Day Hike 5: Thunder Hill Overlook to Boone’s Trace Overlook
Into the Wild
Distance: 5.7 miles
- Difficulty: Moderate. Easy stretches along road with rugged terrain in between.
- Camping: No.
- Land manager: National Park Service.
- Volunteer Task Force Leader: Shelton Wilder, esheltonwilder@gmail.com.
- Piggyback trail: No.
- Connecting trails: No.
The trail passes under the Blue Ridge Parkway near Bamboo Gap.
This stretch starts mellow, with some up and down through hardwood forest. It spends some unavoidable time (about a mile and a half) on roads. And it drops through some terrain, most telling of the Blue Ridge escarpment.
The mellow starts early and lasts for a couple of miles, with gentle ascents and descents through hardwoods and terrain thick with rhododendron. At the midpoint, there’s a passage along the Parkway and George Hayes Road (narrow-to-non-existent shoulder on the latter; be careful) and the section ends with a 0.8-mile leg stretcher on Bamboo Road.
Between those two road stretches you’ll find deliciously rugged hiking. Make that hiking through deliciously rugged terrain, because the trail does a good job switchbacking the steeps, letting your psyche, not your knees, absorb the terrain. An old roadbed, one of those relic mountain roads that gives you a good sense of what transportation here was like before the Blue Ridge Parkway, takes you part of the way. This stretch wraps up along a rocky, mountain creek. By the time you hit Bamboo Road, your legs won’t mind spending most of the last mile along a foot-friendly dirt road.
For detailed hiking directions and parking information, download the Segment 5 guide from our Trail Guides page, using the “Primary Trailheads” section to pinpoint the location. You can also visualize the route on our interactive map; click “Day Hikes” to view the endpoints.
