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Grayson Highlands

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    • Grayson Highlands

      This coming up weekend Dawn and I are taking our niece and her friend on their first backpacking trip when she graduated from highschool this year, this is what she asked for from us. She never wanted wanted to go before, so we are excited for this opportunity to show her one of our passions. She is an outdoorsy girl. We've done tons of car camping with her. And I couldn't tell you how many times she's gone down with the guys to Santee Cooper to go fishing.

      My back has been hurting so I decided to keep the mileage really low. I went to an outfitter last weekend to find a map and see if there was any loops we could do. .. My wife said another map? How many do you need? .. Well, I bought the map and when I went to put it on the hiking bookshelf with my other maps I came across a map of grayson highlands that I forgot I had. We won't tell her

      I think we'll start at Massie Gap and hike to Thomas Knob for water and pitch our tent just north of the shelter. There are some great spots up there in the trees. That'll be around 5 miles after getting water and back tracking. I figure our next day we'd back track and take the AT to wise shelter. There are some tent spots a little past the shelter on the creek. The next morning I figure we could just back track to Massie gap and down to the back country parking.

      I can't wait to take them on their first bpacking trip! Rain chances for sat went from 20% to 60% since yesterday. That sucks! We'll be walking through wet horse poop guess I won't be hiking in my sandles.....

    • Here is another loop

      Massie gap on the AT until Scales then there is a trail that connects to the Mt. Rogers trail which comes back to the AT just south of Thomas Knob shelter. There is an awesome campsite about 1-1/2 miles from scales on the trail leading to the Mt. Rogers trail.

      Total mileage is around twenty.
      Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory.
      Dr. Seuss Cof123

    • That loop is the reason I bought the map. I was hoping to do that one after watching that loop on YouTube. I'll sound like a whiner, but, my back hurts too bad to try and do more miles than what I have planned out already. Next time we'll do that loop for sure. I just hope my back holds out for the short mile days I have planned. If it doesn't I'll have to use one of those ponies as a stock/trail animal...

    • It sure isn't. I had to cancel out on a hike last weekend. My hiking buddies drove up from the Charlotte area to hike up on the Roan. I had thought about driving up to Overmountain shelter for the night to meet up with them. But with a bad back I didn't want to sleep on the ground so I didn't even go. They called me from the barn and said there was about 20 hikers there.....

    • Rasty wrote:

      Here is another loop

      Massie gap on the AT until Scales then there is a trail that connects to the Mt. Rogers trail which comes back to the AT just south of Thomas Knob shelter. There is an awesome campsite about 1-1/2 miles from scales on the trail leading to the Mt. Rogers trail.

      Total mileage is around twenty.
      i'll have to find my maps and find that. starting at massie gap ive done the a.t to the pine mountain trail (blue blazed old a.t.) which connects back to the a.t and back to massie. but thats only (from memory) about 10 miles or so.

      when the kids were younger we made a lot of trips to greyson highlands cuz they liked the ponies and then the next day biked the creeper. nice weekend except for the 6+ hour drive.
      2,000 miler