A picture of a mysterious mountain man with the Hoye Crest highpoint sign in the background.
Backbone Mountain was my second highpoint of the day as I had done Mount Davis (Pennsylvania) earlier in the day and was on my way to Spruce Knob (West Virginia) later on. I used US 219 South and parked at the entrance of the old logging road about a mile into West Virginia. This point was well-marked, ironically, with spraypaint on the trees. It was about a 90 minute drive from Mount Davis in Pennsylvania.
The roundtrip hike to the summit was about 2.2 miles. Slightly less than one mile is spent on the old logging road which is fairly steep. Once on top of the ridge, there is a 20-foot stretch of boulder-crossing that could be slippery in wet conditions. Fortunately, the area was bone dry on this day. The whole hike is forested, which makes for a cool hike. The temperature on this day was around 85, although it was probably 5 to 10 degrees cooler on the shaded hike. The roundtrip hike took a little more than an hour. There is a mailbox on the summit with a register and I discovered that someone had been there about two hours prior. The sign on the summit says "Hoye Crest" (I don't know why, but it probably is addressed on the sign - I didn't bother to read it).