As the start of a trip to Staunton, Va., to see the Fred Eaglesmith Travelling Steam Show at The Mockingbird, we stopped along the Blue Ridge Parkway to climb the back side (well, the side that doesn’t climb 3,000 feet from the Tye River) of Three Ridges Mountain. This climb is about half of that, and the reward is a fine viewpoint (back off the summit by .6 or so), with a good look at what are apparently the formations that give the mountain its name, a spot we’d apparently missed on previous hikes of Three Ridges.
The summit itself is wooded, but we couldn’t have had a much better view of both the mountain and the Tye River Valley (though we could see no trace at all of the river).
We were back down the mountain in pretty good time, and on into Staunton for a nice dinner and a great show by Fred and his band.
Appalachian Trail from Reeds Gap (Milepost 13.7) of the Blue Ridge Parkway to the high point of Three Ridges and back. 8.4 miles.
How to get there: MP 13.7 of the Blue Ridge Parkway (at Va. 664).
