Grayson Highlands State Park & Mount Rogers Guide

This is the other pony herd — not the coastal ones from Chapter 1, but a shaggy band of feral ponies living on windswept alpine balds above 5,000 feet in Virginia’s far southwest. Grayson Highlands sits right against Mount Rogers, the state’s highest point at 5,729 feet, and the landscape up here looks nothing like the rest of Virginia: treeless grassy ridges, scattered boulders, and a herd of 120-plus ponies introduced in 1974 to graze the balds and keep the forest from swallowing them. The hike out to the ponies and toward Mount Rogers runs several miles over open highland with enormous views, and stretches of the Appalachian Trail thread right through. The ponies will walk right up to you — which is the danger, because they bite and kick and human snacks make them sick.