Agile Trekker: Mountains to Sea Trail, Segment 2, Miles 54.1 - 57.0

Date	Distance	Time	Elevation Gain	Average Moving Time	Year to Date Miles
3/14/2024	5.7 miles	4 hours 16 minutes	1,401'	1.4 mph	155.2 miles

Parking:

Wagon Road Gap Overlook, Blue Ridge Parkway

Map:

Trail Guides | Mountains-to-Sea Trail (mountainstoseatrail.org)
Gai GPS app

Directions:

Take spur trail to MST. Cross road and hike on MST to Blue Ridge Parkway MP 415. Return the same way.

Back on the MST today to work on another section. We did an out and back and weren't sure of the most efficient place to park to get on the MST. We chose the Wagon Road Gap Overlook parking lot. We thought we'd need to do a road walk to get to the MST, but there is actually a spur trail in the parking lot that takes you there. The spur trail is not on Gaia. By the way, there is no view at Wagon Road Gap Overlook.

We took the spur trail which reaches the MST at the next BRP crossing. We did see a car parked on the grass there. I'm not sure what the rules are for parking on the grass as opposed to an overlook. We continued on the MST, hiking up to Green Knob. We encountered 2 people at the summit, operating a ham radio. Just past the summit is a short herd path to a view, well worth visiting. Today was hazy! We saw smoke in the distance. I've seen that there are a bunch of controlled burns right now, so I assume we were seeing one. But I'm not sure if the haze is from the burns, or just because it was a really warm day. We had a view of Looking Glass Rock, but it was just a hazy blob. We continued down past Green Knob. We heard a loud fighter jet. We wondered what they were doing in this area. We crossed the parkway, and then hiked until the next parkway crossing at MP 415.

We noticed after our last hike in this area, that there was no assigned trail maintainer for the area. So today, we continued to do some light trail maintenance. We didn't have tools, but we removed 4 trees from the trail, noted others, and removed large branches from the trail. Glen said next time we hike on the MST out here, he'll bring clippers at least.