Overlooking the New River Valley and Gorge is a great place to meditate.
Rhododendron, the state flower of West Virginia, adds color to the green mountains.
Yet one activity unique to this park is the walk underneath the spectacular New River Gorge Bridge, one of the highest and longest single-span arch bridges in the world. Completed in 1977, the bridge stretches 3,030 feet, extending U.S. Route 19 over the New River. The Bridge Walk is a mile-and-a-quarter trek including trails to reach the bridge and a more than half-mile jaunt on a two-foot-wide catwalk just below the roadway. Linked to a safety cable, walkers have a breathtaking view of the river more than 870 feet below. Many of the hikes within the park lead to exceptional bridge and river views. At Adventures on the Gorge, I join a hike along the Endless Wall Trail as light rain pitter-patters against the leafy canopy, making the trail slippery and muddy. “The tall conifers around you are Eastern Hemlocks, considered the redwoods of the east,” points out hiking guide Brenna Craig. “They grow one inch in diameter every 10 years, so it takes quite a while to get this tall.” Along the way, we pass rhododendrons, the State Flower of West Virginia, with their pink and white blooms. We also see metal tags on trees indicating their age, some more than 200 years old. The hike’s highlight comes when we reach a clearing with views of the New River below, where rapids peak over rocky stretches and wispy
clouds dip deep into the valley. “On rainy days you can see the fog coming over the gorge,” points out guide Rocky McDonald. “Sometimes you can see isolated thunderstorms with it raining on that side of the gorge, but not on this side.” What makes the New River even more unique is, like Egypt’s Nile River, it flows from south to north. Thus, to reach one of its more turbulent waterfalls from the landmark New River Gorge Bridge, we drive in a direction that’s upriver, or south, for an hour and a half to Sandstone Falls. The drive includes an eight-mile stretch along River Road, the park’s only scenic riverside roadway. I’m surprised to see the falls are not tall, but instead more than 1,500 feet wide where the river drops from 10 to 25 feet, with cascading torrents crashing against rock islands. On the southern edge of the national park, the town of Hinton, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is further upstream along sloping riverside hills. I notice the distinctive late 19th-century and early 20th-century neoclassical Gothic Revival and Victorian churches and buildings, but what catches my eye is a brightly- colored wall mural with a smoke-spewing locomotive. The mural hints at Hinton’s historic past, founded when the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway Company laid track
VISIT SOUTHERN WEST VIRGINIA
COAST TO COAST SPRING MAGAZINE 2022
30
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online