Mount Jefferson & Whitetop Mountain
Hiking to Jumping Off Rock on the Blue Ridge Parkway | Mount Jefferson State Recreation Area | Camping on Whitetop Mountain, VA | August 2026
We began this morning with packing up at our campsite in Doughton Recreation Area and driving Southwest on the Blue Ridge Parkway towards NC-16, where we planned to continue our road trip heading North. But first, we stopped at the Jumping Off Rock Trailhead along the Parkway to go for a short morning walk. It was a fairly easy one mile trail through the woods that led us to a South-facing overlook. Because of the name, we were expecting it to be a large rocky outcropping, but it turned out to be a man-made overlook with a wall surrounding it. Not exactly a rock you’d want to jump off of, but at least it still had a nice view. Curtis attempted some letterboxes and we returned to the van, ready to continue on with our day.
Our next stop was at Mount Jefferson State Park, a peak that Curtis was very excited to get. There is a trail to the peak, but it basically follows the road that goes most of the way up, so we let the van do most of the climbing, going up long switchbacks to the upper trailhead. From here, we walked the rest of the way to the official summit. Since the summit itself doesn’t have any views, we continued on the Rhododendron loop trail around the top. The trail getting to the summit was wide and even, but the further we got from the summit the more narrow and uneven it became. We finally made it to the rocky outcropping with a view, which was a bit more limited than we expected, but still gave us a nice view of Mt. Jefferson, and the peaks to the North, and a little to the West.
After making it back to the van, we decided to find a spot to have lunch. Instead of picking out a shaded picnic table out of the many along the beginning of the trail, we decided to drive down to the last overlook right before the summit. As it was nearing noon, it had started to get busier up here, and at least at the lookout we could maybe get more of a view. As it turned out, we felt like the best view in the park was right here, as well as plenty of room to sit on the rock to enjoy it all! We enjoyed spending time sitting here, trying to guess at which peaks were which, snacking, and gazing out at the peak that we hoped to summit next. After some pictures, we got back on the road and started to make our way in that direction!
The peak in question was none other than Virginia’s high point, Mount Rogers. It’s been over 2 years since we got our last US high point… which happened to be Florida, so that isn’t saying much. And since Florida we’ve even LOST a state highpoint, when Michigan’s Mount Arvon was contested once again. For as much as we drive back and forth across the Appalachians, we’ve only come close to this peak once, and we didn’t have enough time that day to hike the 9 mile trail. But now, it was finally time. Our plan for today was to get most of the driving out of the way so we could have an earlier start the next morning.
The drive to get there was long and winding on narrow county roads, as I remembered it would be from the last time we were here. But at least we didn’t have to drive the worst and windiest sections of the VA creeper trail that I remember dreading having to return to even as we drove it last time. We crossed into Virginia, then followed US-58 to Mud Creek Lane. We were planning on hiking to the summit starting at the Elk Garden Trailhead off this road instead of from Grayson Highlands State Park, mostly because we could save ourselves the park entrance fee and had free options for camping. While we were pretty sure we could have gotten away with camping in the trailhead lot for one night, we decided instead to drive up Whitetop Mountain and camp up there, simply because we wanted to enjoy a beautiful sunset from high up.
The road getting up to the summit was gravel, and besides a few potholes wasn’t that bad. It was busier than we expected at the top, with people making campsites for themselves in blocked off areas. We decided to park in the trailhead/main parking area and just sleep there, and that worked out just fine. We opened the doors and were shocked that we actually felt cold, then realized the low for tonight was supposed to drop into the 40s! But after the summer we’ve had, we welcomed the cooler air with gratitude, and pulled out our sweaters that haven’t seen the light of day in a while. We wandered up to the summit, hung out in the van, and went for a walk at sunset to enjoy the golden light on surrounding peaks change to pink and eventually fade as the sun sunk beneath the horizon. And we reminisced on the last time we were here, on our first ever trip to Wilmington with Curtis’ new job almost 4 years ago, and thought about all that’s passed since then.
Whitetop mountain, 2026 (top) and 2022 (bottom)
