Hawksbill Mountain is a county "two-fer", i.e. it is the highpoint of two counties, Page and Madison, as well as the highest point inside Shenandoah National Park. Beth and I were making a day trip to the Park and visiting a handful of county highpoints. This particular peak was the southernmost of the three we visited, but we chose to visit it second and then work our way out the park northward (and get the remaining one on the way out). Partly, our decision had a lot to do with the weather. A storm was moving through and for most of the day we'd had heavy fog, stiff winds, some sprinkles and very cold weather. Not the best weather but on the good side, the rain had been mostly light. We arrived to the Hawksbill Mountain region about 2:30 p.m. and had a bit of good luck: the fog was light and we could actually see farther than 20 feet. There are three possible trailheads to access this peak: we chose the Upper Hawksbill Parking area since it was the shortest and had the least gain (1 mile one way, about 400 feet of gain compared to about 1.8 miles one way and almost 700 feet of gain from the other trailheads, which are actually two "let-in" points of the Appalachian Trail). We were the only people there.

We got bundled up and started walking the fine trail up into the forest. Normally this would be a profusion of green - leaves, trees, undergrowth, brambles... but on this cold, blustery November day, everything had closed up for the winter. Combined with general fog and winds, this made for a spooky, interesting little stroll. The trail gains nicely for about 0.6 mile, then levels and drops slightly to where it meets a fire-access road. The remainder of the hike is up this road, where it ends at a shelter called the Byrds Nest #2. It took us about 20 minutes to make the top. The summit is another 50 feet or so along the trail past the shelter and up to a viewing platform. I'm sure the views done onto the valleys below are something to behold, but on this day all we could see was a pall of gray fog. We snapped some photos and sought out the top "natural" rock before heading down. We were back to the car quickly, a round trip of 45 minutes.

From here we started heading back north along the Skyline Drive. About 4 miles north of Hawksbill is an old resort called Skyland that was built about 100 years ago and pre-dates the National Park. While it no longer is a private resort, the Park does maintain it as a destination, and it has a restaurant, gift shop and an attractive lobby with a large fireplace. In the surrounding areas are some camping areas, stables, and Park offices. Anyway, we stopped here to do some souvenir shopping and to dry out. The rain had really picked up and was coming down hard. We still had one more highpoint to do, about five miles north in Rappahannock County. Were we going to let a little thing like heavy rain, strong winds and dense fog stop us from our quest? Click on the link to find out!