Are the Grayson Highlands Fabulous? Roger That!

The Grayson Highlands, in Southwest Virginia, include our state's highest terrain.  Mount Rogers, at 5,729 feet, is the highest point in the east north of the Smoky Mountains until the White Mountains of New Hampshire.  Not only is it beautiful up there, but the vegetation is closer to that of southern Canada than it is to the rest of Virginia, and there are wild ponies, which makes it truly unique.  This time of year, the mares are foaling, and there were little ones all over the place.

I'd been in this area twice in the last seven years, and felt it was time to get back.  Maybe I could catch the rhododendron bloom!  So I put together a group for a three day hike in that area, including a hike to the top of Virginia's roof: spruce and fir covered Mount Rogers.  Seven of us ended up going on the hike.  Here are the other six at the trailhead in Grayson Highlands State Park.

This shows the track of the 15+ miles hike, essentially a big loop and hiking in a clockwise direction.  We started Thursday at the purple star to the south, and hiked up to Rhododendron Gap, camping at the red circle.  Once we set up camp, we hiked west to summit Mount Rogers (pink circle) and got water at a spring about a mile from camp.  On Friday, we broke camp and headed northeast over Pine Mountain, arriving at Wilson Creek for a second night of camping out (blue circle).  Saturday morning, we hiked just 2.5 miles back to the cars and got ready for the long drive home.

Where to start?  The scenery in this area is often spectacular.  The ponies eat continually and keep the high ridges as open country, almost as if it's above tree line.  So this gives a lot of gorgeous open views.

And the ponies themselves are a big draw, especially the foals - which are really cute!

Here is the seven - eight if you count Brody, who used four wheel drive to get over the tough parts - of us partway through the first afternoon of hiking.  We came from five different areas of Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina, believe it or not.  We had never hiked together before, and three of the group had never been backpacking!

Yours truly, pony in the background.  The ponies are semi-wild.  They are tolerant of humans but need to be treated like any wild animal.  Don't touch or feed them.  They will kick, and they will bite.

Here were the only Rhododendrons still in bloom!

Morgan heading up through "Fat Man's Squeeze."

Once we set up camp, we headed towards Mount Rogers.  There are simply gorgeous views along the way.

Here are my companions on the summit of Mount Rogers, the highest point in Virginia.

There is not much a view from up there.  It is covered in Fraser fir and red spruce.

On the way back, I filtered six liters of water at the Thomas Knob spring.  Here, Raja filters water for his night.

We had a great campsite, plenty of open space for multiple tents.  But it was chilly and very windy.  Temperatures in the night were in the 30's.  It's been raining up there for days - we lucked out and only had dry weather - and any wood we found was wet.  We couldn't sustain a campfire, so we talked about great campfires we had known in the past.  The cold and wind, and lack of a fire, resulted in an early bedtime for most of us.

Here is a satellite view of our trek up Mount Rogers: camping area (red circle), the summit (pink circle), and Thomas Knob spring (blue arrow).  Note the open ground to the south.  Without the ponies, it would look more like the forested area north of our track.

About 300 feet from camp was a nice bear box to put our food in.  We didn't see a single bear, but kept hearing how aggressive they are around there about food.

In the morning, a large group of wild ponies was gathered near the bear box.

 Here is another group photo.  No, the land is not sloped like that.  The camera was on my pack, which was clearly at an angle.

Friday was a delightful day of hiking!  The weather was fabulous - sunny and cool but not chilly, and greatly diminished winds.  We only had about 6.5 miles to cover, and most of it was downhill with no steep uphill sections.

Just past Rhododendron Gap (and its non-blooming rhododendrons) is this huge rock sticking upwards.  Allen bravely climbed to the top, reporting amazing views to be had:

I give you the Griswold Family Christmas Tree:

We had two possible routes today - one going through more open country, the other going through more forested country.  Guess which we chose?

After more wild ponies - this is my fourth time here, and I think I saw more ponies than on the other three combined - and....

a relaxing lunch break at the scales,

we arrived where I had planned on camping on Wilson Creek, just before the park boundary.

We ate dinner, and Morgan got a great campfire going, which we enjoyed well past "Hiker Midnight" (9PM).

Wilson Creek lulled us to sleep with its wonderful sounds, and

provided all of the cold, clear drinking water one could want just a stone's throw from our tents.

A couple of the group needed to get home by 5PM Saturday, so we hit the trail by 8:30 and only paused for a quick photo or two.  Morgan, Rudy, and I are tired but happy,

as we enjoy the final views before reaching our cars and getting back to civilization.

This was my third time backpacking here since 2012, and it has been a charmed three trips - perfect weather - well, okay, a little chilly at times - every single day, good companions to hike with, beautiful scenery, and interesting animals.  If you are into hiking, then this is a fabulous place to see!

Hungry for a Hike!

On Wednesday, I drove over 300 miles for a work meeting in Bristol and left for home on Friday.  Being down in the Southwest Virginia mountains in the fall, it seemed logical to take some vacation time and take a hike.  After all this time inside and in a car, I was hungry for a hike, and my "50 Hikes in Southern Virginia" guidebook had just the one: Molly's Knob in Hungry Mother State Park.  I'd never been, and found myself asking "Why?"

Hungry Mother SP is about 50 miles from Tennessee by I-81 near Marion, VA.  On a clear day, one would have a view of Mount Rogers, indicated with a red star, from a high point such as Molly's Knob.  This is where I backpacked a month ago.  The map below shows the location of Hungry Mother with the light blue triangle.

Long ago, a woman named Molly Marley and her little daughter escaped from their Indian captors in the wilderness of this part of Virginia.  They wandered through the forest with only a few berries to eat until Molly collapsed.  The child continued, found a creek, and eventually reached a settler's cabin.  The only words she could say were "Hungry.  Mother."  A search party found Molly, but she had died.  She had wandered over much of the land which is now the park.  In the 1930's, the Civilian Conservation Corps built trails and cabins here, and dammed the creek to form the lake.

My hike was a beautiful seven mile loop, starting and ending at the red star, and traveling clockwise.  I hiked on four separate and well marked trails: Molly's Knob, Molly's Knob Vista, CCC, and Lake.  The purple / yellow star marks the summit of Molly's Knob.

Last weekend in Vermont, I had missed the foliage, but I hit it here.  Colors were at their peak, except for higher up on the mountains.  It was spectacular.  The hike itself involves a fair amount of climbing and descending.  Molly's Knob is over 3,200 feet, and the hike included over 1,700 feet of elevation gain and loss.  It is rarely super steep, but I knew that I was getting a great workout!

At the start of the hike, there is a view over the lake.  The park headquarters are directly across the lake, and there is a swimming beach towards the right.

After about 0.8 miles, I got my first view of Molly's Knob looming above.  It looked like a long ways up there.  I think it was well over 1,000 feet of climbing from the parking area to the top.

As I hiked along, I stopped over and over to admire, and to photograph, the wonderful fall colors.

The trail continued to climb up, up, up.

 Once or twice, I got some partial views but mostly I was in the woods.

When I reached the Vista Trail, I knew I had only 0.4 miles to the top of the knob, along with about 350 more feet of climbing.  I stopped to talk with two park rangers.  They had been told of a large tree down across the trail, and had driven their four-wheelers up to clear it.  The final 0.3 miles had to be on foot, as the trail was too narrow and steep to ride up.  Glad that they were out there doing a good job.

From the summit of Molly's Knob, 3,270 feet, there are great views to the south and east.

 From that point, I hiked a couple of miles through the woods, where I stopped continually in awe of the foliage.

There were also some great sections of the trail going through thick rhododendrons, which would be amazing in June, as the trail descended towards the lake.

Eventually, the trail reached the lake, and for the last couple of miles, it wove in and out of the lake shore and the forest.

What a wonderful hike this was! Can anyone tell me why, after living in Virginia for over two decades, I'd never hiked down here before?  This hike was great, and the foliage was the frosting on the cake.  It left me hungry for more!