Turk Mountain

I had done hike on Turk Mountain on 2nd May March 2015 . It is located in Virginia State near Shenandoah National Park.
Hike Location
Name: Turk Mountain
Distance: 95 miles from Richmond(approx)
Total hiking distance: 10.3 miles(approx).
Altitude: 5440 ft.
Hike Team: Rajtilak, Rohit, Sujay, Vaibhav and me.
Hiking Experience: Started around 7:00 am from our place and picked up Sujay from his place around 7:18 am and left for our destination(Jarman Gap).  We took a halt at Starbucks around 8:12 am , had coffee and home made breakfast. Around 8:45 am we started from Starbucks. We reached the destination parking spot around 9:28 am. There were few cars parked and met group of 10-15 fellow hikers at the parking who were also ready for hike. It was a bright sunny day with cool breeze. we had map with us for the trail. We started along the yellow blazed trail down the hill. In 0.2 miles we came to an intersection with Appalachian Trail(A.T.),a white blazed Trail and continued our hike on yellow blazed trail. The trail is wider, wet and surrounded by huge trees. There was a river stream along the side of the trail which we crossed multiple times. It was a down trail. Soon in around 35 mins we reached an intersection with Turk Branch trail.

We followed the turk branch trail(yellow blazed). The trail is wide and gradually the steep of the trail increased. Due to tall trees surrounding the trail, we have not felt the intense sun heat. The slope started increasing more and more. We crossed small streams along the path. Due to hot summer the water level was low. There was no breeze while hiking along the trail. We reached turk branch parking where we saw few hikers cars being parked. We crossed the parking and followed A.T. The A.T. was downhill and soon we reached an intersection with Turk Mountain Trail. We followed the Turk Mountain Trail(blue blazed Trail) to enjoy the good scenic view of Shenandoah region. The trail is little narrow and was downhill initially. Slowly the steep increased and it was very steep towards the end with lot of stones on the trail and not much trees along the trail. With Sun almost above the head and scorching heat it became much more harder to continue along the trail. We reached the top of the turk Mountain and view of Shenandoah from the top is fabulous. Cool breeze was flowing and we sat at the rock patches on the top and enjoyed the view. We retraced the trail back to the intersection with A.T.

We continued our trail on A.T. and looked for a decent place to have lunch. Around 12:25 pm we sat for lunch. Had delicious home made food, brought and shared by all. We had lunch by 12:55 pm and continued for rest of the hike. It was downhill all along the trail and with huge tall trees on both sides of the trail, we had lots of shade. We reached main road after hiking around 1.4 miles. We continued on A.T. The trail was downhill initially, then the slope of the trail increased gradually. The trail was narrow and almost like we were passing through middle of the jungle. we traversed through the mountain along the trail. We reached the intersection which we have come across during start of the hike. we followed the yellow blazed trail(which was uphill) and reached our parking spot by 1:52 pm. We did some stretching and left for home. Reached home by 3:50 pm. Overall it was a very good hike and memorable one. All is well.