My daughter showed up Friday night with a cake.
Not a regular cake. A sushi cake. Layers of sushi rice, tuna and salmon tataki, cucumber, avocado, seaweed salad, masago, eel sauce, sriracha, Japanese mayo — stacked into an actual cake shape and topped with fish roe and a “Happy Birthday” written in Sriracha. From scratch. Because she is her mother’s daughter and she does not do anything halfway.
I’ve been cultivating this. When she was small enough to sit in a high chair, I used to break California rolls into tiny pieces and put them on her tray. Watched her pick up each little piece of rice with her fingers and smack her lips like she’d been eating it her whole life — because she had. I made a decision early on that my daughter was not going to be a hot dog kid. She was going to have a worldly palate and an open mind and an appreciation for things outside the ordinary.
The sushi cake was confirmation that the plan worked.
We ate it that Friday night before bed, and the next morning we loaded up and drove to Shenandoah. It was my birthday weekend. I had planned it myself. I knew exactly where we were going.
The Birthday Trip
April 11th. My birthday wasn’t for a few more days, but weekends don’t negotiate, so we celebrated early. My daughter stayed over Friday night, we had the sushi cake, we laughed a lot, and then Saturday morning we pointed the truck toward Skyline Drive and went to find something worth doing.
I had been reading about the Bearfence Rock Scramble hike for a few weeks. A 1.1-mile loop. 300 feet of elevation gain. Rated as short but intensely adventurous. The reviews all said the same thing: it’s not about the mileage. It’s about the scramble.
I didn’t fully understand what that meant until we got there.
Bearfence Rock Scramble, Shenandoah National Park
The trailhead is at Skyline Drive Milepost 56.4, right across the road. You start in the woods — normal enough, trees and dirt and the smell of early spring — and for about a quarter mile it feels like any other hike. Then the dirt path just… stops. And in its place is a wall of ancient greenstone boulders stacked and jumbled and waiting.
I looked at my daughter. She looked at me.
We climbed.
Here’s what nobody tells you about a rock scramble: it is not hiking. It is a completely different physical and mental experience. You are not walking from point A to point B. You are solving a puzzle with your whole body — figuring out where to put your hands, testing footholds before you commit your weight, reading the rock face for the next move. The park paints bright blue blazes directly onto the boulders to mark the route, which helps, but within that guidance you are entirely on your own.
I loved every single second of it.
I grew up a serious tomboy. Woods, creeks, rivers, building forts and teepees, climbing anything climbable. Somewhere in the years between childhood and middle age that girl got buried under mortgages and responsibilities and a sedentary job and the general accumulation of adult life. I’ve been excavating her slowly since March, one trail at a time.
This mountain handed her back to me in about forty-five minutes.
The feeling of hauling myself up over a boulder using my hands and feet and sheer stubbornness — of figuring out the move, committing to it, making it — felt like reclaiming something I didn’t realize I’d lost. My body isn’t what it was at ten years old. But it showed up for this. It surprised me. That is not nothing.
My daughter is not quite as naturally adventurous as I am, but she is deeply competitive and she was not about to let a pile of rocks get the better of her. I was braver on a few of the trickier sections. She was right behind me on all of them. We cheered each other over the hard parts and laughed at ourselves on the easy ones and somewhere up there on those ancient boulders we were just two people having the best time.
The View (And My Honest Opinion of Summit Views)
The scramble opens onto an exposed volcanic ridge with a 360-degree view of the Virginia Piedmont and the Shenandoah Valley — one of the only spots in the park where you get a completely unobstructed panorama in every direction. It’s genuinely beautiful. The Blue Ridge rolls out to the horizon and you can see forever.
I’ll be honest with you though: I’m a water girl. Give me a babbling brook or a river rushing over boulders or a waterfall any day over a summit view. Here in Virginia, once you’ve seen a couple of ridge-top panoramas, you’ve mostly seen them all — foliage and valley and another forested mountain in the distance. Beautiful, yes. Breath-stopping, not always.
What WAS breath-stopping was standing on that ridge knowing I had just climbed up it. That’s the view I was actually looking at.
The photo at the top of this post is from near the end of the Bearfence Rock Scramble hike. I’ve also been using it as my blog header. Me on a massive boulder, arms stretched wide, grinning like an idiot. That’s not a pose. That’s what actually happened when I got there. I planned this trip. I led the way. I didn’t need anyone to make me feel capable or secure — I just was. That feeling is new and I am not taking it for granted.
The short summit pan video I shot that day is probably the best piece of content I’ve captured so far. I’ll get it posted eventually. For now, just know that the wind was blowing and the view was wide, and with my daughter it was a perfect moment.
We finished the scramble and connected with a peaceful section of the Appalachian Trail for the walk back — a gentle, smooth path through the trees that felt almost anticlimactic after what we’d just done. We were back at the car in under two hours.
Two hours. That’s all it took to feel like the best version of myself.
A Word to the Wise
A few things worth knowing before you go:
Don’t hike this in the rain or right after — the greenstone gets dangerously slippery. Wear shoes with real grip (not house slippers — I have learned this lesson). The parking lot is small and fills up fast, so go early or go late. And if heights make you nervous, there is a bypass trail to the viewpoint that skips the scramble — but I’d encourage you to try the scramble anyway. The blue blazes keep you on the safe path. Your body knows more than you think it does.
What Came Next
We drove down Skyline Drive afterward feeling accomplished and hungry and very pleased with ourselves. Dark Hollow Falls was next on the agenda — another highly rated Shenandoah hike, just a few miles away.
I have thoughts about Dark Hollow Falls.
They are not entirely positive.
More on that next week.
— Barbara
