forest growth that has swallowed the camp site, you eventually steer nearly straight upwards onto an evil mountain. Before you begin sweating too much, you cross over a vibrant juvenile stream. Cool pools of water rest before descending the rest of the way downhill toward the waiting James River nearby. It’s so tempting to just stop and sit in the water or to take a ladle and sip a few mouthfuls. But I was wise enough and content enough to just splash a little refreshing water across my face.

Increasingly, the trail grows steeper and more rock-filled. Sandy soil with small rocks make traveling treacherous. Soon, you enter a sweltering humid mini-climate with ferns, damp rocks, and persistent head swarming bugs. I had to stop for a quick shot of bug spray just to make it past the nostril gnats. Still the incline increased. I found myself taking breathing breaks with the heart behind my 46 year old over-weight lungs about to burst. I was like a crying cyclist climbing L’Alpe D’Huez.

With little warning, we broke through the canopy to behold an amazing sight: a sheer vertical wall of tumbled boulders, The Devil’s Marble Yard. I’ve bushwhacked up mountains before, but this was ridiculous. The trail disintegrated and it was simply up to our better judgment to make it up as high as we could as we clambered over boulder after boulder. We tried, initially, to do this the hard way by immediately heading into the sexy part of the climb, the “marbles.” Soon we learned that if you really wanted to get higher, you had to ascend in a smarter way, along the slightly tamer edges.

My son took a side trip and headed out across the boulders to the epicenter of the destructive field. I kept tabs on him from the side, afraid to engineer the scramble he was creating. Soon, he grew a bit tired and headed back to my position on the flank of the display.

After many stops for view diversions and breathers, we finally made it above the tumble of rocks and on to the steep grade leading to the summit. Recently, the mountain had suffered a forest fire; so many blackened trees dotted the picture. Burned stumps and new undergrowth were all that remained on this slope. One bonus in the new growth was an abundance of wild blueberries. I feasted as I chugged up the 40% grade. Blueberries were a welcomed rest diversion.

Soon we entered scrub, relatively flat terrain above the marbles. Still at about a 10% grade, we found ourselves looking down into Arnold’s Valley and many ridges beyond. We could see into developing afternoon thunderstorms and the magic of a round world.

One thing that is under-rated is descent on a hike. This was one tough descent. Scrambling down one loose boulder after another, we finally made our way to the bottom of the field and then back along the Belfast Trail to the entrance. Avoiding a violent neighborhood dog at the gate, we piled into our van and drove off.

When we got to the first intersection, we could have turned left onto Rt 130 and headed to Natural Bridge or turned right and taken the wild way home. We chose the wild way. Soon we found ourselves passing through the picturesque town of Glasgow, Virginia. Then we turned onto Rt 501 and headed through the James River Gorge toward Lynchburg. This gorge was amazing. So narrow. So wild. I’ve live in Virginia my whole life, and I’ve never traveled this most beautiful road. At one point, we piled off at an overlook and happened upon a foot bridge across the James. Before we had a chance to cross it, a CSX train blew past us and my son captured the insulting image on his camera video. We were literally three feet away from the train as it swept past with the conductor waving and tooting his diesel horn. For minutes after, empty coal cars thundered by heading for more remote points far away.

After the train passed, we explored the foot bridge across the mighty James River. This was an amazing place. It is just upstream from a spot where George Washington designed a lock system to allow passage through the mighty rapids in this gorge. I stood on this foot bridge in the center of a placid James River and listened to silence for several minutes. A water breeze blew east up the gorge, across the water, and over my sweat-soaked body. I was cooled and calmed like no place I’ve ever visited.

From the foot bridge, we picked up the Blue Ridge Parkway and headed back to Roanoke. Our main highlight on the return trip was finding an overlook that gave us a view of the marble yard we just climbed through. Luckily, we found that view and took some really excellent long view shots.

On the long ride back to Roanoke, we passed through The Peaks of Otter and many wonderful overlooks. Overall, I’ve rarely been on hiking trips that were so multifaceted and challenging.

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Many of you know that I spend many days during the summer following the Tour de France. Perhaps, I’m one of the few Americans who really gives a damn about cycling. I can’t explain why I love it so. Perhaps it’s because I used to ride all over the Roanoke Valley on my bike when I was a teen. I remember when my family moved across town when I was 17 years old, I rode my bike to the new home.

I watched this year’s Tour with my usual relish. Floyd Landis captured my imagination. Floyd has been a favorite rider of mine for several years now. Back when he rode for US Postal, I remember one day he blew away the field on an alpine stage. I loved his performance that day, and became his fan.

In this year’s tour, I watched glued to my TV as usual and saw Floyd crack on a stage in the middle of the Alps. I, like every other human, figured he was done, but Floyd had other ideas. The next day, he came out and blew away the field. They had no answer for him. Many questioned his amazing performance, suggesting that it was enhanced in some way, but I saw it differently. Floyd is one tough guy, and he was shamed by his performance the day before. Just when everyone counted him out, he harnessed their rejection and turned it around in his favor. I’d like to think I’d respond to adversity in the same way. As for the test that showed he had an elevated ratio of testosterone to epitestosterone (TE), there are many possible explanations that do nit fall into the realm of criminal. Keep in mind the test showed his ration to be about 6:1 which used to be within the standard. The 6:1 ratio actually does not mean that his testosterone levels were high. In fact, his levels were lower than average, but his level of epitestosterone was even lower. Floyd is going though some difficult times with a degenerative hip disorder. He takes cortisone injections to ease his pain as he awaits a hip replacement. What affect may that have? Floyd also drank the night before the astounding performance. What affect may that have? In the end, I ‘ve become more resolute in my support for Floyd. This guy had a lot to lose if he took testosterone in this age of bikers being dirty. By taking the drug once, he really wouldn’t gain advantage and would only risk being caught. If he was going to cheat, he would have done it like all of the other cheaters in cycling who dope their blood (drain their blood, enrich it with oxygen, then infuse it back into the body…thus delivering a double whammy effect of oxygen-rich blood and newly naturally produce oxygen rich blood to replace blood that was drained). There are many easier ways to cheat than using testosterone.