Blue Ridge Gazette: Trails: A Public Meeting in Vinton

If you live in the Vinton area, in the Roanoke Valley of Virginia and are interested in hiking, you may want to attend a public meeting at the Charles Hill Senior Center on January 26 at 7pm. The meeting is being held to determine the level of interest, from the public, in a series of trails that could eventually be accessed from the Vinton area; trails along the parkway that could be tied in to existing paths like the Wolf Creek Greenway.

"We have worked with the Blue Ridge Parkway on the development of their trail plan," said Roanoke Valley Greenways Coordinator Liz Belcher last week, "because we wanted to be sure that the greenways would be allowed to connect to the Parkway trails." A variety of Blue Ridge Parkway trails from the Stewarts Knob overlook to US 220 have been cataloged and reviewed by various groups and consultants over the past few years, including horse trails that could be improved and open to other groups. "They always intended for it to be one long trail," said Belcher.

Eventually she said Mill Mountain trails should connect to paths along the parkway for a long continuous loop. Belcher described one trail that could now be taken from the Mill Mountain Greenway that winds up from downtown Roanoke along Prospect Road to one near the Discovery Center on Mill Mountain, to Yellow Mountain Road and the Chestnut Ridge Trail and then to a Park Service horse trail that winds up now at Rutrough Road. It could even go further if all of the loose ends are tied together, connecting it to another trail on the north side of the Roanoke River that heads to Stewarts Knob.