By:
Submission
Water at the shelter was flowing really slowly when we were there. Room for 6-8 tents if necessary. Shelter sleeps 6.
Nice little shelter with picnic table and privy and a place for a fire. They recently had cut down some trees around the shelter, so not sure why or what will come of the felled trees. As with many shelters on the AT, it can be crowded depending on the time of year.
Cool shelter. Passed by it but didn't stop. It is much newer than the Catawba shelter further north towards McAfee Knob. Only a mile in from 311, and plenty of tent sites. Privy is close by. A HUGE tree has fallen next to the privy. Would not have wanted to be in there when that thing hit the ground.
We stayed at this shelter on Friday, May 14th, 2021. The shelter is pretty new. We liked the shelter. It really needs a bear box to store your food. We saw bear skat just a few miles away. That night we searched for a long time to find a tree to hang our food. We didn't really find any good trees, so we did the best we could. We liked that it had a privy (outhouse/restroom). The other issue we had was that we had a lot of visitors throughout the night that kept waking us up. We had a couple come in at 10:00 PM, setup a tent and then break down and leave at 3:00 AM. Then we had people going up to see the sunrise at 5:00 AM wake us up again with kids shouting and laughing. Just be aware that this site will have a lot of traffic due to the close proximity of the parking lot for McAfee Knob.
Shelter is almost brand I went on a weekday. There was nobody around pitched my tent right in the shelter. McAfee is nice, but I like tinker cliffs better.
There are several paths that allow you to check out the boulders that are at the bottom of the cliffs definitely worth crawling around in and checking out while the snakes are asleep. Short, drive up 311. You can park at the dragon's tooth parking lot. 2 and a 1/2 mile walk up to dragon's tooth. It is really nice too. They are after all the big three in virginia dragons tooth Tinkere cliffs and mccaffe
