For those who want to feel fit and take in some breathtaking natural scenery, Southern West Virginia offers a number of popular hiking trails.
Hundreds of tourists and locals are taking advantage of scenic trails during the summer and fall seasons, according to park rangers with the New River Gorge National River of the South District at Sandstone and Grandview.
A history and nature hike features two popular attractions: the old towns of Glade, located on the railroad side of New River south of Horseshoe Bend; and Hamlet, located near the trailhead of the Glade Creek Trail.
Glade and Hamlet originally were connected by a railroad bridge that crossed the New River. The piers of the old bridge are still visible from the main overlook at Grandview.
The park rangers offer a history and botany trip along an old railroad grade, once used by the various companies timbering in the Glade Creek Gorge.
The rangers put out a monthly activity schedule concerning a calendar of upcoming events, available at all local visitor centers and by e-mail.
They call this a pristine area of the gorge. It is relatively inaccessible by vehicle. It allows you to view parts of the New River Gorge in a way that it may have appeared to the early pioneers and settlers.
It’s also a good place to see medicinal plants and wildflowers.
Miles of trails within the New River Gorge National River and along area state parks offer an excellent means of discovering New River Gorge history, as well as its plant and animal life.
Trails feature old coal towns, waterfalls, geological formations, and scenic views of the gorge.
A few trails permit mountain biking and horseback riding. The old mountain thoroughfares also offer some of West Virginia’s best and most scenic trails for health and pleasure hiking.
New River Gorge National River was established in 1978 to preserve and protect 53 miles of the New River as a free-flowing waterway below Bluestone Dam.
Located in Southern West Virginia, this park encompasses nearly 70,000 acres of land along the New River between the towns of Hinton and Fayetteville. The park and the surrounding area are rich in cultural and natural history, offering abundant scenic and recreational opportunities.
The gorge is particularly well suited for hiking, according to an increasing number of patrons who have rediscovered the region’s winding scenic staircase along the river.
The silence of the forest is punctuated by gasps and groans as the mountain trail snakes its way along the torturous trace of New River Gorge. The corridor rises and falls along the banks of the murmuring eddies.
“And hikers can’t say they weren’t warned about the rocks, roots, logs, hills, slippery inclines, and treacherous thoroughfares,” explained Roger Armentrout, a frequent hiker and river guide along mountainous thoroughfares.
“It’s an impressive hike, crawling past craggy cliffs, lumbering through growths of hickory, river birch, sweet gum, red maple and sycamore.”
Some area hikers and runners tackle the trails along the gorge as a warm up for the summer and fall hiking seasons.
Others take to the winding tracks as an alternative to a vacation at the beach.
Still others are attracted to the New River Gorge hiking traces for their scenic wonder and primitive simplicity.
To be sure, they are probably among the Mountain State’s most wild and remote hiking trails, parts of which are often sandwiched between peaks and passages of Glade Creek, Canyon Rim, Kaymoor, and Thurmond.
On the Glade Creek Trail—one of the wildest of the Gorge’s hiking areas—hikers are confronted with a path that gradually ascends along a narrow-gauge railroad bed paralleling Glade Creek for its entire length.
The path begins at Hamlet, on a narrow, new-gravel road that runs 6.5 miles upstream.
Along the way are constant thunderous cascades, waterfalls, in deep chasms and an arched steel foot bridge at mile 2.9 and above this crossing, featuring many species of wild flowers.
This is part of the middle gorge section of the New River Gorge National River. The Canyon Rim Trail is located near the main overlook at Grandview.
The Grandview Rim Trail is one of the gorge’s longest and most interesting trails at Grandview, and offers many views of the Allegheny Plateau and how the river carved its way through it.
From Grandview, about 37 highway miles north to Fayetteville, there’s the Canyon Rim Visitor Center, and at Sandstone there’s the Sandstone Visitor Center with exhibits of coal mining, railroading, logging, as well as map on the floor offering visitors a chance to walk a scale-model trek from Blowing Rock, NC; to Gauley Bridge, WV, the beginning, and end of the New River. It also features a natural landscape and features many native wildflowers.
Starting at the Canyon Rim Visitor Center is the short but very popular Canyon Boardwalk Trail. It descends nearly 200 steps to a breathtaking overlook of the New River and the U.S. 19 Bridge.
Across U.S. 19, from the visitor center entrance, is Burnwood Day Use Area, where the tranquil 1.1-mile Laing Loop Trail leads hikers to many old growth hemlock and beech timber.
The other five trails at this end of the canyon are on the south rim.
From the Kaymoor top parking area on county route 9/2, the 1.6 mile Long Point Trail crosses a plateau. Here are magnificent views of the Canyon Bridge, river, and outcrops on the north rim.
Also from the parking lot, the 1-mile Kaymoor Miners’ Trail switchbacks 600 feet downward past a waterfall to historic Kaymoor mines and an old former logging road. To the left, on the old road near the mine, is the 2-mile Kaymoor trail.
This path passes barred coal mine entrances and relics of the large coal conveyor to the tipple below. The trail follows a moderately graded old road and crosses a footbridge over cascading Wolf Creek to a small parking area on Fayette Station Road.
At Wolf Creek is a connection with the 1.6 mile New River Bridge Trail, which ascends steeply among boulders and cliffs for outstanding views of the canyon bridge.
History buffs should head for Thurmond, six crooked miles from Glen Jean on county route 25.
Now nearly deserted, the town of Thurmond once was the busiest center of commerce in the gorge. It was a town with one bustling sidewalk by the tracks and no main street.
Today, this quiet ghost town is the starting point for two of the gorge’s historic rail trails: the Southside Junction to Brooklyn Trail and the Rend Trail, formerly known as the Thurmond to Minden Trail.
The 7-mile Southside Junction Brooklyn Trail, open to hikers and cyclists, is an easy and scenic riverside ramble on an old railroad grade.
The Southside trail continues for 5.6 miles, shaded by hardwoods and passing by high rock faces and building ruins.
The 3.2 mile Rend Trail crosses five trestles as it follows another old spur up Arbuckle Creek. It can also be accessed from WV 16 by driving five miles down county route 25 from Glen Jean.
In Raleigh County, another grouping of trails is at Grandview Visitor Center off I-64 North on WV 9.
There are six hiker trails, all short except the 1.6-mile Grandview Rim Trail leading to the Turkey Spur Overlook.
Formerly a state park, this extraordinarily beautiful area of flame azaleas and Catawba Rhododendrons has picnic shelters and canyon overlooks, including one of the most photographed and published upriver views of the New River.
“People come from great distances to see the spectacular display of the pink Catawba Rhododendron that grows throughout the Grandview area,” a seasonal park employee at Grandview visitor’s center told me recently. “It is a species of rhododendron that migrated into the New River Gorge by the New River from North Carolina. Usually, the weekend before Memorial Day is the peak-blooming period for those wishing to view this beautiful sight.”
The park’s overlook offers a spectacular view of the New River.
“There’s no question that the Horseshoe Bend is one of the most scenic sites on New River,” noted Armentrout, a float fishing guide and veteran riverman. “Some visitors refer to the site as the Grand Canyon of the East.
“People come from all over the country to photograph this impressive view of the river. It’s one of the most spectacular attractions in the country.”
A wide-angle view of scenic Horseshoe Bend on New River offers visitors at Grandview a glimpse of distant mountain ridges like no other setting in the region. Park employees occasionally offer nature walks and trail hikes that explore history of the gorge’s early settlements and hamlets nearby. Nearly all of the physical structures are gone today, but some of the heritage still remains. Local students and visitors get a look at the natural beauty and rocky outcrops of the Grandview attraction.
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Top o’ the morning!