McAfee Knob

The knob tops out at 3,197 feet, and the rock that makes it famous is a hard band of sandstone that has resisted the weather while softer stone eroded away beneath it, leaving a cantilevered shelf that projects out into empty space. From that shelf the view runs a full two hundred and seventy degrees: the green trough of the Catawba Valley directly below, the long wall of North Mountain across the way, the jagged line of Tinker Cliffs to the north, and the Roanoke Valley off to the south and east.

It is the shape of the rock, more than the height, that draws people. The flat outcrop reads almost like a diving board over the landscape, and generation after generation of hikers has posed on its edge, so that the McAfee Knob silhouette has become one of the most recognizable images in American backpacking. It is the spot people mean when they picture the Appalachian Trail.

The knob carries the name of James McAfee, a Scots-Irish immigrant who settled in the Catawba Valley in the late 1730s, generations before the footpath that made his mountain famous. That footpath was not always meant to pass here. When Myron Avery, the tireless builder who laid out much of the early Appalachian Trail, drew the route through this part of Virginia, his plan sent it along the Blue Ridge crest on the far side of Roanoke.

Local hikers thought that was a mistake, and they were right. The newly formed Roanoke Appalachian Trail Club lobbied Avery to swing the route fifteen miles west to take in McAfee Knob and its neighboring cliffs, and in 1933 he agreed and helped oversee construction of the rerouted trail. That decision handed the AT one of its signature views. Decades later the knob reached a wider audience still when it appeared in the film made from Bill Bryson's hiking memoir, and visitor numbers climbed accordingly.

Almost everyone starts from the parking area on Route 311 where the Appalachian Trail crosses the road at Catawba. From there the white-blazed AT climbs Catawba Mountain, gaining about seventeen hundred feet over roughly four and a half miles to the summit, a moderate but honest workout that most reasonably fit walkers finish in a couple of hours. A parallel blue-blazed fire road offers a gentler, less scenic alternative for part of the way. Round trip runs close to nine miles, so plan on the better part of a half day.

The trail rewards you before the top, passing rock outcrops and viewpoints and a stone shelter, but the payoff is that final rise where the forest thins and the great flat ledge comes into view against open sky. Sunrise and sunset are the magic hours, when the ridges layer into blue and the valley glows or fills with cloud, though those hours also mean hiking in the dark with a headlamp. There is no railing and a serious drop, so enjoy the edge with real caution, keep children close, and give the view the time it deserves before turning back down the mountain.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.