I woke up in the hotel and felt good.
Not just okay-good. Genuinely good. No heaviness, no soreness radiating up from my feet, no dread about what my body owed me for the previous day’s punishment. After Bearfence Mountain and Dark Hollow Falls back to back, I had braced myself for a rough morning. Instead I felt like I’d actually recovered. Like something in me was adapting.
My daughter was still asleep. I lay there thinking: if she wakes up feeling as good as I do, we are not done with this trip yet.
The Devil’s Bathtub Trail in Virginia had been sitting in the back of my mind since March, when Christine and I were trading ideas for things to do during her work trip here. The weather was uncooperative then. But lying in that hotel bed, I realized something: we were already halfway there. The drive from Hampton Roads is eight or nine hours — not a casual weekend trip under normal circumstances. But we weren’t home. We were already four hours closer than usual.
My daughter woke up on her own right as I was pulling up the trail details. I whispered good morning and asked how she felt — tired, achy, fine? She said fine. Normal. I asked if she wanted to extend the adventure one more day. I had vacation time banked at work. She said sure.
That’s it. That’s the whole decision-making process. We pointed the truck west and went looking for the Devil’s Bathtub.
A Warning Before You Go
Download your offline maps before you get anywhere close to this trail. I cannot stress this enough. We lost cell signal a full hour before we were supposed to arrive, and Devil’s Bathtub Trail sits in some of the most genuinely remote backcountry I’ve driven through in Virginia. Beautiful homesteads and farms dot the route, but at one point I turned to my daughter and asked, completely sincerely, “How do people live without cell phones out here?” LOL. The internet and cell phones didn’t even become a thing until I was like 20. They’re so commonplace now that it’s hard to imagine life without these things anymore.
We eventually found a convenience store about thirty minutes out with weak but present wifi. We sat in the parking lot for twenty minutes coaxing Google Maps to load, took screenshots of the directions, and finally continued on with something resembling confidence.
Even the parking situation has a learning curve. There’s a gravel lot with a sign for Devil’s Bathtub parking and a general trail map — but nothing tells you that you’re still over a mile from the actual trailhead, or how to get there. Two hikers coming off the trail took pity on us and explained: keep driving down the road, take the next left, and walk down that road to a small dirt lot at the real trailhead. Note also — the road to the small lot and trailhead has some genuinely large potholes, so take it slow or stop and park at the nicer gravel lot.
The Hike In
Once you actually reach the trailhead, the trail starts with a short, steep climb up and over a hill before settling into more moderate terrain. The path itself is technically dirt, but it’s studded with embedded stones you cannot avoid stepping on — and after the previous day’s punishment, my feet noticed every single one. By the time we were closing in on the Bathtub, the soles of my feet had clear and specific opinions about my life choices.
But the beauty made up for it completely. We followed Devil’s Fork creek almost the entire way in — water so clear it barely seemed real, boulders scattered through the streambed, foam and cascades catching the light. As we got closer, the water started taking on tinges of green and blue so vivid it looked artificial, like something you’d see in a chlorinated pool rather than backcountry Virginia. That was just the preview.
We crossed somewhere around seven or eight streams on the way in — the trail data suggests up to twelve or thirteen total depending on water levels and route — and most of them required real thought. Dispersed boulders, slick algae, moving water. We laughed at ourselves constantly trying to figure out the best path across without soaking our shoes. I’d just recently bought my La Sportiva Prodigio Max trail runners and was not emotionally prepared to baptize them in a Virginia creek yet.
A genuinely useful tip here: bring trekking poles if you have them. My daughter and I both ended up scavenging sticks off the ground to use as makeshift balance poles for the crossings, and it made a real difference. Also — please, for the love of your ankles, do not attempt this trail in flip flops, sandals, or anything Crocs-adjacent. The terrain is no joke and several sections demand real footwear with grip.
If it’s been raining heavily before your trip, wait. The deeper crossings already carry a noticeable current at normal levels; after rain, depth and force both increase significantly, and this is not a trail where you want to gamble on that.
Near the two-mile mark there are narrow, exposed ledges along the gorge with fixed hand-ropes to help with balance — a small reminder that this is genuinely backcountry terrain, not a manicured park trail.
The Payoff
When we finally reached the Devil’s Bathtub itself, we just stood there for a minute, stunned.
The pool is a natural sandstone formation, roughly twenty feet long and twelve feet deep, carved over countless years by the relentless work of Devil’s Fork creek. The blue and green hues are not a trick of the camera — they’re real, and they come from a combination of algae coating the smooth sandstone bottom, which absorbs red and yellow light while reflecting green, and the way sunlight scatters through ten to twelve feet of exceptionally clear, cold water, shifting the deeper sections toward a vivid aquamarine and blue. The whole basin stays shaded by dense forest and runs consistently between 60 and 65 degrees year-round, which keeps the water free of the murky sediment that would otherwise dull the color.
It looks like someone scooped a swimming pool directly out of the sandstone and turned on a hose at the far end to fill it. The exposed rock layers reminded me of formations I’d only seen before in caverns. A small tiered waterfall feeds the pool continuously at one end.
A handful of kids and young guys in their early twenties were jumping in, shrieking at the cold, daring each other to do it again. I knew better than to join them — that water is no joke — but I loved watching them. There’s a fearlessness at that age, a willingness to just leap, that I find myself genuinely admiring now in a way I don’t think I appreciated when I had it myself. I don’t know exactly when we lose that instinct, or whether it’s possible to get any of it back. I suspect the JMT is going to teach me something about that question.
There’s actually a fitting bit of local lore behind the name. According to Scott County tourism, it’s called the Devil’s Bathtub because the water here is supposedly the only water cold enough to squelch the fires of hell. Standing at the edge of that pool, I believed it.
The Way Out
We chose to make this an out-and-back rather than extending into the longer Devil’s Fork Loop — a decision my feet fully endorsed by that point. The walk out was at least downhill the whole way, which felt like a small mercy, though by the final stretch my feet were begging me to send my daughter ahead for the car while I waited at the trailhead. I told them to stop being so dramatic. We finished together.
This was, hands down, the most beautiful and picturesque hike of the entire trip. Bearfence Rock Scramble was probably the most fun. But Devil’s Bathtub was the one that left me a little stunned, the kind of place that makes you understand why people drive eight hours out of their way for it.
We drove a couple of hours that evening — somewhere around Charlottesville — found a hotel, got dinner at the worst Mexican restaurant in Virginia, and collapsed. The whole day ran from six in the morning until nearly ten at night by the time we were finally settled. Worth every minute of it.
My daughter and I had so much fun on this hike. I’d do it again without hesitation. And next time, my feet will be wearing my Topo Vistas to combat the technical terrain. Lesson learned, expensively, by my soles.
— Barbara