The Weather Sucks... Let's Go Hiking!

West Virginia Travelog #7
Beckley, WV - Sun, 17 Sep 2023. 11am

Today's our first full day in West Virginia. We did a fair bit yesterday: a waterfall hike, a ridge hike, and generally a long day with lots of driving— coming off a red-eye flight, at that! Today's our first full day in West Virginia... and we spent the first part of it sleeping in and lazing around the room. 😨 I can't really fault us, though, as (a) yesterday really was a long day, so sleeping in a bit today was justified; and (b) the weather sucks today. It's gray and gloomy and raining off an on. Who wants to go hiking in that?

We want to go hiking, that's who! 😅 Well, we'd rather go hiking in nice weather, but clouds and a bit of rain aren't enough to ruin this day of our vacation. Most of the outdoors things we want to do are waterfalls, anyway, and as I've remarked before many waterfalls look better in a misty rain than in bright sunlight. Plus, today rain means that the waterfalls will be flowing. Nothing's worse than hiking out to a waterfall, when the weather's great, and finding it's not flowing.

We've picked out two falls for today, Cathedral Falls and Hill Creek Falls. We've packed car-bags with full changes of clothes so if worst comes to worst on the trail, we'll be able to change into comfortable clothes for the rest of the drive. Now it's time to make tracks!

Update: Hikes we did on this gloomy Sunday:

• Cathedral Falls
• Hawks Nest State Park
• Falls of Hills  Creek

Cathedral Falls

West Virginia Travelog #8
Gauley Bridge, WV - Sun, 17 Sep 2023. 1pm

After deciding we could do more in the inclement weather than watch it from the window of our hotel room we gathered our gear and headed out. Cathedral Falls was our first stop. ...Well, okay, grabbing a light lunch was my first stop. Then we stopped at Cathedral Falls. 😅

Would fighting through the gloom lead us to something beautiful? The signs were not positive. And by "signs" I mean West Virginia highway road signs.



Absolutely nothing here. 😰 There were a lot of signs like this.

Fortunately we knew where to go. Near the tiny town of Gauley Bridge there was a small, signed turnout for Cathedral Falls.



As promised by the hiking website we checked, the falls is visible from the road. ...Well, maybe not from the road, but definitely from the small parking lot next to it.

As you can see in the photo, we were not the only ones with the idea, "Weather sucks? Let's go hiking!" There were half a dozen other cars at the small parking lot and people crawling up and down the short trail. Well, "trail" is an ambitious word. It was more like a route over the rain-soaked rocks. We came prepared for it, with boots, so we strode up the trail, climbing directly up the rock ledges in the stream bed, where others were picking their ways carefully.



The thing about crowds is that there's usually a lull in them. We bided our time near the falls— not that that was in any way a hardship!— waiting for our opportunity. It came. While the small parking lot remained full, not everybody was interested in scrambling to the back of the canyon.

I made the photo above with the help of my tripod. Yes, I took it on this trip. Yes, I carried in the rain. Yes, it was worth it! With the tripod I can take slow exposures, capturing the motion blur of the falling water while rendering everything else fairly sharply. This one's almost a full second long. Also, even if I weren't taking a slow exposure, using the tripod allows me to compose the picture the way I want to instead of trusting a helpful stranger to understand picture composition. (Hint: almost no helpful stranger understands picture composition, including those carrying thousands of dollars of picture-taking equipment. One of my first experiences in outdoors photograph years ago was money ≠ skill.)

Hawks Nest State Park

West Virginia Travelog #9
Ansted, WV - Sun, 17 Sep 2023. 1:30pm

On the way to Cathedral Falls earlier today we saw signs for a Hawks Nest State Park. After a beautiful visit to Cathedral Falls we knew we'd have to take a detour on the way back out. How could we not stop at Hawks Nest State Park?



Alas there were no actual hawks at Hawks Nest. We asked the bored state park service employee working the combination information center/gift shop; he said nobody's seen hawks in the park recently, just lots of vultures. "But there's great views of the river," he assured us. "Oh," I asked, "Are there ospreys nesting by the river?" I then had to explain what an osprey is. Twice. We decided we were on our own on this one.



The main feature at the park is a lookout over the New River reached by a short walk. Here the river gorge is 585 feet deep. To the left in the photo is a railroad bridge. To the right is the Hawks Nest dam, which generates hydroelectric power.

Speaking of hydro power, a historical marker at the park notes the historically dark side of hydro power. In 1930-31 the local power company bored a 3 mile tunnel near here to divert water to increase power generation. The rock the miners dug through was heavy with silica dust. A huge number of the miners suffered acute silicosis and died. ...And not 20-30 years later like coal miners with "black lung" disease, but in as little as 1 year of work. Local officials admitted there were 109 such deaths out of 3,000 workers. A Congressional investigation in 1936 established the death toll at 476 (for the period of 1930-1935— again, a short period of time for lung disease). Workers and their families estimate up to 1,000 people out of the 3,000 died from silicosis. Whichever number you choose, it's considered the US's worst industrial accident.