It's April so it must be Mary's Rock

On Sunday, after Chris and I went for a hearty breakfast over at the Southern Kitchen in New Market, he headed back home, and I headed back to SNP for a little warm down hike. It was a beautiful day and I thought I might head into the Central District to do the Hawksbill Summit or Stonyman trails, but then I decided I didn’t have enough time for the drives to these hikes, and I decided to try Mary’s Rock instead.


The trailhead is right at the new Panorama rest station, just inside the Park, south of the Thornton Gap entrance. In fact, you can see all of that from the summit, where the 360-degree view is one of this hike’s great features.

Mary and I took this hike last April, when traces of spring were working their way up the mountainside, just as they were on my hike last weekend. I also had an ill-fated attempt to climb it in December, where I wanted it to be the first test of my new Casio pathfinder…the snow held me back, and I turned around after less than 200 feet of climbing because of the conditions.  Here is my record of this hike, from the Pathfinder data bank:

This is a steep and rugged trail, with my altimeter recording 1,130 feet of elevation gain during the 1.7 mile ascent . The trailhead sign advises the hike would take almost four hours, so I was worried about my late start. There were no impediments on Sunday, so I easily made it to the top, and completed the 3.5 mile hike in about 2.5 hours, and I traveled very light, carrying only a liter of water – I encountered some busybody overnighters on the trail who let me know they thought I was unprepared.

One of the things that I always pause to think about on the Mary’s Rock hike is the amount of trail building that’s been done here. Almost the entire route, except for the tenth of a mile spur trail to the summit at the very top, lies on the Appalachian Trail. The downhill edges of the path are curbed with rocks, and the tread of the path is often paved with rocks laid into the ground. So I have these images of CCC teams busting up the rocks, hauling them, and setting them in their places in the 1930’s – that’s plenty of hard work, but I have really grown to appreciate it on this route.

Here are links to my past hikes on this route, including some of the other lore about this trail:
http://hawksbillcabin.blogspot.com/2009/04/marys-rock-not-so-easy-day-hike.html
http://hawksbillcabin.blogspot.com/2010/01/tech-watch-geek-pathfinder.html