West Virginia in the Snow

Carole and I haven't been back to West Virginia in over a year. We'd like to take a trip there again. These shots are from our last vacation in the state, spent principally in and around Blackwater Falls State Park. For years there has been a movement to try to create a new National Park around Blackwater Falls and the canyon there. But of course the energy and timber corporations have fought such a proposal to a standstill.

This old train station had been restored and converted into a museum. Closed the day we were there.

Deer in the Snow.

The mighty Blackwater Falls.

Heavy snowfall hit while we were at the waterfall overlook.

Pointing across the gorge at the lodge where I was staying.

Snowmelt and fresh snow had created enormous water volume for the falls.

Some Waterfalls from 2007.

Not too much work on the novel today. Work was high pressure due to the retirement of our longest serving letter carrier at the station. Archie Smith is calling it quits after more than forty years working for the USPS. Yep, 40+ years. There was a huge going-away party for Archie which put us (appropriately) off schedule, thus making for a longer day and correspondingly tougher work. I had to walk a lot faster to try to make my normal leave time. But the celebration was the best one in a while. Our station is currently experiencing a high level of retirements since we have more than our share of employees who have more than thirty years of work in at USPS. We've seen quite a few retire this year with more scheduled to cash in their chips before December. It's sad to see them go (especially when I have to stay).

Here are some of the waterfalls Carole and I visited (or sometimes just me) in 2007.

This one, I assume, has no name. It's a falls located in the Tuckerman Ravine on Mount Washington in New Hampshire.

Also on Mount Washington just a short hike above the Joe Dodge Lodge.

I shot this one with the telephoto lens from the opposite side of the Blackwater Canyon in West Virginia. Notice all of the living hemlocks in this shot. I wonder if they're still alive?

This isn't really a natural waterfall. But this old footbridge on the Toe River below Mount Mitchell in North Carolina makes for a great swimming hole. We had a good time there in the summer of 2007.

I found this waterfall by accident when I took the wrong road and trail trying to find the Woody Ridge Trail in the Black Mountains of North Carolina. I think it's called White Oak Falls.

Probably one of the strangest waterfalls I've ever seen. It's called Virgin Falls and is located in the Virgin Falls Pocket Wilderness in Tennessee. The hike down into the valley was hot and muggy. This waterfall appears out of the mouth of a cave and drops down into a sinkhole and then vanishes into the earth again. The amazing thing about the sinkhole was that the temperature PLUMMETED when I hiked down into it. Which was a very refreshing relief from the heat through which I'd been hiking. This is the only waterfall I've ever seen that seems immune to drought. I visited this wilderness in the midst of one of the worst droughts in the past 200 years and while all of the other waterfalls in the area were either dry or nearly dry, this one was chugging away at its normal rate.

Burgess Falls in Tennessee. This waterfall was doing okay during the drought because it's partially fed by a dammed lake above it.

Another, lesser falls, in Burgess Falls State Park in Tennessee.

This is Twin Falls in Rock Island State Park. Although it's not advertised as such, this is an artificial waterfall created by an impounded lake on the other side of the ridge.

Another waterfall in Rock Island State Park.

Blackwater Falls in Blackwater Falls State Park in West Virginia. There have been efforts for years to turn this area and the gorge around it into a new National Park. However, the coal, timber, and gas industries in West Virginia have fought this effort relentlessly. This is why it's important to keep government stronger than corporations. Without government, the population of the USA is at the complete a total mercy of greedy, rapacious, jackass industrialists.

Fall Creek Falls in Tennessee. Again, in the midst of a hideous drought. This waterfall is normally a thundering sight. But the days we were there it was reduced to almost a slight mist filtering over the precipice.

I stitched this together from shots I took from the base of Falls Creek Falls. Technically, this is the single highest drop for a waterfall in the eastern USA. There are higher falls, yes, but none with a higher single unhindered drop.

East Coast Mountain Memories

Ever since I was about eight years old I've wanted to travel out west. When I was a kid I would beg my parents to take me to Yellowstone and, later, to Yosemite. A lot of the kids I went to school with would bring their summer vacation photos to class and I'd see them--Old Faithful, Grand Teton, Yellowstone Falls, El Capitain, Half Dome, Tuolumne Meadows, grizzly bears, bison, elk...the list goes on.

My parents never were able to take me to Yellowstone, or anywhere else out west. In my thirties I was able to travel to California, but only on business, and the only time I got to hike out there was in the state park on Mount Palomar and at Cabrillo National Monument. Nice hikes, but hardly the kind of thing I wanted to see in the west.

When I was in high school, the brothers I hiked the Appalachians with spent one summer vacation hitting the western parks with their parents. They hiked all over the big peaks and got to visit the places I'd dreamed of. "Once you see the Rockies, you'll throw pebbles at the Appalachians," one of my pals told me. I couldn't imagine doing that, but it let me know how truly spectacular the western high country is.

In honor of my upcoming 2010 trip to the western mountains, I've decided to post a few photos of some of my favorite hiking spots in the eastern high country. Just so I'll be reminded not to throw pebbles at them when I return from Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons.

Big Creek, in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Midnight Hole, Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Bald River Gorge Wilderness, Tennessee.

Citico Creek Wilderness, Tennessee.

Rowland Creek Falls, Virginia.

Hickory Nut Gorge, North Carolina.

Blackwater River Gorge, West Virginia.

Dolly Sods Wilderness, West Virginia.

Seneca Rocks, West Virginia.

Tuckerman Ravine, Mount Washington, New Hampshire.

The Lion Head, Mount Washington, New Hampshire.

Friction climbing in the James River Face Wilderness, Virginia.

Harkening Hill, Virginia.

Whitetop Mountain, Virginia.

Whiteside Mountain, North Carolina.

Granny Burrell Falls, Panthertown Valley, North Carolina.

In the Albright Grove, Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

On my favorite hiking trail, the Black Mountain Crest Trail, North Carolina. My favorite because every few feet you're gasping. Either because of the rugged terrain, or because of the amazing views.

Blackwater Canyon, West Virginia.

Blackwater Canyon is located in the Allegheny highlands of West Virginia. Cut by the Blackwater River, the gorge averages well over 500 feet deep and it remains a relatively pristine area filled with a vast forest of hemlocks, pines, poplars, and oaks.

A bit over 2,000 acres of the canyon is preserved as Blackwater Falls State Park, one of West Virginia’s premiere parks. There are a number of canyon rim trails, a ski slope within the park, a lodge, cabins, and a campground. For sheer physical beauty, this is one of the most beautiful parks in the Southeastern United States.

There are a number of spectacular waterfalls here, most notably Blackwater Falls, a 57-foot drop that displays the dark water for which the river and canyon (and falls) are named. The water is darkened not from soil runoff, but from the tannins created by the mildly acidic effects of the many hemlocks trees that clothe the canyon’s slopes. While the hemlock wooly adelgid that has decimated the forests farther east have recently been reported in the park, they have so far not destroyed these trees. However, unless there is a wide-scale application of the insecticide imadacloprid, these forests will fall to extinction as have those from Virginia south to Georgia.

No official trails find their ways to the canyon floor, and travel into the canyon itself is not encouraged. However, there are a number of unofficial trails and manways that weave down from the canyon rim and to the floor of the gorge. The best of these descends from Pendleton Overlook and is relatively easy to follow, if not so easy to negotiate. Some scramblers periodically leave nylon ribbons along this manway to keep hikers from straying too far into the maze of rhododendron hells. Use of these manways, while not encouraged, is not prohibited. Just use common sense when climbing down the extremely steep slopes into the rugged canyon floor.

Over the past few years, the canyon has been at the center of a drive to protect the lands that are not currently within the boundaries of the Blackwater Falls State Park. Efforts to preserve several thousand additional acres failed when the landowner sold the property to a timber company which desperately wants to log the canyon of its timber and leave the place devastated and unsuitable for a park. Additionally, this company is even lobbying to be able to move the timber from their logging operations through the existing park. Only time will tell if conservationists will prevail in creating a new National Park in this place, or if yet another corporation will succeed in raping the land for short-term profits.

There are a number of rare and endangered species that live within the Blackwater Canyon, and hopefully the presence of these living things will aid in stopping any further logging operations by the Allegheny Wood Products company. It would be a shame and a crime to lose this phenomenal landscape to the depredations of another greedy corporation.