Hanging Rock State Park

Today we went hiking at Hanging Rock State Park, located about 100 miles from Durham, just north of Winston-Salem. The park is nestled among the Sauratown Mountains with peaks ranging from 1,700 feet to more than 2,500 feet. Named for the Saura Indians, the Sauratown Mountains were once much larger, but have eroded significantly over the years. Still, coming from the hills of the midwest, they were definitely mountains to us!

The park has over 18 miles of trails, so we left bright and early and arrived at the park just before 10am. We mapped out our 8-mile route to cover a couple of waterfalls, the signature Hanging Rock, and a long wooded trail leading to several other vistas. A cloudy morning, the sun hadn't yet burned off the haze as we headed out on Indian Creek Trail to see Hidden Falls and Window Falls. Only a half mile into the trail and accessible by families, they were nice little falls, but I suspect they are more impressive in the spring.




After the falls, we retraced our steps back to the parking and to the Hanging Rock trailhead. The trail starts out as a wide paved path and turns to gravel after about 1/4 mile. After about a half mile, the trails gets steep and we're climbing over roots, boards and boulders. We climb for a half mile straight up, panting and sweating to the top of Hanging Rock, but the view was well worth it.




We did our best to take photos that didn't reflect how massively busy the trail and the vista was. That's what we get for hiking on a holiday! Kids were running everywhere with their parents yelling after them. Peaceful it was not, so we'll definitely be going back.

After hanging rock, we scrambled down the trail and connected with the Wolf Rock Trail, a longer less accessible and therefore more peaceful trail. Another rocky hilly trail, our ankles and hips were beginning to get sore from walking on uneven ground. The only wildlife we encountered were tiny lizards and the biggest, grossest centipede thing we've ever seen. Once we reached Wolf Rock, we stopped for lunch.


Huge black ravens soared past us and we could just make out the skyline of Winston-Salem on the horizon, nearly 25 miles away. After lunch we continued down the trail another mile or so, still clambering over rocks and roots until we got to another nice vista, but by this time our feet were beginning to fail us so we turned around and headed back. All in all we hiked somewhere around 6.5 miles and left room for another visit this fall when the leaves are changing and the trails are less crowded.