Best hiking trails near Scott Stadium in Charlottesville: a guide for Virginia football fans

Week 0 | NC State at Virginia | Saturday, Aug. 29 | Scott Stadium, Charlottesville, VA | 3:30 p.m. ET

Here's where to go - all within an hour of kickoff and none requiring a passport or conversational Portuguese.

10 minutes from Scott Stadium | Easy

If anyone in your group wants to actually tour the house, that's a separate ticket - $23 to $30 for adults, $10 for kids 5 to 11 - but the trail itself is free.

30 minutes from Scott Stadium | Easy

A change of pace from the usual mountain-view hike: a 4.6-mile out-and-back through an actual 1850s railroad tunnel carved straight through the mountain under Rockfish Gap. Bring a flashlight or headlamp - it gets really dark in there, and the temperature drops the deeper you go, which is an added bonus.

25 minutes from Scott Stadium | $30 per vehicle | Moderate

If you're only going to spend money on one thing this weekend besides the game, this is the one worth it. The Rockfish Gap entrance drops you right onto Skyline Drive, with two standout hikes an easy detour apart: Calvary and Chimney Rocks at milepost 90, a short trek out to a flat-topped rock overlook, and Turk Mountain at milepost 93.5, which delivers rock scrambles and real mountain views for the effort.

Being a national park, it will cost you an entry fee of $30 per vehicle, which is good for seven days.

35 minutes from Scott Stadium | Moderate

The pick if you're looking to do a little soaking. A 3-mile out-and-back from the Sugar Hollow parking area leads to the Blue Hole, a genuinely beautiful swimming hole on the Moormans River. This spot keeps showing up on the "best swimming holes in Virginia" lists for a reason. Bring water shoes; the rocks get slick.

If your crew wants more of a workout instead, a separate 4.6-mile route from the same lot heads out to Big Branch Falls through a shaded forest.

30 minutes from Scott Stadium | Moderate-strenuous

The payoff hike, and the one most worth setting an alarm for. It's a brutal, steep mile straight up, but the reward is a 360-degree view across the Shenandoah Valley and Blue Ridge that's tough to beat anywhere in the state. This is the one hike on the list with zero shade at the top, so this is the one to knock out at sunrise, not after brunch. Sunrise at Humpback is a bucket-list item for many UVA students.

60-75 minutes from Scott Stadium | $3 day-use fee | Moderate-strenuous

Crabtree Falls is a series of five major cascades tumbling a total of 1,200 feet down the mountainside. For context, that's taller than the Eiffel Tower. And the longest single cascade in that series drops 400 feet, enough to make Crabtree Falls the tallest single vertical-drop waterfall east of the Mississippi. The hike up alongside it is a 3-mile round trip with switchbacks and handrails at the steeper spots. It's genuinely one of the most photographed trails in Virginia.

The catch: this one runs 60 to 75 minutes from Scott Stadium depending on route and traffic. If you're rolling into Charlottesville just for the game, Crabtree probably isn't the move. But if you're making a weekend of it and have an extra day before or after, it's worth the drive.

We should probably also mention there's another Crabtree Falls off the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina. Make sure you're plugging the right one into your GPS.