We knew that we had a chance of rain all day for this Humpback Rocks hike, but all eight of us women still wanted to go on this adventure! We hiked 4.2 miles, the Humpback Rocks Loop Trail, in dense fog and some rain that was only falling from the trees. When you see the white overcast on these photographs, that isn’t my camera fogging up! That is truly just how foggy it was on our hike! I am happy to say that we didn’t experience any actual rain showers during the hike! It was not until we were driving back to the Hampton Roads area of Virginia that we got the rain.

Five out of the eight of us were on their first hike with Her Hike Collective and so I asked everyone what their favorite part was while hiking with us. The majority of them said things like: ‘the continuous laughter,’ ‘making friends with complete strangers and getting to know each other… especially when we reached the summit together and got to sit and enjoy that moment and talk more,’ ‘getting out of my comfort zone to hike a mountain and meet new people,’ and the list went on and on. My favorite part is definitely to see the different conversations come naturally, that almost always lead to lots of laughter, and everyone encouraging each other throughout the hike. I also loved the variety of wildflowers throughout the hike that were still in bloom.

I hung back a little further on this hike, this time and took a lot of photographs. I don’t know if it was the stillness of the fog and the cooler weather but something inside me just wanted to observe my surroundings and the activity going on during the hike. When we started the hike, when we hung out at the summit, and when we celebrated at a brewery afterwards I of course chatted with everyone and got to know them even better. But during the hike you are sometimes in a single file line or in pairs, but regardless we are in some sort of line formation. I try to find out what everyone needs or wants to get out of the hikes each time we go on one, and it can be different every time.

This was a fun and adventurous group! They pushed themselves up the first mile of steep incline, climbed over rocks at the top even when that was a little out of their comfort zone and laughed almost continuously together. Each hike instills so much excitement within me for the next one and I cannot wait to hike again with these women and new women to join Her Hike Collective!    Victoria was sitting on the edge of the rocks!   Alison’s first hike with us and the soles of her shoes fell right off! 🙂 She was a good sport about it though. I love that these two best friends got each other to sign up for this hike with us! Cant wait to see them on future hikes!   I am known for getting the women to walk out on to rocks and climb on some that they normally wouldn’t do. (Only if they truly want too, of course!) I love seeing their faces after they do it!  Meghan was way ahead of me to climb up this side though!   All of the women decide to climb up the other side with us!  Our entire group for the Humpback Rocks hike.  All of the wildflowers were beautiful throughout the last three miles of our hike!   We got done with this hike earlier in the day than our past hikes so we were able to stop at Blue Mountain Brewery to celebrate! Thank you to all these amazing women for coming on this hike with Her Hike Collective! Sign up for the Her Hike Collective Email list and you will receive all of our future hike dates and events: