Lindy Point

I hiked through some seriously deep snow to get to an overlook today. I'd promised myself to take a winter photo from Lindy Point which I'd visited before during summer. But the road to the trailhead was shut because of deep snow so that added more than a mile to the hike, so instead of a one and a half mile round trip I was looking at a four-mile round trip. Still an easy hike if you didn't consider that I was going to be hiking through extremely deep snow with many patches of hardened ice. If I hadn't worn my Yaktrak Pros I probably wouldn't have been able to make the hike in a reasonable time frame. As it was I did it fairly quickly. I only encountered one other person the hike--a woman who'd ski'd in on her cross-country skis, but she left soon after I arrived at Lindy Point so I had the place to myself for quite a while.

The trail in to Lindy Point. Very deep snow and lots of ice.

I went over the fence onto a rock pillar to get this photo. That's my camera tripod beside the viewing platform.

And here I am at the tower of rock they call Lindy Point. The Blackwater Canyon behind me.

West Virginia Rock

I took this one in Dolly Sods at a place called Bear Rocks.

One of our favorite vacation places is West Virginia. Sadly, we don't go there nearly as often as we once did, but we still try to get there at least once per year. It's kind of like our secret, in a way, for we have rarely encountered crowds at any of the parks we've visited.

One thing about West Virginia is that it has a lot of genuine high country. Well, genuinely high by eastern standards. 4800 feet above sea level would be far underground in many locations in the western USA, but here in our half of the continent, that's pretty good.

And among the most beautiful parts of West Virginia are the really highest peaks--the stuff around the Allegheny Front. Here there are dozens of miles of ridges that break the 4,000-foot barrier and lots and lots of exposed rock that juts up like claws through the green fur of the great West Virginia park lands. If you've never been, you're in for a treat.

Looking up at Seneca Rock.

Taken from Spruce Knob, the highest point in West Virginia.

If you click on this photograph and look closely, you'll see tiny little humans climbing up the sheer face of Seneca Rock.

Lindy Point.