Hiking Old Rag Mountain

Welcome to Travel Tuesday! Old Rag Mountain is located near Speryville in Madison County, Virginia. It’s part of the Blue Ridge Mountains and its peak is nestled within Shenandoah National Park (aka the closest national park to me)!

(Spoiler alert: we made it to the top!!!)

Hiking Old Rag Mountain

Old Rag is Shenandoah’s most popular (but also most dangerous) hike. When we went (back in 2018), no permit was required. Now, if you’re going between March 1 to November 30 via the Saddle, Ridge, and Ridge Access Trails, you’ll need to obtain a day-use ticket in advance.

Distance: 9 miles
Duration: 5-7.5 hours
Elevation: 3284 ft
Difficulty: Moderate to Difficult
Admission: $30 (free during National Park Week!)
Parking: Free
Trailhead Address: 38.57082,-78.29359

I’d definitely recommend getting there early since the parking lot is pretty small. We had a late-ish start to our day, partly because we realized the night before that Old Rag Mountain was 3 hours away (vs 2) from us (sigh), so we ended up starting our hike at 11:30 am. There were no parking spaces left, but the lady who owns land next to it opened up her lot for $10/car. She probably made at least $1.5k in cash on that day alone.

Since the upper lot is no longer available for parking, the hike from the lower lot is roughly another 0.5-0.7-ish miles.

We went up the Ridge Trail, which goes up the mountain and passes through a series of what we thought of as fake summits (and lots of pretty overlooks).

Fake summit #1!

Since we got there later in the day, by the time we got to the rock scramble part (I wish I had more photos, but I [a] didn’t fall/hurt something, and [b] didn’t drop my phone), there was a longgg line. There are parts where you’re pretty much in a single-file line and can’t pass anyone, so there was a good amount of waiting involved.

All in all though, the rock scramble part was really fun! Definitely more on the challenging side than easy, but it made for a really fun adventure. :]

There are two shelters along the way down–the Byrds Nest shelter (#1) and the Old Rag shelter (#2)–we stopped at the latter for a snack!

After that, we followed the Weakley Hollow Fire Road (~2.5 mi) to get back to the parking lot.

The website recommended reserving 7.5 hours to finish this hike, but we finished the hike in 5 hours! This was with breaks every 30-45 minutes or so, either for photo stops, snacks, or to just really take a break.

Apparently, this would also be a pretty cool place to climb! I’ve only been climbing outdoors once, but I’d love
to come back here someday to try em’ out! The climbs range from 50-100 ft high and difficulties from 5.4-5.12+. It also has lots of bouldering challenges!

Tips:

• Get there early! Finding parking may be difficult.
• Dress in layers and avoid wearing any bulky jackets if possible.
• Try to go on a weekday if possible; there are a lotttt of people on the weekends and you may have to wait for a long time during the rock scramble portion of the hike since you basically have to go one by one.
• The last part of the trail isn’t strenuous but when you’re hungry and thinking of ice cream/your return to civilization meal, it can be somewhat of a drag, especially after all the excitement from climbing through the rock scramble!

A post shared by Farrah | Blogger/Physician, DO (@fairyburger) on Apr 21, 2018 at 6:31pm PDT

• Have you ever been on a hike where you had to climb things?
• Have you ever been to Shenandoah National Park? :O