HIKING VIRGINIA

Mount Pleasant must rank as one of Virginia’s most aptly named peaks. Few hikes, if any, offer so much for so little work. For the price of a small elevation gain, hikers can climb two of the Blue Ridge’s highest peaks on a loop trail that is, for lack of a better phrase, quite pleasant. Steep, rocky climbs along the final miles to Mount Pleasant will appease the gung ho hiker. Otherwise, it’s easy hiking on wide paths and old roads through thick masses of rhododendron and mountain laurel; forests of oak, hickory, and beech; and small pockets of high-grass open forest.

THE RUNDOWN

Start: Parking area on FR 48, 0.3 mile past a forest gate at Hog Camp Gap

Distance: 4.8-mile loop

Hiking time: About 4 hours

Difficulty: Moderate due to a long uphill approach along the Henry Lanum Loop Trail and a single, steep climb on Mount Pleasant Spur Trail

Trail surface: Dirt roads and forest footpaths lead through open rock formations, fields, open peaks, mountain meadows, remnant chestnut forests, steep cliffs, and along streams.

Land status: National Scenic Area

Nearest town: Buena Vista, VA

Other trail users: Hunters (in season)

Accessibility: None

Canine compatibility: Dogs permitted

Trail contact: Glenwood-Pedlar Ranger District, Natural Bridge Station; (540) 291-2188; www.fs.usda.gov/gwj

Schedule: Open year-round

Fees/permits: None

Facilities/features: None

NatGeo TOPO! map: Montebello, Forks of Buffalo

NatGeo Trails Illustrated map: Lexington, Blue Ridge Mts; Appalachian Trail, Bailey Gap to Calf Mountain

From Buena Vista, drive east on US 60 for 8 miles to the town of Oronoco. Turn left onto VA 634 (Coffey Town Road) at a small general store. In 1.7 miles, turn right onto VA 755 (Wiggins Spring Road), which turns into a rough gravel FR 48 and veers right in 1.4 miles. Continue on FR 48 across the Appalachian Trail (AT) in 1.4 miles. Come to a fork and sign for Mount Pleasant in 0.2 mile. Turn right and go 0.2 mile to the parking area. GPS: N37 45.553′ / W79 11.338′. DeLorme: Virginia Atlas & Gazetteer: Page 54, B2.

The wind—you notice it first, and it never really goes away. Long gusts wrap around Mount Pleasant’s highest point, a 4,090-foot exposed rock face with views in all directions. It chaffs cheeks and hands as you stare out to the low-lying Piedmont rolling east from the mountain. Falcons or some other raptor too far off to distinguish with certainty circle on the upward-spiraling currents. A blurry rush fills your ears, and soon after it chills your bones.

You descend off the peak, but the wind isn’t done yet. In an under-grown forest gap below the Mount Pleasant summit, streaks of air rustle a thin forest canopy. Sunlight leaks through a patchwork of young oak and poplar, playing crazy angles with pole-size tree trunks. As the day lengthens, the wind picks up strength. Streaks of light and shadows interlace across the woodland. Grass bristles in the breeze. Here, a circle of light stretches halfway up a tree trunk. There, the setting sun alights on branch tips of an oak. In the darkness that drops suddenly, the wind remains, wrapping around you as it races through the trees.

Wind generates some of the Virginia mountain’s most severe storms. As systems of high and low pressure move eastward across the mountains, the haphazard arrangement of steep-sided mountains and deep valleys creates small tempests. Under proper conditions, a storm pocket will wreak sizable damage. Far more common, however, are isolated windthrows (aka downbursts or microbursts), where a sudden, fierce storm has torn down, snapped, or uprooted a few acres of trees. These are the seemingly out-of-place gaps in an otherwise solid forest that appear suddenly as you approach Mount Pleasant from the southwest. These gaps lack the clear, defined lines of a meadow. A rash of subcanopy vegetation, plants such as Virginia creeper or poison ivy, blur the line between forest and open space. Grasses that normally perish in the shadows of a forest canopy lend the subforest a pastoral look. To a bone-weary hiker, they appear as a perfectly peaceful spot to camp. Closer inspection, however, shows mounded soil where trees came uprooted, indicating a violent episode sometime in the past.

Disturbances, whether natural or man-made, have long been a part of the Mount Pleasant landscape. Meadows atop Cole Mountain, in the southern portion of the 7,580-acre Mount Pleasant National Scenic Area, date from a time when private landowners grazed livestock (indicated by place-names such as Cow Camp Gap and Hog Camp Gap). Maintaining the open fields through prescribed burns and timber management kept Mount Pleasant from being named a federal wilderness. Although much smaller, the fields inevitably invite comparisons to the high-country meadows of Mount Rogers National Recreation Area.

The southern slope of Cole Mountain drops into the North Fork Buffalo River, and from this stream rises Chestnut Ridge, a long ascending buttress that leads to Mount Pleasant’s peak. Unfortunately, the ridge’s name only reminds us of when the American chestnut tree blanketed the Appalachian forest. Here’s a reminder that ecological disturbances come in many forms, not just wind. Consider as you descend along the trail that a forest canopy once rose 100 feet and higher overhead, that tree trunks measured 10 feet in diameter. “No greater catastrophe has ever befallen a tree in our time,” Roger Tory Peterson wrote of the chestnut blight. That may well be an understatement. Imported from Asia, the blight—a fungus that appears as a black canker on the tree trunk—spread virulently down the Appalachian chain, destroying in a span of 20 years an estimated 3.5 million trees. (Look for signs of chestnut blight beyond Pompey Mountain as you hike the Henry Lanum Loop Trail away from Mount Pleasant.) It also deprived today’s hiker the opportunity to see this once strong tree grow past head-height—the size at which, today, the blight destroys chestnut trees. This is a humbling status for a tree once considered North America’s most productive.

Hope, however, is not lost. Biologists believe they now have an American chestnut that is 95 percent resistant to the blight. Here in Virginia, the American Chestnut Cooperator’s Foundation is experimenting with grafting techniques in the Warm Springs Ranger District of the George Washington National Forest. This technique takes young American chestnuts with no signs of blight and grafts resistant chestnut stems onto them. The hope is that the tree will produce nuts with blight-resistant genetics. In the Lesesne State Forest in nearby Nelson County, American chestnuts are being backcrossed—a type of genetic altering—with highly blight-resistant Chinese chestnuts in the hopes of producing a blight-resistant American chestnut. A reason, perhaps, to hope.

MILES AND DIRECTIONS

0.0Start from a trail board in the parking area on FR 51. Walk straight past the trail board and follow the blue-blazed Henry Lanum Loop Trail as it descends gently on a dirt road. Note: The Pompey Trail, which is the return leg of this loop hike, departs from this parking area. It climbs left from the trail board on a dirt road.

0.8Cross two seasonal streams. The trail slowly arcs right and continues to descend.

1.5Turn left at a double blaze and climb. The trail, a bit rockier, crosses a stream. A mature hardwood forest covers the slopes, replacing the fields and gaps at lower elevations.

1.7Turn right at another junction with an unmarked forest road. The trail is now a footpath and crosses several seasonal drainages. Note: Do not count on water from these sources during summer or fall.

1.9A relentless climb marks the approach to Mount Pleasant. The trail switches back several times. Large boulders along the trail make for convenient rest points.

2.3Turn right onto the Mount Pleasant Trail and begin a final ascent of Mount Pleasant.

2.6Reach the open rock face of Mount Pleasant’s 4,090-foot summit. To return to the Henry Lanum Loop Trail, turn and descend 0.3 mile on the Mount Pleasant Trail. Before doing so, however, take time to soak in the views that encircle the mountain. Far eastward rolls the Piedmont. To the north is Pompey Mountain. Chestnut Ridge approaches the mountain from the south. Through the valley south of the mountain runs the Buffalo River.

2.9Intersect the Henry Lanum Loop Trail and hike straight ahead. As you descend off the mountain, continue straight ahead.

3.0The blue-blazed trail crosses a saddle between Mount Pleasant and Pompey Mountain. Several gaps in the forest open up as you walk through a grassy landscape.

3.2The trail passes just to the left of Pompey Mountain. (Although only a few feet shorter than Mount Pleasant, Pompey Mountain is wooded with no views.) After passing the summit, the trail drops hard down the north slope.

3.6Turn left onto a narrow footpath that wends its way through a spare forest notable for the waist-high grass. The trail climbs and reenters forestland, where rhododendron form a brief tunnel. There are campsites off either side of the trail along this section.

4.1Cross a small knob and begin a descent to the parking area.

4.8Hike ends at the parking area on FR 51.

30. MOUNT PLEASANT