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This enjoyable, easy loop is always a good one for a rushed weekend where you get to reinforce how lucky Roanoke is to have the Appalachian Trail as close as 20 minutes away, but also its own in-town trail system on its own in-town mountain.

You can think about a climb with 21 switchbacks as one long climb of a mountainside. Or you can think about why the trail builders created them: to make the climb of a mountainside a heck of a lot easier than going straight up.

You get a sunny February day with a predicted high of nearly 60, plus a not-too-far destination with a pretty view, and every once in awhile, you can get some big numbers for a hike.

With as close to a truly winter day as we've had this winter, we opted for the once-a-year of lunch in the Peaks of Otter Lodge at the pause point between a hike up a mountain on one side of the Blue Ridge Parkway and up a mountain on the other side.

It could've been a formula for disaster: a threatening winter day and two nine-year-olds starting up a mountain at 10:30 in the morning with the chances of rain inching up by the hour.