Travel & Leisure

     Like the more famous Chinco­teague ponies of Virginia’s Eastern Shore, the Mount Rogers ponies are not really wild. The late Bill Pugh, of nearby Sugar Grove, brought them here in 1974, to a spot where the state park meets the national recreation area. Here, the AT chugs down a former railroad line built in the early 1900s to haul virgin timber, passing huge boulders and blueberry bushes in open prairies. To many visitors, Thompson says, “It’s like visiting Montana right here in the state of Virginia.”

     Today, some 100 shaggy ponies live on the high plains, feeding on wild grasses and approaching hikers with friendly nibbles. They are a scrappy bunch, attuned, like all animals that have been fed by humans, to the crinkle of plastic wrappers, prelude to a handout. Members of the Wilburn Ridge Pony Association round up the ponies each summer, then auction off a few of them at the Grayson Highlands Fall Festival during the last weekend of September. Proceeds from the sale raise money to pay the veterinary care for the herd.

     Outback, catching up with us on the trail, soaks up the morning sun and seems fascinated by the ponies. He surveys the animals and the rocky-topped peaks of Wilburn Ridge in the distance, then announces that he will abandon his original plan to hike 17 miles on this day. Instead, he will walk little more than five, saying that the Grayson Highlands are too spectacular to pass through quickly. That’s not his only consideration: “You can’t get into a rhythm on this terrain,” he allows. “You have to take it as it comes.”

     Continuing south, our group greets 31-year-old Nathan Luetke, a hiker on a three-week mission to cover about half the length of Virginia’s AT corridor. Days earlier, his wife dropped him off in Damascus, a little more than 30 miles away. Now Luetke, a lecturer in mechanical engineering at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, is working his way north, toward Roanoke. Once only an avid weekend hiker near Charlottesville, Luetke opted to tackle this section in southwestern Virginia after hearing about the fern-covered forest floors and all the rocks of Wilburn Ridge.

     Named for famed 19th-century hunter Wilburn Waters, the jagged Wilburn Ridge is composed of residual rhyolite, a type of rock associated with ancient volcanic activity. To get here, one passes through a gate separating the state park from the Mount Rogers National Recreation Area. You also must grab a few rocks and pull yourself up, climbing sometimes as much as six or eight feet. And then, just as the trail reaches an elevation of about 5,000 feet, you must twist and turn to get through the “Fat-Man Squeeze Tunnel,” a natural passageway through stony walls.