Reddish Knob sits on the boundary between Augusta County, Virginia, and Pendleton County, West Virginia, inside the George Washington National Forest. From its summit, water flows in three directions, all eventually reaching the Chesapeake Bay through different rivers. The northwest slope drains into Stony Run and the South Fork of the South Branch of the Potomac. The southern slope drains into the Little River, then the North River, then the South Fork of the Shenandoah, then the Potomac. The eastern slope drains into Briery Branch and the North River. Three watersheds meet here. A raindrop landing on this peak can join any of them depending on which side of a ridge it falls.

From the 1920s until 1975, a steel fire lookout tower stood on Reddish Knob's summit. Forest Service watchers spent fire seasons up there scanning the mountains with binoculars for the first wisp of smoke. The tower came down in the mid-1970s as the agency moved toward aerial surveillance and other detection methods. What remains is the bare summit clearing - a fortunate side effect of the tower's existence, since the keepers needed unobstructed sightlines. That clearing gives today's visitors the wraparound views. From the top you can see Massanutten Mountain to the east, the West Virginia Allegheny ridges to the west, and on clearest days the Blue Ridge running along the horizon.

Reddish Knob is the after-class destination for students at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Eastern Mennonite University, and Bridgewater College - all three campuses within easy driving range. The summit becomes a kind of social hub on warm weekends and on autumn nights when foliage peaks across the Appalachians. The pavement runs all the way up from Harrisonburg, weaving through forest before opening onto the bald. The Grindstone 100, a hundred-mile ultramarathon held in the surrounding forest, sends runners over Reddish Knob in the dark; many of the runners who reach the summit at 2 a.m. on race night describe seeing the entire Shenandoah Valley laid out below them as a low constellation of streetlights. The Jeremiah Bishop Alpine Loop Gran Fondo, a cycling event, climbs the dark side of the mountain on gravel forest roads, summits, then descends the paved access road back to Harrisonburg.

South of Reddish Knob along the ridge crest, a scenic gravel road follows the Virginia-West Virginia line. The Shenandoah Mountain Picnic Area sits a couple of miles down. Further south, the road enters the Ramsey's Draft Wilderness, where some of the central Appalachians' last old-growth hemlocks still stand. North of the summit, rougher forest roads access a series of grassy ridge-top balds with primitive campsites. Hone Quarry, a few miles down, has a developed picnic ground, a campground with widely spaced sites, and a small lake. The summit is an entrance, not an endpoint - the highest accessible point in a national forest that stretches for miles in every direction.