Usually when taking a weekend trip anywhere, cloudy weather isn’t ideal. But when climbing up a mountain when you’re essentially in the clouds, it makes the view from the summit that much more dramatic.
Our rise into the clouds was along the trail up Stony Man Summit in the Shenandoah Valley. At only 4,110 feet it’s not a severe incline, but the view from the top was still pretty cool.
Stony Man Mountain is a mountain in Shenandoah National Park, Virginia, and is the most northerly 4,000 foot peak in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Its maximum elevation is 4,011 feet above sea level with a clean prominence of 651 feet. Along with Hawksbill Mountain (4,051 feet), it is only one of two peaks in the park higher than 4,000 feet. The shortest route to the summit is from the Skyland Resort and gains less than 400 vertical feet in about 1 kilometer. On the upper slopes of Stony Man one can see a few red spruce and balsam fir trees which typically grow in more northerly latitudes. The mountain is composed of ancient basalt which was metamorphosed into Greenstone through heat and pressure.
Probably the coolest part of the view was sitting so high up in the clouds. You can see the clouds climbing over the mountain just across the way from where we were.
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