Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 14, 1993 TAG: 9302150304
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BILL COCHRAN OUTDOOR EDITOR
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
TRAIL HAS BIG BITE OF BEAUTY
Zetta Campbell is calling to a half-dozen hikers atop Dragon's Tooth, a jagged piece of stone monolith towering above the Appalachian Trail in Roanoke County.The hikers are relaxing on the tooth's coarse fang, like birds of prey following a feed, basking in the sun, sensing the breeze that is beginning to kick up out of the north, some gazing down into Catawba Valley, others into the dormant brown of Craig County.
It is the weekly Sunday afternoon hike of the Roanoke Appalachian Trail Club, and Campbell is the leader.
"We better start back," she calls, her soft voice caught by the breeze and dashed against the barren limbs of trees that march up Cove Mountain.
"Do you think I used enough of my command voice?" she asks the hiker standing next to her.
It is a fine February afternoon, the sun having overcome morning clouds to the point of being deceptively bright. February days are longer and more springlike, but they tend to end quickly, as if the sun loses its brakes on its downward trip. Everything suddenly can get as black as the bowels of mid-winter, a reality that has Campbell glancing at her watch. It's especially that way in the mountains, where a ridge can throw up a barrier, blocking the last ray of sun like a catcher's mitt engulfing a foul ball.
Campbell hardly is what you'd expect in a trail boss, slight of size, with the looks of a kindly great aunt, more artist than outdoorsman. Some people have let that deceive them, only to have the Vibram soles of their boots pounded into the dust by this trail veteran.
"How long have you been a member of the club?" a newcomer wants to know.
"Pretty long. I think I joined in 1959 - 1960 is a nice round number - but it was a year before that."
Campbell leads about a dozen club hikes annually, the trip to Dragon's Tooth one of her favorites. It begins at the Orange Market in Hanging Rock, where she organizes a car shuttle for the nearly 30 participants.
The hike is listed as five miles and moderate, but Campbell says she is adding a couple more miles. Her idea is to continue southward on the trail to Trout Creek, where several cars will be deadheaded. She prefers the extra miles and the race against darkness to retracing the route back to the Dragon's Tooth parking lot. This will open new vistas, but it also will shorten the basking time atop Dragon's Tooth, so Campbell gives the rock climbers an extra few minutes, like a kindly teacher extending recess.
A string of mild winters has introduced growing numbers of people to the joys of hiking. The Roanoke AT Club offers two hikes each weekend - year-round - with the disclaimer that if it snows a hike may be replaced by a cross-county ski trip. It is hard to remember the last time the narrow skis have come out of storage.
Like most members of the Roanoke club, Campbell swells with pride over the fact that the 30-mile Catawba corridor contains some of the finest scenery of the 2,100-mile American legend called the Appalachian Trail.
From south to north, you hit Dragon's Tooth, McAfee Knob, Tinker Ciffs, Hay Rock, all spectacular outcroppings of million-year old Silurian sandstone. If you look carefully, you will see patches of sand in the trail, evidence that this too shall pass, but probably not before a good many Sunday afternoon hikes take place.
It was just this kind of scenery that lured Susan and Frank Young to the region, two Washington, D.C., law firm employees who tired of the traffic and decided to move to a spot that would put distance in their eyes.
They are part of Campbell's clutch, as is Dr. Jorge Garcia, who says, "I used to do a lot of hiking and camping, then I got fat and lazy."
The Dragon's Tooth trail follows a rill gurgling cold and clear out of the Jefferson National Forest, where hemlocks and rhododendron flourish in a mist-nurtured habitat. Then it begins a serious climb, and that is where Bobbi Nagy must turn back, her 5-year-old collie - Ladie - unable to scramble over the rocks. This is Virginia's Mount Katahdin.
Dragon's Tooth once was called Buzzard Rock, but Tom Campbell, a member of the Roanoke club from 1947 until his death in 1986, thought it merited something more poetic, so he renamed it.
Eddie Carter is one of the first of Zetta Campbell's group (she isn't related to Tom) to reach the peak of Dragon's Tooth. He takes in the visual gulp, then pulls out a harmonica and plays America the Beautiful.
Darkness beats the hikers back to Trout Creek. Campbell recommends using night vision as long as possible. Then a few flashlights are pulled from packs and pockets, and they look like giant fireflies in the winter woods.