May came in like a lion, cold and windy - not that, in my limited experience, all that many lions are cold and windy. Great weather for windmills (not this kind of windmill) and a good excuse to do one last hike this instead of bike. Since I had to fly to beeyootiful Lincoln, NE that day we had to do a relatively nearby hike, so we decided to check out the Gold Mine trails at the Maryland side of Great Falls National Park on the Potomac. To save the parking fee, we decided to park at the Old Angler's Inn parking area - along with about half the population of the DC area it turned out. It was the type of day where all the companies that produce post cards of the DC area had to have been out in force - they surely aren't out there in the dog days of July and August around here.
From the upper Old Angler's Inn parking area you hop onto the Berm Road that runs along the non-towpath side of the canal all the way to the Great Falls Tavern area. After the pumping station, you turn right and head onto very well worn path with very mature trees. There are a number of trails that criss cross through here but you basically keep following the trail markers for the Gold Mine Loop and you reach the underwhelming site of the Maryland Gold Mine - basically, a chain link fence around a bunch of collapsed corrugated steel sheds. Nice place to amble, but not tremendously scenic. After the gold mine, you connect to a trail that follows a dirt berm that appears to encircle an area where water was impounded, maybe the tailings of the process of trying to find gold in them thar hills.
For a while the trail broadens out - somewhere it mentions it was an old trolley line. Rather than stay on the trail all the way to the Visitor's Center, we decided to head downstream and then connect to the Billy Goat Trail on the way back. A little bit of up and down here and some very nice views through the trees of the canal down below and the Potomac River beyond that.
Once on the Billy Goat Trail, the views get even better. A lot of rock climbers across the way on the Virginia side and lots of billy goat-like rock scrambling to follow the trail on the Maryland side. We were just about the only people doing the trail in a counter-clockwise direction - maybe everyone out there was from the southern hemisphere. No signs of the allegedly killer snakes that reportedly sun on the rocks and leap out and bite unsuspecting hikers. Lots of flowering stuff - I have no idea what kinds of trees they were.
The Billy Goat trail returns to the towpath at the downstream end of the white water section and many fisher-people were out and (as usual) not catching diddly. All in all, a pleasant (but not very challenging, other than the rock scrambling) loop. Carl's GPS said 5 miles in total, it was probably a bit longer than that. A few more pictures below.
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