White Rock Tower Mtb Ride

White Rock Tower Mtb Ride

This is a great "off the beaten path" ride for you mtbers. What is cool is you can finish it and then do North Mnt ride too (that is where Pete lives-more on him in another post).

total distance for the WRT about 15 miles.

See Pete's Cave North Mnt blog for the starting area. Its the same.

From the parking lot head east on Old 60. Ride about 2 miles until you cross a bridge then turn left onto a Fireroad. This is a really tough climb to the top but worth every effort. Its more like a jeep trail than a fireroad. No gravel. I hope to do this route soon and will get back with more accuate directions and distances. The Road take you to an old Tower base, hence White Rock Tower. Turn left

About .5 miles you will reach a large rock formation on your right and have a chance to scale a ridgeline-on foot.


Check out the views

Back to the trail. Some great singletrack that dumps you out on a gravel road.
From here you drop into a large parking lot, just keep going through the lot

Just a few other landmarks. Turn right onto the main road and back to the car.

Pete's Cave/North Mnt Ride

Pete's Cave Mtb Ride

Looking for a change in routes?

Here are some pics of a great ride up to Pete's Cave. You'll meet Pete later.

It can be around 12-15 miles depending on where you start. You can also add another 15 with some tough climbing on the White Rock Tower side.

With both Pete's Cave and White Rock Tower you would do a figure 8 bringing you by your car for any refueling needs.

Ok, here we go.

From Roanoke, take 220 North towards Covington.

When you arrive at Interstate 64 head East towards Lexington

Travel about 8 miles on 64 to the Longdale Furnace Exit #34.

Turn right off the exit

You will see a parking lot on the right side of the road about 100 yrds from the exit.

You can park there continue another 100 yrds and turn left onto Collierstown Rd.

Collierstown Rd turns to gravel

National Forest Parking area about 2 miles on the right.

If you start from the National Forest Lot, the ride is a 12 mile loop.

Head up for a 2 mile climb on a gravel road

The first fork in the road you turn right. you will see a cell tower on top of the mnt. This a great climb and I like to ride it from the Longdale Furnace parking lot.

after you have turned right, head up about 150 yrds and you will see the trail head on the rt.

This is called the North Mnt Trail

Basically, the trail follows a ridgeline with awesome views.

after the ridge, you drop through some cool trees.

One of the markers you will find.

Here is where it gets fun. The trail leads up some technical rock formations.

Through a crevas

time to park the bikes and enjoy a little rock scrambling and great views

Oh yeah, this is Pete. this is a natural rock formation that looks like a guys face

Head down for about a mile and turn rt when you see this sign.

A little log jump for those that dare

Yeah I hit it and landed.



Here is Ryan trying to jump and ends up with a face plant. The video is sideways so either turn your head or rotate the computer screen.

Unfortunately, the camera ran out of battery power and I didn't get the rest of the ride in.

The trail leads to 2 other forks. Just take a rt at each fork. The final 2 miles is a nice gravel road back to the National Forest Parking lot. If you parked at Longdale Furnace, then turn left out of the park and continue downhill.

Mount Rogers Hike

Mount Rogers Hike

This was one cold and windy hike. As we are driving to our destination point to drop off a vehicle, snow began to cover the ground.

Some 1hr later we arrived at the start, temps around the mid 20's and lots of wind. Don't think I have ever hiked in this much clothing.

Part of the Virginia Creeper trail

Camp #1 about 15 miles. Task, get as much wood and water as possible. General rule of thumb, get enough wood you think will last the night, then get 3x that amount.

Poor man's saw

Nothing like a fire to warm the body.

Yep, that's the water source. You would be surprised how much water you can pump out of a little hole.

It was around 19 the next morning.

Nothing like toasting your buns first thing in the morning

Somebody either had some serious intestinal problems or was really bored. This was the entire Dr. Suess story on the outhouse wall.

My entertainment during a break

Heading upward towards the Boy Scout Shelter about 17 miles away.

This was really weird. there hundreds of yards of irrigation type hoses weaving thru a portion of the woods. If anyone knows what this stuff is, let me know.

Mount Rogers peak, our destination, off in a distance.

There was about a foot of snow at the top

Weaving our way to the top Sad sight, acres of trees killed by acid rain.
Destination Reached, Boy scout shelter ahead

One of the cool things about this shelter is the views and sunsets

I thought this was a cool pic.

This is a double decker shelter. There were two windows with lots of air blowing in. I found a good use for my 1$ emergency blanket. Just a little ducktape and foil, a great shelter from the wind.

8pm is hikers midnight. The problem with getting to sleep that early is your wide awake around 5am before the sun is up. So we packed up and headed out. Just a few 100 yards from the site, we were rattled by the noise of large animals. There are 100's of wild ponies in the area. Thought these pics were cool being before sunrise.

the eyes were a little scary.

About 4 miles into the hike, the sun pops up. this was the last pic of the hike. ran out of batteries.