Metcalf Bottoms - Little Brier - Little Greenbrier - Roundtop - Little River crossing

Date: 8/3/13
Distance: 12 miles

I hiked with the Meetup group today from Metcalf Bottoms to the Townsend Y.  The hike was a shuttle hike where we met at the Y and took a few cars up to Metcalf Bottoms to begin the hike.  The hike began on the Metcalf bottoms trail that leaves the picnic area and ends at the Little Greenbrier School.  There was also a cemetery at the school.

A gravel road leaves the school and eventually reaches the 5 sisters cabin.  The cabin is a cool place to visit.  It is very scenic with a Cabin, a spring house and a building that looked like a feed house.

We probably spent 20 minutes milling around the cabin.  The story from the people who knew about the cabin was that the sisters refused to sell when the park was started, but eventually agreed that the park could have the land once all the sisters had died.  One of the sisters lived in the cabin up until 1964.  The gravel road got close to the cabin, but not all of the way.  It would have been a rustic life.

The Little Brier Gap trail leaves the gravel road just above the cabin and terminates at the Little Greenbrier Trail.  This intersection is about 2.5 miles from the Metcalf parking lot.  We took the left fork of the Little Greenbrier Trail towards Townsend.  The trail hugged the edge of the park with several trails that headed down the mountain outside of the park.  At one spot there was a platform with a nice view of Wear's Valley.

This trail terminated at the Metcalf Bottoms Road (not sure this is the name. It is the road from Wear's Valley into the park at Metcalf Bottoms.)  We turned to the left on the road and walked a few hundred yards down the road to the Roundtop Trailhead.  The Roundtop trail had a decent climb onto the side of Roundtop Mountain.  Fortunately it didn't go to the top of Roundtop as that would have been a very hard climb.  The trail was a nice walk in the woods with a few nice views along the way.  It is 7.5 miles in length.  There was one tree across the trail that made life interesting.

The last 0.5 miles of the trail goes down the mountain and ends at the "Y".  It is on the "wrong" side of the "Y", so we had to fjord the Little River to get back to the cars.

Met at the Y at 7:30
Got started on the trail at 8:15
Back to the Y at 2:15