Seventh Annual Canaan Valley Weekend

We spent this past weekend with our friends in the Canaan Valley in West Virginia. This is our seventh (!) year doing this. I can't believe it has been that long. Time flies. We rent a lovely house close to a bunch of outdoor activities and cross our fingers that there might be snow. This year, we got a lot of rain and a little snow, and a whole lot of cold. Not to mention great food, board games, and a wonderful weekend spent with friends.

On Saturday, Michael and I went for a long walk in Canaan Valley National Wildlife Refuge. This bridge was perched oddly on a hillside, about 200 yards above the nearest creek.

 Michael pausing to take pictures on a hillside.

 Birch leaves.

Clouds descending over Canaan Valley. At this point it was starting to snow a little bit. That would pick up and then change to rain later in the afternoon. It finally changed back to snow Sunday morning.

 Trees on the edge of the meadow.

 The trail crosses the stream at this point. A beaver decided the trail crossing was a great place to build its home.

 The beaver dam near its den.

 We surprised a grouse alongside the trail. It left wing prints in the snow when it flew off.

 On Sunday, Michael and I and three friends went over to Blackwater Falls State Park. Since it rained all night, the falls were running hard. The red color is from tanins in the soil.

 Icicles near Blackwater Falls.

 Another view of the falls.

 We also walked down to Elkala Falls.

 Rhododendron leaves curled up in the cold (it was about 15 degrees).

 Our final stop was Lindy Point. Normally, this is a really nice view of Blackwater Canyon. On Sunday, it was a view of the cloud!

 Michael and I at Lindy Point.

There was a lunar eclipse on Sunday night. It kept clouding up, but right near the end of totality, we got a clear view. It was _cold_. It was around -8 and pretty windy. It was so cold that the trees popped and cracked around us. There were many things I could have done to get sharper pictures, but in the cold and at that late hour, I didn't think things through clearly. I'm just happy we got to see it!

Canaan Valley Weekend 2016: Winter's Arrival

This past weekend, we made our annual trek to the Canaan Valley for winter hiking, good food, and fun with our friends. We arrived Friday afternoon to gray, relatively warm weather, at least for that part of West Virginia. We made a couple of quick stops at Blackwater Falls State Park before picking up the keys to our cabin.

Blackwater Falls

The stream below Elkala Falls.

Our plan is always to get some snowshoeing in while we are out there, but since it had been relatively warm, none of the streams were frozen over and there was only a dusting of snow on the ground. No snowshoeing this trip. If we had been able to stay for another day or two, we would have been able to snowshoe. Winter decided to arrive over the weekend while we were out there. By Monday, there was a fair bit of snow and sub-zero temperatures.

Instead of snowshoeing on Saturday, we went for a long hike on the gravel road that leads from Blackwater Falls to Table Rock. The road winds around Canaan Mountain through stands of hemlocks and rhododendrons. There is a lot of green, even this time of year.

The view from Lindy Point. It was incredibly windy and cold out here. The temperature started out around freezing, but steadily declined over the course of the afternoon.

Crossing one of the streams.

The road we hiked on.

Hiking up in the cloud towards Table Rock (which we didn't make it to).

On Sunday, the weather at the cabin started out similar to Saturday: gray, cloudy, light snow and near freezing. We hiked up the ridge to the east of our cabin into northern Dolly Sods. As we climbed, the temperature dropped and hoar frost began appearing on the trees. Towards the top of the ridge, the trees had nearly at inch of hoar frost.

 Looking up the hill towards Dolly Sods.

 Hoar frost on dried leaves.

The group, on reaching the top of the ridge. The wind was pretty mild for winter in Dolly Sods, but that doesn't mean it wasn't windy. I came down the mountain with mild windburn. It was, of course, quite a bit colder up in the wilderness area than it was at our cabin, several hundred feet below.

 Frosty trees on the plateau. I love Dolly Sods in winter. It looks different each time I'm there, but it never fails to impress me. This time it looked like a sugar-coated wonderland.

 Looking west towards Canaan Valley.

 Hiking south along the western edge of the wilderness area.

 The group hiking south along the trail.

We descended back to our cabin and got back in time to do a little bit of sledding down the hill behind it. Monday, five of us went tubing before making the long drive home. The high was a balmy -1 degrees Fahrenheit at the tubing run. We had a blast. A great end to a pretty perfect weekend.

Snowshoeing in West Virginia: Blackwater Falls and Dolly Sods

We spent the weekend at Blackwater Falls State Park in West Virginia with several friends from Old Rag Mountain Stewards. The state park has wonderful cabins that are practically a steal to rent, especially when divided by a crowd. We booked the cabin a while ago for a weekend of snowshoeing and good food. Two weeks ago, we were worried that there wouldn't be any snow at all, but we arrived at our cabin to find a foot of the lightest, fluffiest, driest powder that I've seen east of the Rockies.

Friday afternoon, we went down to Blackwater Falls was mostly frozen. The reddish color in the ice and in the water is tannins from the cedar forests surrounding the river.

Icicles near the falls. I really liked the patterns in the ice.

Friday evening, we headed over to the town of Thomas to the Purple Fiddle for dinner, a band, and some incredible people watching. The band was pretty good, if not my style of music, but the people watching was priceless.

We spent Saturday snowshoeing all over Blackwater Falls State Park. The high for the day was only around 20 degrees and the wind got progressively stronger as the day went on.

We followed the Canaan Loop Road to Lindy Point Overlook.

The Blackwater River canyon. The wind at the overlook was enough to take my breath away.

The curling bark of a paper birch tree.

 Michael breaking trail through fir trees.

The snow really picked up in the afternoon. It was cold enough that the trees popped and cracked as we hiked through the woods.

Balancing Rock in Blackwater Falls State Park. This isn't a great photo, but there isn't really a place to get a nice clear shot of the rock formation. Nonetheless, it was worth the hike to it.

At the end of the day, the group humored me by parking at the lodge so I could run down the Elkala Trail to see Elkala Falls. We ran into a couple we had seen near Balanced Rock earlier in the day. We chatted with them and mentioned that we were going to see the waterfall, to which they responded, "There isn't any waterfall." I pulled out my map, which showed that the falls were right by the bridge that we could see and that the couple had just walked over. They shrugged and continued on their way. We walked out onto the bridge, looked down, and there were the completely frozen falls. It took some work to get down to them and get the shot from below. Let's just say it was good to have traction devices.

Sunday, we headed for Dolly Sods, which is one of my favorite places to hike in the winter. We made the climb up the ski run in good time, getting a few funny looks from people who had the good sense to ride a lift to the top of the mountain. We started out in the sun, but by the time we reached the entrance to the wilderness, it was snowing again. It is a little strange to stand on the edge of the run, watching the crowds of skiers and snowboarders go by, then turn around and walk twenty yards into the wilderness area and a completely different world. 

The entrance to Dolly Sods Wilderness. No one else had been up there that morning, so we had untracked snow and complete solitude.

Michael making hot drinks for lunch.

Dolly Sods can have frightful weather. On Sunday, we experienced freezing cold (maybe twenty degrees), gale force winds, and lots of snow - some of it fell from the sky and some of it was just blowing around. It was hard to tell which was which sometimes. We plowed through drifts over our knees in places. When we finally turned around, we found a lot of our tracks and been completely covered by snow, even though we had only been there less than an hour before.

 Later in the afternoon, the sun did try to come out.

The trail through some cedars. We decided this would have been the perfect place to camp since it was sheltered from the wind.

 Looking west across the Canaan Valley. We got just a sliver of a sunset in the distance, beyond the clouds.

A friend of ours hiking along the ridge.

Breaking trail out in the open.

Blowing snow on the western edge of the ridge in Dolly Sods. I was just a little bit sad that we weren't camping out. It was such a beautiful day and there was so much snow that I wanted to spend more time out there. Unfortunately, we all had to get home for work on Monday. 

Snowquester: One Last Snowshoeing Trip to West Virginia

On Wednesday, while the rainy, snowy mess that was the Snowquester in the DC area amounted to very little, it was snowing buckets in West Virginia.  While g-chatting with a friend that afternoon, we decided it would be a crying shame to let that kind of snowfall go to waste.  Within an hour, we had reserved a cabin (with real beds and heat!) and started making serious plans.  Ultimately, we rounded up a total of eight like-minded people for an overnight at Blackwater Falls State Park near Davis, West Virgnia and met at the cabin on Saturday morning.

For all of the times I have parked at Blackwater Falls State Park so I could go backpacking at Canaan Mountain immediately to the south, I had never really explored the park itself.  Four of us set out to explore the rim of the north side of Blackwater Canyon (The rest of the group went to Dolly Sods).  There were about two feet of snow on the ground and it was warm enough to snowshoe in a t-shirt.  We crossed a dam on Pendelton Creek and then left the trail to explore the little canyon formed by the same.  We crawled through and around rhododendrons and hemlocks, getting glimpses of pretty snow-covered waterfalls along the way.  Finally, we reached some cliffs that we couldn't get around, so we made our way back up to the trail.  From there, we followed the trail west to a rocky overlook where we had a great view of Blackwater Canyon.

Saturday night, we checked out the falls which the park is named and we had a proper feast, complete with WanderMindfully's awesome lasagna.  Sunday morning came way too early after a late night of games and especially after the time change.  Everyone else had to be home by a reasonable time, so WanderMindfully and I headed to Timberline Resort and up into Dolly Sods.  It was cloudy and a little chilly when we arrived, so I started snowshoeing in a long-sleeve shirt, which meant I didn't sunscreen on my arms.  I would pay for my oversight since, as soon as we started climbing, I put on a short-sleeve shirt.

We hiked up one of the ski runs into the wilderness and turned north, basically following the route I took after another freak weather event at the beginning of the season.  Like that trip, we found three feet of snow up there. Remarkably, it wasn't windy on this trip, even out on the very edge of the plateau. It was even warmer than on Saturday. We had lunch there looking down on the Canaan Valley, soaking up the sun.  In spite of the snow, the trees have buds on them.  We meandered along the western edge of the wilderness until it was time to return to the car.

This was my third trip into Dolly Sods this winter and I just have to say that it just doesn't get old:  It is such a spectacular place.  Today, I am tired and fairly sunburned, a great price to pay for an amazing trip.  What a way to finish the winter!

Pictures (click to enlarge):

Blackwater Falls at sunset Saturday.

 The trail behind our cabin at Blackwater Falls State Park.

Pendelton Creek below the dam.

Untracked snow on the Pendelton Trace Trail.

 A rhododendron bud.

Boot/Snowshoe Shot over Blackwater Canyon

Melting snow near the overlook of Blackwater Canyon.

Another view of Blackwater Falls.

Fuel for snowshoeing in the form of lasagna.

 The entrance to Dolly Sods.

 Windblown ripples in the snow on the western edge of Dolly Sods.

Buds on trees:  a sure sign that spring will be here soon.

 A massive wind-blown snow drift.  This was taller than me.

 Tracks in the snow.  I think these are bobcat, but they were not especially distinct.

 More tracks in the snow.

 Looking northeast over the northern section of Dolly Sods.

Droplets from melting snow.