Mount Rogers

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Coordinates: 36°39′35″N 81°32′41″W / 36.65972, -81.54472

Mount Rogers
Summit
Mount Rogers in winter
Country	United States
State	Virginia
Counties	Grayson, Smyth

Range	Blue Ridge Mountains

Elevation	5,729 ft (1,746.2 m)
Prominence	2,469 ft (752.6 m) ^[1]
Coordinates	36°39′35″N 81°32′41″W / 36.65972, -81.54472

Management	George Washington and Jefferson National Forests
Owner	USDA Forest Service

Easiest access	hike via Appalachian Trail spur

Topo map	USGS Whitetop Mountain

Nearest city	Abingdon, Virginia

Location of Mount Rogers in Virginia
Website: Mount Rogers National Recreation Area

Mount Rogers is the highest point in the state of Virginia, USA, with a summit elevation of 5,729 feet (1,746 m) above mean sea level. It is in Grayson County, about 6.45 miles WSW of Troutdale, Virginia, within the Mount Rogers National Recreation Area.

The summit is most easily accessed from Grayson Highlands State Park using a well marked trail system. It is covered by trees and marked with a National Geodetic Survey triangulation station disk. The Appalachian Trail passes right beneath the summit and thus the area is especially popular with hikers.

The Mount Rogers area contains a unique record of the geohistory of Virginia. There is evidence from the rocks that volcanoes were part of the landscape, but not for about 200 million years. Roughly 750 million years ago, rift-related (divergent) volcanoes erupted along the axis of what later became the Appalachians, and one remnant of that volcanic zone, with its volcanic rocks, still can be seen at Mount Rogers. Massive rhyolite lava flows erupted at the mountain during the Precambrian rifting event. Mount Rogers is also the only place in Virginia that preserves evidence of ancient glaciation.^{[citation needed]}

U.S. Coast & Geodetic Survey marker planted in rock at the summit of Mount Rogers

[edit] Global Warming Controversy

Mount Rogers is one of the many homes to the high-altitude Spruce-Fir forests in the Appalachian Mountains. The cold temperature of the high mountain supplied a perfect climate for these trees. In recent years temperatures have been above average in the Appalachian region, even having record highs broken frequently. The heat combined with longer dryer summers have caused the Spruce-Fir forest to begin to die. Scientist believe if the warming trend continues and the forests are depleted it will endanger and even cause extinction to animals in the area that rely on these forests, such as the Northern Flying squirrel (Glaucomys sabrinus) and the spruce-fir moss spider (Microhexura montivaga).

It is more widely accepted that the conifer decline on and around Mount Rogers is the effect of Acid-rain and parasites.