Travel & Leisure

     Up here, after sunset, it gets pitch black very quickly, and we are suddenly treated to a celestial light show. Surely we are gazing at every star in the sky, each twinkling in the cosmos amid the streaks of satellites and jets. I am both mesmerized and humbled: The vast expanse of space is always a stark reminder of one’s microscopic place in the universe. If it’s not a comforting thought, it strikes my weary mind as halfway profound as I sit in the mountain darkness.

     A burst of cold wind ends my reverie, blowing through the shelter and fluffing a Led Zeppelin T-shirt hanging from the ceiling. It was obviously left behind by some anonymous hiker before us. Moments later, we fall asleep on the bare wooden floor, listening to the rippling waters of nearby Big Wilson Creek and the wind whistling through the leaves of gargantuan rhododendrons.

     Named for trail volunteers Bill and Clara Wise, the Wise Trail Shelter sits at the middle of a 17-mile section of the Appalachian Trail marked on one end by a remote spot named Elk Garden and on the other by an equally nondescript spot known as Fox Creek. While they are nothing to shout about, guidebook authors Leonard Adkins and Johnny Molloy, in their respective books, consider the miles in between among the most spectacular of the entire AT. Molloy, in his Mount Rogers Outdoor Recreation Handbook, says the path “offers fine views from the moment it leaves Elk Garden until it drops off Pine Mountain, 13 miles later.”

     Going the other way, starting at Fox Creek, the trail heads south over ridges, slipping past the Old Orchard and Wise trail shelters. Then it climbs into the rocky country of Wilburn Ridge, where the panoramic views are so splendid that some hikers call it a “Disneyland” of visual delight. Author Adkins, describing this passage in 50 Hikes in Southern Virginia, writes, simply, “This is one of the most scenic hikes in the state; do not miss it.”

Grayson Highlands encompasses nearly 5,000 acres near the middle of this ribbon of the AT. The remote park lures about 120,000 visitors a year, providing “the closest and the least strenuous access to the summit of Mount Rogers,” says Thompson, the park manager. Many of the people who use the park are dayhikers. Still inside the park’s perimeters, along the AT, we meet the family of Wesley Belcher, a Baptist minister from nearby Saltville. Belcher studies the area’s scattered stones on a short sprint with his wife, Sheila, and their children, 12-year-old Cassie and 7-year-old Keith. The minister, who has hiked other portions of the AT in Giles County, calls Grayson Highlands at Wilburn Ridge “probably one of the rockiest trails that I’ve been on.” Asked to reveal her strongest impression, Cassie says she liked seeing the “pretty” ponies that roam both Grayson Highlands and the adjacent Mount Rogers National Recreation Area.