trip report | july 2024
I worked in Maryland over the summer and I chose to drive, which meant when the program was over, I had a 13-hour drive back home to Alabama. The route from Maryland to Birmingham, Alabama almost perfectly follows the Appalachian Mountains which meant there were lots of interesting hikes along the way. To make the drive a bit more interesting, I made a couple stops on the way back. My first stop was about 2 1/2 hours into the drive, at Old Rag Mountain in Shenandoah National Park. The route was a little over 9 miles, 3.8 miles on the trek up to the summit, and 5.3 miles on the way down the long side. The first 2 miles or so was standard uphill hiking but the last stretch up to the summit was the gnarliest rock scramble I have done since climbing Katahdin in Maine. It was a lot of fun, it's like a big playground made of boulders. At the summit, I made a danger doodle (timber rattlesnake) friend and took in the view. I jogged the 5.3 miles down the backside of the mountain on a fire road so I'd have time to make the 4 1/2 hour drive to my next stop.
After driving across basically the entirety of Virginia — which is bigger than you’d think, as I had learned the hard way on my thru-hike of the AT — I came to the Elk Garden Trailhead in the Mount Rogers National Recreation Area. From there, a quick couple miles uphill on the AT through the Lewis Fork Wilderness got me to the trail junction to Mount Rogers, the Virginia state highpoint. I already went up Mount Rogers during my thru-hike, and while it is a neat and beautiful wooded summit, I just didn’t have time this trip. So I continued another 3 or so miles to get into the heart of the Grayson Highlands. As the evening came, the clouds and the golden light made quite the dramatic scene, and the greenery was very vivid and verdant. I enjoyed the rest of the evening sitting on the rocks and taking in the view. I set up camp on top of Pine Mountain, where I had first seen the wild ponies that inhabit the highlands on my thru-hike. Unfortunately, the sunset was covered by clouds, and those same clouds shrouded the stars and soaked my tarp in condensation. But it was all worth it for that sunrise the next morning, when I woke up above the clouds. I packed up and took the VA Horse Trail for the last stretch back, which I would not recommend since wherever there are horses, there is also horse shit. I got back to the trailhead and started off towards home. These were two awesome hikes I look forward to doing again.
