Humpback Rocks

On the Blue Ridge pkwy, at milepost 6, there is a great little spot called Humpback Rocks. There is parking on either side of the parkway here - visitor’s center and old pioneer village is on the west side and trailhead parking for the Humpback Rocks trail is on the east side.

This was part 2 of the Adventure Club’s November 2010 trip “Birds of Prey / Bird’s Eye View”. The first part of the day had been spent touring The Wildlife Center of Virginia, and as neat as that was, it was time to get some hiking in! Humpback Rocks is an outcropping of granite high in the mountains. The trail is only about 8 tenths of a mile long but the elevation gain is over 1000 feet! That’s steep people. Never-the-less, we all made it to the top just fine. The ages on our hike ranged from 8 - 45 yrs old. The view from the rocks was amazing to say the least. I spent a lot of time searching for the best photo spots up there and took lots of shots with the kids. My favorite photo of the trip was this shot of the Adventure Club boys hanging out on the rocks. This picture is somewhat deceiving though, they’re actually laying down on the rocks on about a 45 degree angle so I just angled the camera to create the cliff scene.

After spending 2 hours at the top, just hanging out with great family and friends, we started our decent. Going down this trail proved to be very rough on the knees, but nothing a long drive back home wouldn’t cure.