PEMBROKE, Va. – Barney’s Wall and the Cascades is a 4 mile round trip hike that has mountain and waterfall views.
You’ll park off of Little Meadow road on VA-714. Full disclaimer, if you don’t have four wheel drive, you probably won’t make it up to this spot.
Walk up the road a few yards then the sign for the trail is on your left. The trail heads through lush greenery and then you’ll be met with a ’T’. Stay to to the right to go to Barney’s Wall
There’s a nice camp ground on your left, then after 3 quarters of a mile, you’ll arrive at the overlook. For a day that was supposed to storm, we got pretty lucky.
When you’re finished taking in the view, head back to the ’T’ intersection and stay to the right. This is the trail down to the cascades.
This trail is marked with yellow blazes. We went a few days after a storm, and the trail had a lot of downed trees. Just make sure to watch where you’re stepping!
The trail runs along a creek and you will have to cross it. A few paces later, I had a stark realization: the past 1 mile or so was all downhill, so the hike back up would be a tough one.
As I like to say, that, is a ‘Future Brooke problem’. Keep yours eyes out for another fallen tree, then you will arrive at an intersection.
Stay to the left. After a quarter mile or so, you will end up at another ’T’. I did not take my follow the yellow blaze advice, and we headed to a path to the left.
We could hear a waterfall so we assumed we were close. The path brought us to the top of what we thought were the falls, and had nice little wading pools.
Then we noticed the sky was turning a not so pretty color. I didn’t want to drive down that road in a storm so we went around one more bend in the trail and appeared at the top of a waterfall. Not the cascades, but definitely a pretty part of Little Stony Creek.
We decided to call it a day and do the Cascades another weekend and remember when I said the hike back was ‘Future Brooke’s problem?’ It was pretty steep. But we made it, and I would recommend this hike for sure, but maybe on a cooler day.