Category: virginia & maryland hikes

virginia hikes: Hoop Hole, April 7 2019

.Reading time 12 minutes.

Spring had arrived when I headed up to hike Hoop Hole. Flowers were in full bloom at lower elevations around Roanoke, so I decided to go for a hike one Sunday afternoon to see the bloomage on the mountains. Since I was by myself that day, I also was looking to explore something new. Hoop Hole is a well known local hike, but it was one that never really sounded that interesting to me before. Having put it off all these years, it did serve my explore mentality.

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virginia hikes: Devil’s Marbleyard via Belfast Trail, November 4 2018

.Reading time 12 minutes.

The fall foliage hiking season seems to be getting shorter and shorter each of the last couple of years. This year it was nearly all green one week, peaked for one week, and gone the next. During the beautiful and fleeting peak weekend this year, Whitney and Matthew joined me for a hike and scramble up Devil’s Marbleyard. For future updated foliage report for in SW VA, check out Virginia Department of Forestry Report.

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This report is supplemented by pictures of my past hikes.

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virginia hikes: Wilson Mountain Trail & Sprouts Run Trail Loop, March 4 2018

.Reading time 15 minutes.

One aspect of my hike and trip reports is that I keep my personal ratings of the hikes, mostly for myself as part of the reflection process. Well, my whole purpose of this blog serves as an outlet for reflection, but the need to quantify the experience serves as a nice short cut for me to sum up the experiences and compare them for future planning. So my rating system developed meticulously with the rating representing an exact meaning. Of Course, just reading a definition of a rating can be hard to nail down the exact meaning and examples are always nice. So I present to you the perfect example of a 2 rating in views category, the little known Wilson Mountain Trail & Sprout Run Trail Loop.

Note to self, I really should change “views” to “experience”.

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virginia hikes: Dragon’s Tooth, February 21 2018

.Reading time 17 minutes.

Dragon’s Tooth is one of the 3 peaks of the Roanoke triple crown (Roanoke Appalachian Trail Club) along with McAfee Knob and Tinker Cliffs. It is characterized by the outcrop “tooth” like rock just off the peak of Cove Mountain that can be scrambled upon for a 360 view. It is also known as the most technical of the 3 with a short section of scrambling on the Appalachian Trail near the peak.

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There are actually 4 ways from 3 different trailhead that you can used to access Dragon’s Tooth. The most popular and easiest is an in and out from the Dragon’s Tooth Parking Lot on the Dragon’s Tooth Trail that turns southbound on the Appalachian Trail (AT) at Lost Spectacles Gap. This is also my recommend return route for all other starts. Out of the same Dragon’s Tooth parking lot, the spur Boy Scout Trail splits shortly after the trailhead and connects with the AT quickly before continuing southbound. The other ways are starting on the AT at main trailhead parking lots (Trout Creek trailhead on Miller Cove Road VA-620 to head northbound or McAfee Knob Parking lot on Catawba Valley Drive VA-311 to head southbound).

While I hiked this on an overly warm, 78 degree Fahrenheit, February weekday recently for sunset, this is one of those local hikes that I’ve done multiple times in the past since it’s so close. My preferred route and what I hiked last time is to head up the Boy Scout Trail and returning on the Dragon’s Tooth Trail after summiting. However, I hiked down in the dark on my last trip since I was catching sunset. Rather than describing the exact hike of my most recent hike exclusively, I’ll cover the most popular and easiest way up first and then I’ll follow up with the alternatives using pictures taken across the years.

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virginia hikes: Great Falls Park Virginia & the Difficult Run Loop, April 15 2017

.Reading time 7 minutes.

Last weekend, we traveled up Boston to help celebrate Juan & Rose’s wedding. Rose, who is one of Meg’s best friend, reminded me that I still had not written about the hike we did together when she visited the D.C. area in the spring. So here is the report and the pictures on the the first of our hikes that weekend.

 

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virginia hikes: Flat Top & Fallingwater Cascades, May 20 2017

.Reading time 4 minutes.

Previously, I had covered Sharp Top, one of the two peaks making up the Peaks of Otters. This is one of the more popular spots along the Blue Ridge Parkway. Earlier this year, Meg, Mark, and I headed up the second peak, Flat Top (FT) and tacked on an addition loop to the Fallingwater Cascades (FWC). Read More

virginia hikes: Old Rag, July 30 2017

.Reading time 9 minutes.

Living in Southwest Virginia and around Virginia Tech, majority of the day hikes we can feasibly do are around a 3 hour radius. We don’t get to the trails out in Northern Virginia much, but recent events will have us exploring there more often now. Read More

sw virginia hikes: Dismal Creek and Sugar Mountain Loop, June 25 2017

.Reading time 8 minutes.

Recently, the focus of my effort on travel2walk have been on getting the many backlogged large trip reports out. I still have the two trips from this year that I’m working on. A side effect of my focus on trip reports is that other sections of my page has been neglected, such as my local Virginia hike reports. A poor fall 2016 foliage season due to the warm weather wasn’t very motivating for me to work on the section either. A second side effect of the long trip reports is that I don’t get as much content out as quickly.

With that in mind, I’ve revamped the sw virginia hiking page and you’ll see more quick hiking reports like this. The thesis length trip reports will still come, but at a slower rate. I’m hoping I can get those out in time for you to reference while planning for the following season.

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