4 Best Hikes for Beginners in Shenandoah National Park

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I’ve always had a hard time picking a favorite season, but then autumn comes around on the east coast. Fall foliage is one of my absolute favorite magic tricks of Mother Nature, so I knew that since I was back on the east coast for a little while, I had to take full advantage of this magnificent season! So, I visited Shenandoah National Park!

Luckily, my National Park Annual Pass is not up until December, so I wanted to try to get one last park in for the year. In exactly a year from this week, I have visited 11 national parks! I am so grateful for this year of travel, and I cannot believe that number honestly. If you are looking to plan a national park trip, go check out my itineraries for the parks I’ve been to so far! Within the next couple of months, I am looking to add some more about my trips to all of them. (Theodore Roosevelt NP, Yellowstone NP, Grand Tetons NP, Joshua Tree NP.)

But let’s talk about Shenandoah National Park! Located in Virginia, this park is 102 miles long with a single road taking you through the entire park. It is such an easy park to navigate with tons of overlooks and hiking trails. If you are driving along the park, I highly suggest continuing on Skyline Drive to the Blue Ridge Parkway or vice versa depending on if you are traveling north or south.

Camping in Shenandoah National Park

Of course, I came for the foliage, but I was also excited about this trip because it would be my first time solo camping! I wouldn’t say that my glamping experience outside of Yellowstone necessarily counted (read about it here!). I spent two nights in the park at two different campgrounds, and I loved every second of it! 

The two campgrounds I stayed at were Loft Mountain and Michael’s Arm. Something to look into is the elevation of the campsites! Loft Mountain was much higher than Michael’s Arm which made is a lot colder my first night. But I came prepared with extra layers and blankets and all of that fun stuff. 

I will say I felt that Loft Mountain had more privacy than Michael’s Arm, but it also depends on which site you reserve. Speaking of, I highly recommend reserving a campsite before you go! Especially around peak fall foliage, the park gets pretty busy, and spots fill up quick. Some of the campsites have walk up sites available on a first come first serve basis, but again, better to be safe than sorry. You can reserve your site on the park’s website here. From the website you can also modify or cancel your reservations if necessary.

Budget Friendly Trip in Shenandoah National Park

But the best part of this trip was how affordable it was! Since I had my annual pass, it was basically free for entrance into the park. Again, the pass is $80, and it is usually $30 per vehicle to enter a single national park regularly. And seeing I’ve used the pass for 10 out of the 11 parks I’ve been too, I’d say it’s been paid off for a while now.

Then both of my campsites were $15 a night, and all of my food and supplies was under $50. Gas from Pennsylvania to the park and back was around $60. So my entire trip added up to around $140 for three days in the park!

The Best Hikes in Shenandoah National Park:

Now let’s get into why you’d want to visit the park! Shenandoah is actually part of the Appalachian Trail! In fact many of the hikes in the park take you on portions of the trail! I can officially say that I have hiked about 5 miles of the 2,190 miles that make up the Appalachian Trail. I’m sure I’ll get around to the rest of it someday. 

I did a mix of hiking and driving to overlooks which I would say is the best way to do it. I successfully drove the entire park north to south and then back again stopping at every outlook and doing the few hikes I had researched.

With three days in the park, I did five hikes. I love hiking, but sometimes hiking doesn’t like me if that makes sense. Okay fine, maybe I’m just not in the best shape to be hiking mountains, but at least I can say I went out and did the damn thing! Anyways, after researching which hikes were the most rewarding while also staying in the easy to moderate hiking zone, I found quite a few I’ll be sharing with you today! I will also share with you the ones I didn’t get to do because of my lack of time and energy. Let’s get into it!

Stony Man Trailhead (1.6mi)

This hike is a popular one, so be prepared! The parking lot fills up fast, but there are plenty of places to pull off to. I was not alone during the entire hike. That might have had something to do with it being midday on a weekend during peak foliage, but nevertheless, I highly recommend this one! I’d put this at an easy level and one of the most rewarding hikes out of the list. I didn’t find the incline on this one to be that much of a challenge, and there were all ages on this hike from kids to the older retirees. 

Rose River Falls (4mi)

Many people choose this hike because you get a bang for your buck! This trail not only takes you to two beautiful waterfalls, but take the five-minute detour, and you find yourself at the popular Dark Hollow Falls! So if you want a less crowded, more exciting hike to Dark Hollow Falls, I recommend this one! If you simply just want to snap a picture of Dark Hollow Falls, I suggest taking the shorter 1.4 mile hike down to it on Dark Hollow Falls Trail.

Funny story about this one. The parking for this trail is actually across the street from the trailhead at the Fisher’s Gap overlook. Silly me who didn’t see the signs directing you to cross the street, found a backcountry trail at the end of the overlook. So, I got a nice extra 2.5 mile hike on the wrong trail! Needless to say, I got back from that hike, refilled my water, and started off on the Rose River Falls Trail.

Now this one almost killed me (I’m being a bit dramatic). I did this loop trail counterclockwise which I still cannot decide if I would do it this way again or not. If you follow the trail counterclockwise, you will be on a steady decline until you reach the falls. I think if I could do it again, I would just turn around and go back up the way I came because the rest of the 2.9 mile path was brutal. Again, this was the third hike of the day, and since I don’t do this regularly, I was exhausted. 

Anyways, I did the rest of the loop which takes you along the river and it’s all nice and peaceful until the last 1.7 miles where it’s just a straight uphill battle. I think the only reason I made it out alive was because Miley Cyrus was singing “The Climb” in my head on repeat. But I made it! I’m alive and I can now tell you how pathetic I felt trying to do this trail. 

The park’s website ranks this trail at a moderate level which had me terrified for the other moderate trails I had on my list, but I did not back down to another challenge! 

Black Rock Summit (1mi)

This trail right here was easily my favorite out of all of the ones I did! I got to this trailhead at around 8:30am on a Monday, and I had the entire trail to myself. This is easily the most rewarding trail you will do because the view took my breath away. I climbed up the jagged rocks (please don’t do this by yourself if you don’t feel 100%) and sat up there for a solid half hour just taking in the beautiful silence around me. Perfect place for some morning gratitude thoughts! 

This is ranked as easy on the difficulty scale, but there is definitely some heavy incline in some areas.

Hawksbill Summit (1.7mi)

Welcome to the highest point in the park! That being said, get ready for some steep inclines gaining 690 ft in elevation. Labeled as moderate, I would say it was a bit of a challenge. But the best part about my Rose River Falls experience was that I felt like nothing would be worse than that which kept me pushing to reach the top.

This view is quite rewarding as well! But be warned that the wind up there is no joke. And this is coming from the girl who after being told that the wind had killed people at the Cliff of Moher still dangled her legs over the cliff’s edge. So just. Make wise choices my friends. 

There are two ways to get to the summit. You can take this trail which starts at the Lower Hawksbill Trail, or you can take the trail via Upper Hawksbill Trail which is 2.1 miles but only a 560 ft elevation gain. Or go all out for the Hawksbill Loop at 2.9 miles and 860 ft elevation gain.

The Three I’ll Be Coming Back For:

Mary’s Rock  (3.7mi) with a moderate status at 1,220 feet elevation gain

Frazier Discovery Trail at Loft Mountain Campground (1.2mi) with an easy status at 429 feet elevation gain

Lewis Falls (3.3mi) with a moderate status at 990 feet elevation gain

And there you have it! The best hikes in Shenandoah National Park! I really enjoyed this trip and being disconnected from the world to reconnect with nature. There isn’t any cell service in the park, so I was quite literally in the dark to anything going on which is sometimes the best way to reset. This is my favorite form of self care, and I am so happy I got to spend some time alone and challenge myself along the way.

This post is about Shenandoah National Park.