Mountains to Sea Trail from Greybeard Mountain View Overlook

Date	Distance	Time	Elevation Gain	Average Moving Time	Year to Date Miles
7/7/2024	3.6 miles	2 hours 23 minutes	545'	1.6 mph	470.1 miles

Parking: 

• Greybeard Mountain View Overlook, Blue Ridge Parkway

Map:

• FarOut app

Directions:

• From the parking area, head north on the MST. Continue a ways past lunch rock. Return the same way.

We've had hot weather recently, so hiking has been hard. Forecast was for thunderstorms early this afternoon, but we decided to drive to higher elevation to get cooler weather. We've already hiked this section of the MST, but it's a beautiful section, so I was looking forward to hiking it again. There are lots of blueberries on this hike. I found a ripe one, but the majority aren't ripe yet. This is a great time of year to do this section - so many wildflowers! The terrain was mostly rocky and rooty. We ran into Lori, a CMC member who I went backpacking with on the Smokies portion of the AT a couple of years ago.

On the way home, we got stuck in a traffic jam on the BRP. Bears of course. Mother bear was on one side of the parkway, mostly ignoring her cubs who were on the other side of the parkway. The mother bear had foam on her snout. Anyways, we sat there for 5 minutes, because people were taking photos. It also must have been unnerving, because when people eventually moved, they were driving by 2 feet away from the bear!

Overlook view

View from lunch rock

The cause of a traffic jam on the way home. 
Mother on one side of the parkway.

Two babies on the other side.