Short, sweet, and steep, Hawksbill Summit boasts Shenandoah National Park’s highest peak and the views at the end are well worth the effort to reach the top. This hike can be done a number of ways, but for a quick sunrise hike, I’d start at the Lower Hawksbill Parking Lot and hike from there.
Shenandoah National Park requires a $30 entrance fee or anannual park pass, which pays for itself in about two visits and is worth every penny if you live in the area!
This trail is dog-friendly, so leash up your pups and bring them along. It’s less than two miles out-and-back, and while the journey up is pretty steep, it’s the kind of steep where right as I began questioning why I had woken up at four in the morning on my day off just to hike in the cold darkness of Appa- lachia, my friend and I reached the top just as the sun was peaking up over the horizon.
Hawksbill Summit is quite popular so you’re unlikely to find much solitude here depending on when you go, but there was only one other gentleman up there when we arrived and he vacated the premises pretty quickly, so we had the peak all to ourselves for about twenty minutes until the cold sent us back down.
