Skyline Drive - Hogback Overlook

Author's Comments

Hogback sits at one of the higher points along the drive, and the valley below it is so wide and so still that you can lose your sense of scale entirely. Page Valley stretches west toward Massanutten, ridge behind ridge, the geometry of it older than anything I know how to name. I have stood at this overlook in late October when the fog had filled the valley floor and only the mountain tops were visible, and the effect was something close to vertigo. The photogenic score for this place will tell you it is middling. I disagree, with conditions. Hogback is not a place that rewards showing up at noon in July. It is a place that rewards arriving before sunrise on a cool morning in mid-October, when the overnight air has pooled cold in the valley and the ridge is clear. The fog comes up gradually and then burns off, and there is a window of maybe forty minutes when the scene is genuinely extraordinary. The near ridgeline in silhouette, the valley invisible beneath white, Massanutten emerging from the far side like something surfacing. Sunset works too, though the fog show is the thing I keep returning for. Come in the week after peak foliage. The color is still there and the crowds have started to thin. Bring something long enough to pull Massanutten closer. And bring patience. This is not a view you photograph quickly and leave.

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