We Stumbled Into Damascus — and an Ultra Marathon
We Stumbled Into Damascus — and an Ultra Marathon
This was not a planned stop.
We were on a road trip from Texas to Maryland to see my father. The plan — loose as it was — was to drive along the Appalachian Mountains and hit the Appalachian Trail wherever the road offered a chance. The AT runs the spine of the East, and if you’re making that drive anyway, why not use it.
Damascus, Virginia happened by accident.
The Turn We Made
We came into Damascus the way most people probably do the first time: without quite knowing what they’re walking into. We had the dogs with us. We were not planning anything in particular beyond the drive.
Then we turned a corner and there was an ultra marathon.
Not a road race. Not a 5K with a finish line banner and a DJ. The Yeti Running Group — a legit ultra running crew out of this corner of southwest Virginia — had a race going through the trails around Damascus. Runners moving through town, crew vehicles parked along the street, the particular energy of race day when the people doing the suffering somehow look like they’re having the best time.
We were absolutely not registered. We had dogs. We had zero equipment for entering a race.
We joined the energy anyway.
We spent time there watching runners come through, cheering for strangers, letting the dogs absorb the chaos. It was one of those accidental afternoons that ends up being the thing you remember from a trip.
Then we found out that friends from our tiny corner of Texas were actually in the race.
Small world doesn’t begin to cover it. You drive from coastal bend of Texas to southwest Virginia and stumble into an ultra marathon that contains people from your own neighborhood. The trail running community is small and it is everywhere.
The White Blaze on the Building
The AT is marked by white blazes — two-by-six inch white rectangles painted on trees, posts, and rocks every few hundred feet for the entire 2,190-mile length of the trail. If you’ve hiked any piece of the AT, you know the blaze.
Damascus is one of the few places where the white blaze is on a building.
The Appalachian Trail runs directly through downtown Damascus. Not near it. Through it. Down the street. The white blaze is on one of the buildings because that’s where the trail goes. It cracked me up the first time I saw it — you’re looking for the trail marker and it’s on a wall in the middle of a town.
It’s called Trail Town USA for good reason. This is the rare place where the trail is the town, not something you drive to outside of it.
The Virginia Creeper and Abingdon
The Virginia Creeper Trail runs out of Damascus toward Abingdon — 34 miles along the old railroad grade, following the creek through the mountains. The trestles are the feature: old railroad bridges, some of them high above the water, now carrying hikers and cyclists instead of coal.
Abingdon is the other end of the Creeper, and it’s worth the stop on its own. Small Virginia town, historic district, the kind of Main Street that looks like the set of a Hallmark movie in the best possible way — old brick buildings, restaurants that have been there for decades, no chain restaurants in sight. We fell in love with it immediately. The combination of Damascus and Abingdon makes for a complete trip: trail town at one end, charming small city at the other, 34 miles of excellent trail in between.
We’ll Be Back
We did not run the Yeti race that day. We were unprepared, we had dogs, and we had Maryland waiting at the other end of the drive.
But you don’t stumble into a place like Damascus — into the AT running through the middle of it, into an ultra marathon you didn’t know existed, into finding friends from home at the starting line — and not make a mental note.
We’re going back to run Damascus. That’s decided.
The Appalachian Trail runs through Damascus going both ways — find trail camping near the AT → and plan your own version of this accidental stop.
