Washington County Highpoint Trip Report

Buffalo Mtn (3,520+ ft)

Date: April 28, 2006
Author: Patrick Craft

My son and I planned to summit Buffalo Mountain after climbing Roan Mountain. I followed Ken Oeser’s directions and my DeLorme Atlas. I missed the turn on Dry Creek and approached from the south (which was good as I was running out of gas and a gas station was in Garber). The road in is about 2.5 miles when it hits the T, at the crossing of Briar Creek. I tried to drive my low-riding Passat past the T but I kept scraping and turned around.

We did walk down the Forest Service road to the right a little and found a family walking out with collected grape vine and talked about the summit. We walked back to the car and struck up the ridge. The woods were open, unfortunately the ridge had been subject to a prescribed burn, so we subjected ourselves to the second burned ridge walk in 4 months (the other was Holsten Mountain). It appears the west mountain between the lower road and the ridgeline has been burned.

Eventually we made the road on the ridge, about 0.25 mile from the tower and walked to the summit. The gate was open and we had a great view to the east. I considered climbing the tower but thought the wiser. We decided to return by the road rather than subject ourselves to more ashes. We made the car in round trip 2 hours and 50 minutes. I estimated we walked 6 miles. The Forest Service access road is 1.9 miles south of the gap on Dry Creek road and exactly 12.3 miles from the Dairy Queen on Roan Street in Johnson City.