The tour is 7.6 miles round trip, with 2,235' of elevation gain. You can take a side trip down to Champney Falls, which we decided against, due to time and lack of interest. The trail is described by David Goodman as a "mildly graded logging road" up the mountain. Brian took this description perhaps too literally, expecting an actual, well, road. As I've come to understand from experience hiking, climbing and skiing in New England (where I now live), vs. hiking, scrumbling and pretending to very occasionally ski in Virginia (where I used to live and where Brian resides), "road" - in the context of the backcountry - has a very different meaning in the two locales.

In Virginia, a "logging road" is going to be what you'd find in a "fire road" just about anywhere else. It's going to most likely be a fairly wide, well, road, cut some time ago, maybe, or, perhaps recently. And it's probably going to be maintained, i.e., cut and pruned, maybe even having a fresh bed of gravel spread across it, every few years or so. Someone is damn well sure gonna drive a truck up it. I tell you whut. Dang ol' Mopar and glass packs. Put a little ol' STP in there and it go ba-boom! Just like 'at.

In New England a "logging road" may be something that is reasonably wide. Seventy years ago, when it was cut for mule or an ox cart, or a llama.

I had my hopes as well. I will not lie. They were dashed.