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Wind Rock and White Rocks - Mountain Lake Wilderness, VA

1,266 views · Published 7 September 2018 · 9:11 · Indexed 11 October 2026

Channel: Zachary Robbins · 2018 · Travel & Events

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Hike on Saturday, July 14 returning to the Mountain Lake Wilderness. This was my third weekend in a row hiking in Virginia, it had better weather forecasts during this stretch. The Mountain Lake Wilderness is located in the Eastern Divide Ranger District of Jefferson National Forest and is the largest wilderness in Virginia outside of Shenandoah National Park. On my first visit I did a loop, this time we were doing a shorter hike at the VA 613 parking area for Wind Rock and the Appalachian Trail. Wind Rock is located very close to the road, and has a good panoramic view of Peters Mountain and the Stony Creek valley along the VA/WV border. From there we took the little-used Potts Mountain Trail which is the former route of the AT and stays on top of the ridge. This trail may be abandoned by the forest service, and is very overgrown with grasses and ferns. Since it was midsummer we were a little worried about unseen snakes, but no issues.

The first stop was the remnants of the Stony Creek Lookout Tower at the true summit of Potts Mountain (4,128 feet). There is nothing there except a ranked peak. We continued on to the next, much larger meadow and lost the trail, winding up on the AT. Since there is a short connector to the Potts Mountain Trail where the AT turns south, we followed the AT to this point and rejoined the trail. The old trail was a little better past this junction with lots of great looking campsites that no one uses. Our destination was White Rocks at the Giles, Craig, and Monroe tri-county border. White Rocks is the County High Point (CoHP) of Craig County and an AT CoHP. (In the video I mistakenly called it the Monroe CoHP as well, but the spot we stood on was simply the HP of White Rocks.) There was no view though, and the only views from the White Rocks section were average. I thought older reports said it had a great view, but some of them involved precarious ledge scrambling that we did not feel was worth the trouble. From the best rocks you have a good view of Johns Creek Mountain and Kelly Knob. Overall, I wouldn't recommend doing this full hike unless you are peakbagging. Wind Rock is a great, short hike from the road that I highly recommend for all hikers.

Hike was 7 miles with 1,042 feet elevation gain in 3 hours and 20 minutes.

Hike location
https://goo.gl/maps/HLNDA2Gzv5v

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