Loft Mountain / Shenandoah National Park
Shenandoah National Park | Camping at Loft Mountain | Hiking to Hightop Summit and Rockytop Overlook | August 2023
After leaving the Peaks of Otter Campground, our plan was to finish driving North on the Blue Ridge Parkway, enter into Shenandoah National Park, and camp at the Southernmost campground, Loft Mountain, for a few nights. We don’t usually like to camp in national parks because they’re busier and more expensive, but for this trip we wanted to continue our slower, relaxed pace, and still be able to camp near where we wanted to hike and hang out. The campground was a bit busier than the ones on the Blue Ridge Parkway, especially on our second night which fell on a Friday, but when we arrived on Thursday we had our pick of plenty of first come, first served sites.
Unfortunately, it ended up raining the entire first day, so it turned out to just be a driving day, and besides short walks at the campground we stayed cooped up in the van for most of the night. However, Loft Mountain happens to be on Curtis’ list of promontory peaks, so it was an easy stroll over to the true highest point in the campground, number 71!
The next morning started out cloudy, but the rain was gone and the skies would occasionally clear in different directions. We decided to attempt a hike to a lookout and promontory point North of us, Hightop Summit. The hike was entirely along the Appalachian trail, and we started from the Southern trailhead which we thought would be 3 miles, which was longer but less steep than the Northern approach.
We started on the trail in the late morning, taking our time as this was our main activity for today. The trail was a little overgrown, with wildflowers in full bloom the whole way. It stayed cool and shady throughout the hike, but the constant trees meant we didn’t have any sort of view. Charlotte was doing well, but as the trail continued she started slowing down. When we reached the turn off for the shelter, we realized how much more trail there was to the summit and thought better of making Charlotte go the whole way. So I let Curtis finish the trail, and started to lead Charlotte back the way we came. Curtis was able to go up and back at a much faster pace, so we were soon reunited and finished the trek back to the car. Our trail recording showed the trail being closer to 4 miles, which doesn’t sound like a lot, but it’s more than we make Charlotte walk these days. It’s just harder to walk further when we’re only going about a mile an hour, and spending most of our time carefully watching the path coming up and warning Charlotte of steps, rocks, and roots.
After our hike, we rewarded ourselves with snacks at the trailhead, then drove back to Loft Mountain, stopping at lookouts along the way. The clouds moved back in as the afternoon progressed, which was unfortunate because we were told we had a rocky outcropping near our campsite that was supposedly great for sunsets. We still walked out to it that evening, and got little glimpses of the sun and the golden light as it set. The walk back to our campsite was sort of dramatic though, as it was getting dark and an owl started stalking us and swooping low over us. Could it be related to the owl Curtis ran into a few days prior?? Possibly!
That evening at 9:30, Curtis went to an astronomy/night sky talk by a ranger. I skipped because I was skeptical they would see anything, but it turned out that the sky cleared just in time. Curtis said it was fun and enjoyable but that he didn’t really learn anything, but I don’t know what he expected, being an astronomy major and all.
The next day, we packed up and started driving South to return to US-250, which we would then take to begin our journey West. For one last hike in Shenandoah, we took the easy, one mile trail up to Rockytop Overlook. Charlotte did really well on this hike, but the end turned out to be a giant boulder pile so we weren’t able to ‘summit’ that together. I guess I should have expected that with a name like “Rocky Top”! Still, the views were the best we’d had during our time in Shenandoah, so we enjoyed the overlooks separately before returning back to the van. With that, we said goodbye to the park for now and headed West towards West Virginia.
