Grayson Highlands State Park
By: Will Hackman
Tags: Travel, Hiking, Travel Writing, Camping, Outdoors

If you do things correctly, you’ll eventually get to this sign. Again, this is only about 1–1.5 miles from Massie Gap and from here only about 3 more miles to the top of Mount Rogers for about an 8-mile round trip hike total. This is by far the quickest route description you’re going to find. Although, I always recommend having physical maps with you and other forms of trail descriptions just in case (AllTrails, Hiking Upward, USFS Maps, always good options).

You will link up with the Appalachian Trail again, per the sign, and will take the Mt. Rogers Spur Trail the rest of the way to the summit.

***ALWAYS BRING A HEAD LAMP just in case you run out of daylight. An 8+ mile hike with ~1,000+ feet of elevation gain can be challenging and last longer than you realize. There are a bunch of side trails and the crowds thin out the further into the Mount Rogers NRA you get so you don’t want to get lost in the dark.

It’s fun to see the difference as you go, though, between the invisible state park boundary and the national recreation area. Quickly, you can feel like you have this high, backcountry world all to yourself!

Backpacking option:

Somewhere early on hiking up the Rhododendron Trail, you’ll enter the Mount Rogers National Recreation Area (exiting the state park) and will see various backcountry camp sites near the trail and indicated by stones people have piled up around fire pits. You can camp anywhere — as usual on USFS lands which offer fantastic backcountry camping accessibility — as long as you don’t have more than 10 people in your group. This is bear habitat and water sources are limited in the high country so be prepared. Leave No Trace and adequately store any food in tight / waterproof bags or bear cannisters so you don’t have any unwanted visitors in the night.

Usually you can also camp along the Appalachian Trail at a safe distance off the trail itself— usually 60 feet or so, depending on exactly where you are. There is also the Thomas Knob Appalachian Trail Shelter near the Mt. Rogers summit Spur trail.

Here’s a great map of the area from the USFS website: map. As you can see, the summit of Mount Rogers and the surrounding area are all within the Mount Rogers NRA and are also within the Lewis Fork Wilderness Area.

QUICK INTRODUCTION TO WILDERNESS AREAS:

Congressionally designated wilderness areas are my absolute favorite places to explore! They are designed to protect the pristine natural character of an area.

According to the USDA / USFS, “The National Wilderness Preservation System is a network of over 109 million acres of public land comprised of more than 760 wilderness areas administered for the American people by the federal government. These are special places where nature still calls the shots. Places where people like you, with an appetite for adventure, can find a sense of true self-reliance and experience solitude. They are final holdout refuges for a long list of rare, threatened, and endangered species, forced to the edges by modern development. They are the headwaters of critical, life-infusing rivers and streams. They are places where law mandates above all else that wildness be retained for our current generation, and those who will follow.” (Credit: USDA/USFS)

This description of wilderness alone gets my blood flowing! Some of the most spectacular places I’ve been in the mid-Atlantic (and elsewhere) are designated wilderness areas including Dolly Sods Wilderness in West Virginia. You can also still hike, backpack, and enjoy many activities in wilderness areas you just have to be sure to check the rules and regulations of wherever you’re going.

On Mount Rogers, the Lewis Fork Wilderness was established in 1984 and is 6,076 acres (larger than all of Grayson Highlands State Park btw) of high-elevation hardwoods, Red Spruce, and Frazier Fir. For a detailed map of just the Lewis Fork Wilderness along with excellent descriptions, click: here.

Federal public land management in the US can be a bit like the movie Inception — wilderness areas (Lewis Fork), within National Recreation Areas (Mount Rogers NRA), within national forests (GW & Jefferson Ntl Forests)… And then many have state parks (Grayson Highlands) or national parks (Shenandoah) or national park service units (Blue Ridge Parkway) nearby… But it’s not hard to navigate all this once you get the hang of it and you’ll notice for yourself slight differences in how each of these areas look and feel depending on the different levels of protections / activities allowed. It’s pretty amazing that we have this in our country. These are our public lands and they belong to all of us. ​Protected public lands are an American legacy we should all be proud of.

This post isn’t about wilderness or backpacking though, so I won’t spend more time on it but there are many additional sources you can look up for information on backpacking in Lewis Fork Wilderness and Mount Rogers NRA. Make sure you read all rules and regulations and are fully prepared.