WHY GO?
Hazel Mountain and Sams Ridge once offered a sizable mountain community all the tools and products for a decent living. Today it draws people for its natural beauty. At Hazel River Falls, the stream drops 30 feet into a pool ringed by tall cliffs in the shape of a natural amphitheater. From here a trail climbs to the heights of White Rocks before dropping back to the river and more scenic cascades. Throughout the area a sharp-eyed hiker will spy evidence of mountain settlers. Trails follow old roads used to transport farm products, and old fields, apple orchards, and home foundations are visible.
THE RUNDOWN
Start: Trailhead at the Meadow Springs parking lot
Distance: 10.8-mile lollipop
Hiking time: About 5 hours
Difficulty: Moderate due to steep climbs along White Rocks and unaided stream crossings of the Hazel River
Trail surface: Dirt footpaths and old wagon roads lead to waterfalls and rock overhangs at Hazel Falls, views off White Rocks, streamside trails along the Hazel River, and an old homesite on Sams Ridge.
Land status: National park
Nearest town: Luray, VA
Other trail users: Hikers only
Accessibility: This trail is not accessible to people with disabilities; however, most of the facilities within the park are. Check out the accessible 1.3-mile Limberlost Trail (Mile 43).
Canine compatibility: Leashed dogs permitted (leash no longer than 6 feet)
Trail contact: Shenandoah National Park, 3655 US 211 East, Luray; (540) 999-3500; www.nps.gov/shen
Schedule: Open year-round. Skyline Drive may close without advance warning due to inclement weather. Even when Skyline Drive is closed, hikers may still enter the park on foot. Most facilities begin opening in Mar and close by late Nov.
Fees/permits: Entrance fee required, valid for 7 days, or annual pass. Free backcountry camping permits, available at ranger stations and visitor centers between sunrise and 1 hour before sunset, are required. Campfires prohibited except in established fireplaces. Before visiting, review backcountry regulations, which cover such issues as group size, where to camp, and waste disposal. Call (540) 999-3500 for regulations. To fish in Shenandoah National Park (SNP), Virginia residents age 16 or older must have a Virginia state fishing license.
Facilities/features: The park offers a variety of services, including camping, dining, and lodging.
NatGeo TOPO! map: Thornton Gap, Old Rag Mountain
NatGeo Trails Illustrated map: Shenandoah National Park; Appalachian Trail, Calf Mountain to Raven Rock; Massanutten and Great North Mountains
Other Maps: PATC #10: Shenandoah National Park Central District
FINDING THE TRAILHEAD
From Luray, drive east on US 211 for 8.8 miles. Turn onto the Skyline Drive access road at the Thornton Gap entrance station. Proceed south on Skyline Drive. Park at the Meadow Springs parking area on the left (east) side of Skyline Drive between mileposts 33 and 34. A concrete post at the back of the parking lot marks the start of Hazel Mountain Trail. GPS: N38 38.298′ / W78 18.820′. DeLorme: Virginia Atlas & Gazetteer: Page 74, C2.
THE HIKE
To my considerable disappointment, Mr. Bear didn’t stick around to answer questions about life on Sams Ridge. He saw me before I saw him, and my view constituted his posterior ambling into the brush. A bear in the wild ranks as one of Mother Nature’s more fleeting encounters (gaping at the bear from your car on Skyline Drive does not count). But what adrenaline! My imagination worked overtime. Would the bear circle back and track us to our tent? Did bear reinforcements lie in waiting nearby? Mentally, I prepared myself for a late night banging pots around a bonfire.
Then I tripped. Rocks in the trail are a definite hazard if you’re daydreaming. Abandoning the trail, I followed Mary past small shrubs and creeper vines toward a patch of uneven ground. An iron stove and a blue-and-white-specked pail lay partly buried. Faint markings of an old home foundation were visible. Of all the homesites scattered around Hazel Mountain, this spot surely qualified as prime real estate. Views carried east across the Hazel River to White Rocks’s four distinct peaks. A thick mat of green broad-leafed plants crowded a nearby spring. Hazel Mountain Road, a main route across the Blue Ridge in the 1800s, passed just a half-mile up the trail.
A hike around Hazel Mountain (you never actually climb this 2,880-foot mountain) runs with ghosts of mountain settlers from beginning to end. The initial descent to the Hazel River passes by hidden ruins of settler homes, and patches of apple trees indicate old orchards. As recently as 1900, the trail itself was a busy thoroughfare through Thornton Gap; a church and school stood at the junction of Sams Ridge and Hazel Mountain Trails. White Rocks Trail and Sams Ridge Trail were old roads as well. On White Rocks Trail—where it arcs right around a boulder field—the landscape to the right side looks suspiciously like an overgrown field. On Sams Ridge, where we found a home foundation, there also stood a fruit tree, a twisted piece of metal stove, and a pile of rocks—each a ghostly sighting of a past life in the mountains.
In the black-and-white photos of that period, mountain settlers rarely smile. But to say theirs was a hardship is misleading. Certainly by our modern standards it was hard. Fireplaces provided the only heat during cold winter months. One personal recounting of a season spent on the Blue Ridge describes how blankets froze where the sleeper’s breath touched it. Otherwise, life revolved around subsistence farming. Warmer months found men and women outdoors, working fields, cutting wood, planting garden plots. Kids attended school in between chores. Small garden plots supplied most of a family’s organic food; larger fields were sown with corn, rye, or oats to be sold in town. Through the 1800s Thornton Gap was a busy thoroughfare. A mill complex on the east side of the mountain ground corn and cut lumber. A blacksmith was located here, and a distillery, too. On the western flank of the Blue Ridge, leading to Luray, a tannery operated.
HEADS UP
The current threat to Shenandoah’s trees is the emerald ash borer, an exotic beetle from Asia that is feeding on and killing millions of ash trees throughout North America. Visitors can only bring USDA-approved firewood into the park in an effort to prevent further spreading.
This was the age of the chestnut tree. Once the dominant tree of the Southern Appalachians, the American chestnut supplied wood for homes, nuts for eating, and bark for tanning. As the nuts ripened, kids would stand under the trees throwing rocks into the branches, trying to shake loose the round, burry fruit. Tea from the leaves, mixed with honey, made a natural cough syrup. In fall, dry leaves were gathered and stuffed in mattresses (they called these “talking beds” for the noise they made). The tree bark proved most profitable. Tanners chopped, ground, and mixed bark with water to form a thick, watery, acrid-smelling stew. Animal hides were layered in vats filled with this liquid. Over the course of a year or so, tannic acid—a harsh, bitter, yellowish substance plentiful in the chestnut tree bark—leached into the animal hide and cured it. As you climb through the gap between Hazel and Catlett Mountains on the Sams Ridge Trail, it’s hardly a stretch to imagine a wagon loaded with sheets of chestnut tree bark en route to the tannery near Luray, driver perched atop the running board.
Coincidence is sometimes unsettling. In 1900 plants imported from Japan to a New York City zoo contained a blight that would destroy the mature American chestnut population within 40 years. In 1925 President Hoover proposed a national park along the Blue Ridge south of Front Royal. In the fall and winter of 1931–32, the two events— the chestnut blight and construction of a national park—converged on the upper slopes of Hazel Mountain, Catlett Mountain, and other peaks in the northern Blue Ridge. For months, standing dead chestnuts shimmered ghostly, their bark stripped, the wood bleached white. At a time when mountain residents were facing displacement and relocation for a new national park, the tree that had provided sustenance in so many ways was dying as well.
Seventy-plus years later, Shenandoah National Park faced another tree crisis to the mighty eastern hemlock, which succumbed to pollution, drought, and finally the woolly adelgid, a microscopic organism that coats the underside of the hemlock needles with millions of white sacs. Today you might see the remains of dead trees, but very few live hemlocks on this trail.
I don’t believe in specters, but I had to agree with Mary as we climbed back to Skyline Drive: There was an unsettling feeling in the air on Sams Ridge, in the vicinity of old homesteads, and along the Hazel River, where we stared at the old hemlocks. The ghosts of people and trees—not the haunting kind—just silent reminders of how time marches on.
MILES AND DIRECTIONS
0.0Start at the concrete post labeled Hazel Mountain Road. Walk downhill and bear right past the trailhead for the blue-blazed Buck Hollow Trail, which branches off left. Continue straight on the yellow-blazed Hazel Mountain Trail, which is an old dirt road.
0.4Buck Ridge Trail, marked by a concrete post, enters from the left. About 50 paces past here is an unmarked campsite on the right of Hazel Mountain Trail.
1.3Hazel Mountain Trail begins paralleling the Hazel River, which is audible to your right. Note: This is not an open-harvest stream, and all fish caught must be released.
1.6Turn left (north) onto the yellow-blazed White Rocks Trail. Note: Straight on Hazel Mountain Trail is the return leg of this loop.
1.7White Rocks Trail begins a long curve right, skirting a spot that shows evidence of an old settlement or field. Trees are sparse or young growth. Shrubs and vines run riot here and dominate the understory. It was common for settlers, when clearing fields, to pile the rocks or make stone fences. Remnants of both are visible.
2.5Enter a “four-corners” trail junction. Turn right and descend 0.15 mile down a steep, narrow footpath to the Hazel River. At the stream, turn right and hike upstream a few feet to a 30-foot waterfall. (Birds nest in the rock overhangs, and the common blue violet peeks out from thin patches of soil amid the rock boulders.) To return to White Rocks Trail, follow the route you descended.
2.8Back at the “four corners” trail junction, turn right to continue on White Rocks Trail. The trail climbs to the four knobs whose exposed white rocks give this ridge its name. To the southeast, the lush Hazel River valley unfolds. Look left for a nice view of the remaining White Rock knobs.
4.2After a long descent, reach the Hazel River. Cross and bear left, walking downstream along the river. This is a good camping spot, with several established sites marked by fire rings.
4.4Reach a T intersection with the Hazel River Trail. Turn left and follow the Hazel River Trail to the park boundary. Bailout: Turn right on Hazel River Trail and climb over Hazel Mountain. Reach Hazel Mountain Trail in 2.0 miles, turn right, and follow mileage cues below starting at 8.0 miles. This shaves 1.5 miles off the route, but avoids a steep ascent up Sams Ridge.
5.7Turn right onto the blue-blazed Sams Ridge Trail, begin a steep ascent, and exit the park. Option: An alternate starting point for this hike is straight ahead on the Hazel River Trail, which empties onto VA 600.
6.2Reenter the park. Boundaries are marked by red slashes on the trees.
7.0The trail levels as you near the top of Sams Ridge. Around you, the vegetation changes from the hardwood-dominated ridge flanks to a lush mix of evergreens and scrub hardwoods. The woods thin and again you’re entering an old settlement area. Metal stoves, pots, stone walls, and piles of rock all testify to the previous inhabitants, displaced when the federal government seized land to create this park. Spend some time and explore, but don’t disturb the remains.
7.6Broad Hollow Trail exits on the left to access trails around Catlett Mountain and Nicholson Hollow. Continue straight on the blue-blazed Sams Ridge Trail. There is a spring just around the bend from this junction.
7.8Turn left onto Hazel Mountain Trail, marked by a concrete trail mark post.
8.0Continue straight past a junction with Hazel River Trail on the right. Note: If you opted for the bailout at 4.4 miles, continue with mileage cues from this point.
8.2Pass an established primitive campsite off the left side of the trail. The trail is now a wide, old dirt road.
8.7Cross a small tributary stream and bear right on Hazel Mountain Trail at a junction with Catlett Spur Trail on the left. Note: Catlett Spur Trail follows Runyon’s Run upstream 1.2 miles to Catlett Mountain Trail.
9.3Pass the trailhead for White Rocks Trail and continue straight.
10.8Arrive back at the Meadow Springs parking lot.
HIKE INFORMATION
LOCAL INFORMATION
Luray—Page County Chamber of Commerce, Luray, (888) 743-3915, www.luraypage.com
LOCAL EVENTS/ATTRACTIONS
Wildflower Weekend, May, Shenandoah National Park, Luray, (540) 999-3500, www.nps.gov/shen. Guided hikes and programs throughout the park.
LODGING
Park lodges at Skyland (Mile 41.7 and 42.5), Big Meadows (Mile 51.2), and cabins at Lewis Mountain (Mile 57.5) are seasonal. Call (877) 247-9261 or go to www.goshenandoah.com for reservations.
Campgrounds are located at Matthews Arm (Mile 22.2), Big Meadows (Mile 51), Lewis Mountain (Mile 57.2), and Loft Mountain (Mile 79.5). Some are first-come, first-served. For campground reservations, call (877) 444-6777 or visit www.recreation.gov.
Six backcountry cabins are operated by the PATC. For reservations, call (703) 242-0693 or visit www.patc.net.
RESTAURANTS
Full-service restaurants are located at Big Meadows Lodge (Mile 51.2) and Skyland (Mile 41.7 and 42.5), and Wayside Food Stops at Elkwallow Wayside (Mile 24.1), Big Meadows Wayside (Mile 51.2), and Loft Mountain Wayside (Mile 79.5). All restaurants are seasonal. Visit www.goshenandoah.com for information.
HIKE TOURS
Ranger-guided programs are offered spring, summer, and fall.
For commercial tour operators that are permitted in the park, visit www.nps.gov/shen/planyourvisit/permitted-business-services.htm.
OTHER RESOURCES
Potomac Appalachian Trail Club (PATC), Vienna, (703) 242-0315, www.patc.net. Publishes maps and guides and sponsors hikes in the park.
Shenandoah National Park Association, Luray, (540) 999-3582, www.snpbooks.org. A nonprofit partner that sells guidebooks, maps, brochures, and CDs on the history, flora, and fauna of Shenandoah National Park, to benefit park activities.