dom15931
New member
Having done a lot of hiking in the Northeast I have recently begun discovering what lays south of western Pennsylvania to curb my tendency really want to take 10 hour drives up to the Dacks, Greens, and Whites every time I get a few days off work! 
This trip report hits a lot of places of interest in West Virginia and I have a link to hundreds of photos for anyone who is curious about this surprisingly interesting area. My girlfriend, Meghan, and I were down there from Friday afternoon 10-12-07 to Sunday evening 10-14-07.
Friday:
We left for West Virginia at about 1:50 in the afternoon. Fall had finally begun in PA and the forecast was looking good for WV. When we arrived in WV I couldn’t pass up stopping in at the Blackwater Brewing Company for a few tasty brews. It is in Davis, WV. The beer is made, literally, behind the counter here and the steaks are great. There is another great brewery 2 miles back up rte32 in Thomas, WV also.
After a good meal we went over to Blackwater Canyon and Falls, only a mile or so from the Brewing Co. The water levels were low. This was my third time seeing them and always at different water levels and as alway were beautiful. There is a 'thousand stair-staircase down' to the falls that is a workout after a big meal. We scurried over to the canyon overlook at dusk and just made it, but the pics are a bit dark here.
We figured we would get a motel adj to the brewery right there and call it a night. But ‘$88 bucks and problems with the heating system’ turned us off to it, so we drove down to Elkins, WV about 45 minutes south. Elkins is the big ‘mountain town’ down there and like a gateway city to the Allegheny’s and the recreational areas. The college was having homecoming! Some how we managed to get a room, which was, honestly, the nicest-dollar-for-dollar room I had ever seen for 63 dollars tax and all on the weekend. The Elkins Motor Lodge…highly recommended. The bathrooms have phones and bottle openers in reach of the toilet, a very peculiar setup indeed. After getting our room we went downtown to check out a ‘townie’ bar. We hit gold with the Jabberwalk. It was interesting enough of a bar, with local beers on tap, to make us buy t-shirts.
Saturday: This too was more of a road-trip/semi-hike day, but provided for some of the nicest photography in all of my travels.
First we went to Dolly Sods. In WV there is a lot of surface area that is over 4000 ft. There are crude roads that ascend this plateau. It is a high elevation near-treeline plateau at the edge of the Allegheny Front that was created by excessive logging that allowed for the burning and then rapid washing away of approx 8 foot of humus of what was once a nearly temperate rain forest of red spruce, so the literature says. It, like the mountains in the NE, experiences high winds and ferocious cold in the winter. This in combination with the now missing soil creates a difficult living environment. It will be eons before the forests return. There are, so I hear, some small tracts left. Elevations in the Sods range from approx 3900ft to 4500 ft roughly.
I had been here several times before. Unfortunately we missed the ‘peak foliage’ by a few days. (didn’t last year!) The, weather however was great. Looking around the area is reminiscent of a sub-arctic environment, but it exists because of the harsh conditions from the aforementioned excessive logging long ago. That aside, the place is amazing and quite expansive, being loaded with boldering opportunities, wildlife observation, and an expansive backcountry experience. I managed to mangle some boulders to get to an outcropping ’island’ at Bear Rocks, which is a short hike from the road. The area was as crowded as I had ever seen it.
We ate lunch at a nice old-time restaurant above Harper’s Country Store and headed for Spruce Knob, the state highpoint. We took a little tangent side trip up a road leading to a vista on the adjacent North Fork Mountain, an Appalachian. They rise immediately to the east of the plateau to elevations exceeding 4000 feet in places. Untouched by the last ice age, they have more of a ’fishbone’ appearance and do not have well defined summits, instead long ridgelines. Driving up allowed for quick views back at the plateau, where the highpoint is. North Fork mountain has a trail that is supposedly quite awesome along its ridgeline. There are numerous cliff faces along the mountain. These are visible in the pics from the plateau and I will do the trail someday. We took a few pics and headed for the highpoint.
It is almost a complete drive up also, but there is a loop trail around the summit and an observation tower and a grassy bald with some large boulders also worth checking out. The spruce here remind me more of the NE, they are stunted, huddled together and very thick. The tranny in the car was sick of 'hiking' so we did some exploring. This place was loaded with people, I am thinking a college trip or something was up there. The summit observation tower is nice, but the views on the south side of the mountain provide for, in my opinion, some of the nicest views in the Eastern US because of the grassy bald area with its complete lack of trees and the presence of several large boulders. The Appalachians look so impressive from here and the farms creeping up from the valley are a sight to see. My fourth time here, and finally, I get to see what the views are really like without fog. We took pics till the sun set.
The motel room we ended up with for the night was cheap also, but the heat was down and so was the hot water….ughhhh. Not much choice on a booked weekend.
Sunday: Some real hikes!
Seneca Rocks…the rock climbing Mecca of the east. You can ascend to the sheer cliffs from a 1.5 mile switch-backing trail on the NW side of the mountain. We set out at about 8:30 or so…a little later than I had hoped, but early enough to beat the crowds and late enough to avoid the chill. The trail is in very good shape and well maintained. It is easy hiking and has an elevation gain of 1000’ feet and ends with an observation deck. What lays beyond is one of the most impressive physical features this side of the Mississippi. Seneca Rocks, an exposed chunk of Tucadora sandstone rising near vertically and very narrow hundreds of feet from the valley floor. There is a warning sign about the cliffs and the dangerous terrain ahead. Here you can fall hundreds of feet if you are not careful. Many folks learn to repel at the start of the cliffs and the climbing school was up there with some trainees. I really need to take the class sometime.
This place brings out the fear of heights, if it’s in you , better than the knife edge on Katahdin or the Huntington Ravine on Washington in my opinion because of the true near-vertical almost certainly fatal falls you will be only inches from. It’s a real gut check. My third time here I definitely have little skittishness left in me about heights. I used to get a little anxious around free fall type areas, namely here the previous two times. Climbing up the Trap Dyke in the Dacks didn’t bother me, but Giant’s Eagle Slide did unnerve me a bit, thought beating it is probably what took what little fear of heights I had out of me. (that and the fact that I decided on no rock shoes for the day…dumb move) We ventured out as far as you could ‘safely go with extreme caution’ without technical equipment. There are a lot of holds on the ’fins’ of the rock formation, so with careful footing, hand hold choice, and concentration it is possible to go quite a ways. I will mark the position on a photo from the mountains base and post it up. Also worth checking out are some of the photos I have of a climber on the eastern ‘fin’ of the mountain. These areas are only accessible by rock climbing. Must have been amazing. The weather was so perfect and our pics came out great because of it. On the way down we noticed horses tied before the cliffs. That would be an interesting way to visit for sure too.
We headed down the mountain and headed for the Olsen Fire Tower, something I had been wanting to experience for like a year and a half. We stopped in Canaan Valley, a big ski area, for pizza and child-like fun playing ski-bowl
The Olsen tower is located off US 219 between Davis and Parsons and is the highest tower I have ever climbed. (I estimate approx 100 ft+) Definitely higher than the fire tower on top of Hunter Mtn. in the Catskills. It is like a best-kept-secret because it seems so few people know of it as evidence by the scarcity of pics on Webshots and the fact that we were the only people there on a beautiful fall weekend day at 1pm. And there is a national forest road that leads right too it. Its elevation is approx 3500 ft. We took pics from the tower and then did a 6+ mile hike through the national forest on a nearby trail that is close to the canyon wall of the Blackwater River. It was peaceful and an interesting walk for sure, with gradual ups and downs and a well blazed out and maintained trail. The laurels and rhododendrons were as thick as the black spruce are in the NE at similar elevations. I can’t even imagine bushwhacking through them. Near 3300 feet and above there is a heavy mix of conifers in with the forest, but not thick like in the NE. There were many rock formations, but not many views with most of the leaves still on the trees. We would have had to have ventured further down the Canyon Rim Road (a dirt jeep trail part of our loop) to see some real views, but alas, we were out of time.
Enjoy the numerous photos...link:
http://community.webshots.com/user/dom15931
The newest six albums are from this trip.
Dom
This trip report hits a lot of places of interest in West Virginia and I have a link to hundreds of photos for anyone who is curious about this surprisingly interesting area. My girlfriend, Meghan, and I were down there from Friday afternoon 10-12-07 to Sunday evening 10-14-07.
Friday:
We left for West Virginia at about 1:50 in the afternoon. Fall had finally begun in PA and the forecast was looking good for WV. When we arrived in WV I couldn’t pass up stopping in at the Blackwater Brewing Company for a few tasty brews. It is in Davis, WV. The beer is made, literally, behind the counter here and the steaks are great. There is another great brewery 2 miles back up rte32 in Thomas, WV also.
After a good meal we went over to Blackwater Canyon and Falls, only a mile or so from the Brewing Co. The water levels were low. This was my third time seeing them and always at different water levels and as alway were beautiful. There is a 'thousand stair-staircase down' to the falls that is a workout after a big meal. We scurried over to the canyon overlook at dusk and just made it, but the pics are a bit dark here.
We figured we would get a motel adj to the brewery right there and call it a night. But ‘$88 bucks and problems with the heating system’ turned us off to it, so we drove down to Elkins, WV about 45 minutes south. Elkins is the big ‘mountain town’ down there and like a gateway city to the Allegheny’s and the recreational areas. The college was having homecoming! Some how we managed to get a room, which was, honestly, the nicest-dollar-for-dollar room I had ever seen for 63 dollars tax and all on the weekend. The Elkins Motor Lodge…highly recommended. The bathrooms have phones and bottle openers in reach of the toilet, a very peculiar setup indeed. After getting our room we went downtown to check out a ‘townie’ bar. We hit gold with the Jabberwalk. It was interesting enough of a bar, with local beers on tap, to make us buy t-shirts.
Saturday: This too was more of a road-trip/semi-hike day, but provided for some of the nicest photography in all of my travels.
First we went to Dolly Sods. In WV there is a lot of surface area that is over 4000 ft. There are crude roads that ascend this plateau. It is a high elevation near-treeline plateau at the edge of the Allegheny Front that was created by excessive logging that allowed for the burning and then rapid washing away of approx 8 foot of humus of what was once a nearly temperate rain forest of red spruce, so the literature says. It, like the mountains in the NE, experiences high winds and ferocious cold in the winter. This in combination with the now missing soil creates a difficult living environment. It will be eons before the forests return. There are, so I hear, some small tracts left. Elevations in the Sods range from approx 3900ft to 4500 ft roughly.
I had been here several times before. Unfortunately we missed the ‘peak foliage’ by a few days. (didn’t last year!) The, weather however was great. Looking around the area is reminiscent of a sub-arctic environment, but it exists because of the harsh conditions from the aforementioned excessive logging long ago. That aside, the place is amazing and quite expansive, being loaded with boldering opportunities, wildlife observation, and an expansive backcountry experience. I managed to mangle some boulders to get to an outcropping ’island’ at Bear Rocks, which is a short hike from the road. The area was as crowded as I had ever seen it.
We ate lunch at a nice old-time restaurant above Harper’s Country Store and headed for Spruce Knob, the state highpoint. We took a little tangent side trip up a road leading to a vista on the adjacent North Fork Mountain, an Appalachian. They rise immediately to the east of the plateau to elevations exceeding 4000 feet in places. Untouched by the last ice age, they have more of a ’fishbone’ appearance and do not have well defined summits, instead long ridgelines. Driving up allowed for quick views back at the plateau, where the highpoint is. North Fork mountain has a trail that is supposedly quite awesome along its ridgeline. There are numerous cliff faces along the mountain. These are visible in the pics from the plateau and I will do the trail someday. We took a few pics and headed for the highpoint.
It is almost a complete drive up also, but there is a loop trail around the summit and an observation tower and a grassy bald with some large boulders also worth checking out. The spruce here remind me more of the NE, they are stunted, huddled together and very thick. The tranny in the car was sick of 'hiking' so we did some exploring. This place was loaded with people, I am thinking a college trip or something was up there. The summit observation tower is nice, but the views on the south side of the mountain provide for, in my opinion, some of the nicest views in the Eastern US because of the grassy bald area with its complete lack of trees and the presence of several large boulders. The Appalachians look so impressive from here and the farms creeping up from the valley are a sight to see. My fourth time here, and finally, I get to see what the views are really like without fog. We took pics till the sun set.
The motel room we ended up with for the night was cheap also, but the heat was down and so was the hot water….ughhhh. Not much choice on a booked weekend.
Sunday: Some real hikes!
Seneca Rocks…the rock climbing Mecca of the east. You can ascend to the sheer cliffs from a 1.5 mile switch-backing trail on the NW side of the mountain. We set out at about 8:30 or so…a little later than I had hoped, but early enough to beat the crowds and late enough to avoid the chill. The trail is in very good shape and well maintained. It is easy hiking and has an elevation gain of 1000’ feet and ends with an observation deck. What lays beyond is one of the most impressive physical features this side of the Mississippi. Seneca Rocks, an exposed chunk of Tucadora sandstone rising near vertically and very narrow hundreds of feet from the valley floor. There is a warning sign about the cliffs and the dangerous terrain ahead. Here you can fall hundreds of feet if you are not careful. Many folks learn to repel at the start of the cliffs and the climbing school was up there with some trainees. I really need to take the class sometime.
This place brings out the fear of heights, if it’s in you , better than the knife edge on Katahdin or the Huntington Ravine on Washington in my opinion because of the true near-vertical almost certainly fatal falls you will be only inches from. It’s a real gut check. My third time here I definitely have little skittishness left in me about heights. I used to get a little anxious around free fall type areas, namely here the previous two times. Climbing up the Trap Dyke in the Dacks didn’t bother me, but Giant’s Eagle Slide did unnerve me a bit, thought beating it is probably what took what little fear of heights I had out of me. (that and the fact that I decided on no rock shoes for the day…dumb move) We ventured out as far as you could ‘safely go with extreme caution’ without technical equipment. There are a lot of holds on the ’fins’ of the rock formation, so with careful footing, hand hold choice, and concentration it is possible to go quite a ways. I will mark the position on a photo from the mountains base and post it up. Also worth checking out are some of the photos I have of a climber on the eastern ‘fin’ of the mountain. These areas are only accessible by rock climbing. Must have been amazing. The weather was so perfect and our pics came out great because of it. On the way down we noticed horses tied before the cliffs. That would be an interesting way to visit for sure too.
We headed down the mountain and headed for the Olsen Fire Tower, something I had been wanting to experience for like a year and a half. We stopped in Canaan Valley, a big ski area, for pizza and child-like fun playing ski-bowl
The Olsen tower is located off US 219 between Davis and Parsons and is the highest tower I have ever climbed. (I estimate approx 100 ft+) Definitely higher than the fire tower on top of Hunter Mtn. in the Catskills. It is like a best-kept-secret because it seems so few people know of it as evidence by the scarcity of pics on Webshots and the fact that we were the only people there on a beautiful fall weekend day at 1pm. And there is a national forest road that leads right too it. Its elevation is approx 3500 ft. We took pics from the tower and then did a 6+ mile hike through the national forest on a nearby trail that is close to the canyon wall of the Blackwater River. It was peaceful and an interesting walk for sure, with gradual ups and downs and a well blazed out and maintained trail. The laurels and rhododendrons were as thick as the black spruce are in the NE at similar elevations. I can’t even imagine bushwhacking through them. Near 3300 feet and above there is a heavy mix of conifers in with the forest, but not thick like in the NE. There were many rock formations, but not many views with most of the leaves still on the trees. We would have had to have ventured further down the Canyon Rim Road (a dirt jeep trail part of our loop) to see some real views, but alas, we were out of time.
Enjoy the numerous photos...link:
http://community.webshots.com/user/dom15931
The newest six albums are from this trip.
Dom
Last edited:
