Mount Rogers Backpacking

Over the past year or so, I've slowly been accumulating backpacking gear. This has been in the hopes of not only using it for backpacking, but possibly someday bikepacking as well. I finally felt like I had a decent enough kit to have the bare necessities, so I invited a coworker who backpacks quite a bit to come along. I knew that he would be interested in going, but also that I could learn a bit from the stuff that he was using. I chose to head to Grayson Highlands and Mount Rogers National Recreation Area in Virginia because it would allow us to choose from a number of loops dependent on how things were going. Our first day was a bit short due to the time we were able to leave, but still allowed us to get in maybe about 6 miles up to Thomas Knob at about 5400'. On our way out, we were being chased by storms.



Thunder echoing off the valley walls, and intermittent showers were the norm for the hike out. A storms level of malevolence can be appreciated with altitude. Lightning can be seen all around when out on these balds, some striking near, some three or four ridgelines away. It's amazing to get the scale of storms, by counting the ridgelines in the distance. By the time we got to where we decided to camp, things were looking better.


We got a fire started and ate some food. Mountain House Teriyaki Chicken is awesome! After about twenty minutes in the tents, all hell broke loose on us. A series of about five thunderstorms unleashed on us for probably about 4 hours. The thunder sounded like it was actually coming from down in the valley next to us, then flying over our heads like jet planes; definitely a surreal experience. I was finally able to get to sleep around 3 or so, then was awoken around 6 by another thunderstorm. We replenished our water supplies in the nearby spring and sat under the Thomas Knob shelter until about 10 when the rain finally subsided. We packed up our stuff and headed out towards the Scales.
We ran into these Longhorns on the way to the Scales. I'm guessing that local farmers can access grazing rights to the bald areas in order to keep them pastoral.


The morning was great, the rain had cleared out and gave us big puffy white clouds with blue skies as a backdrop. We stopped in at the Scales for some lunch and were still trying to decide what to do that night. We had enough food for three days, but were considering cutting it short dependent on how the afternoon looked. We continued hiking back towards Grayson Highlands taking a few off shoot loops here and there to add mileage.

The night before, we had camped near the pinnacle of the rock outcroppings to the left. This was about 1500 feet above where we were when I took this picture.


When we got to the Wise shelter, we took another little break, and the thunder and rain made our decision, we would hike the last three miles back to the truck and not continue on the AT. Setting our wet tents back up only to spend another night getting hammered by storms wasn't too appealing for my first real trip of legitimate backpacking. All in all a fun trip, and I'm already scheming another trip for this fall!

Break time at the Wise Shelter, replete with the thousand yard stare from dog and man.