**********
The scene: Saturday Night Live’s “Weekend Update” with Stefon Zelesky and Seth Meyers.
Stefon Zelesky (in his soft, breathy voice): “New York’s hottest new nightclub is: Crease. The club promoter has gone all out. This place has everything: banjos, lights, stilts, ice sculptures, bear traps, screaming babies in Mozart wigs, carnival barkers, a cat from a bodega, an entire room of puppets doing karate . . .”
Seth Meyers: “Puppets doing karate?”
Stefon Zelesky: “You know, that thing when someone calls Miss Piggy ‘fat’ and she goes, ‘Hiiiii-ya!’” (Apologies to Saturday Night Live, created by Lorne Michaels, NBC, Season Number 37, April 14, 2012; Modified for this Trip Report).
**********
The scene: The Allegheny Trail with David O (“Spider-Man”) and Kyle (“Water Dog”).
Spider-Man (in his confident, charismatic voice): “West Virginia’s hottest new trail is: the Allegheny Trail, Section 2. The trail coordinators have gone all out. This trail has everything: River fording, mountain climbs, a retired guy on break from thru-hiking the PCT talking botany with a 20-year-old getting married in two weeks, gravel road walking, cold rain, self-destructing sunshine, ugly religious trees . . .
Waterdog: “Ugly religious trees?”
Spider-Man: “You know, that thing when there is a grove of virgin spruce trees. They are obviously virgins because they are ugly, or because they are so religious they are saving themselves for marriage.”
**********
I’ve been backpacking with DC UL for the past 8 years and never hiked West Virginia’s Allegheny Trail. I barely heard of it. Looking at past Trip Reports of ours, it seems DC UL never hiked any part of this 311-mile trail. This is odd because we regularly backpack in West Virginia. The nearby trails in Otter Creek Wilderness, Dolly Sods, and Spruce Knob are staples for us. We regularly hike mid-length long trails, such as the Tuscarora Trail and Pennsylvania’s Mid State Trail. So, why is there a trail cleanly bisecting West Virginia from Pennsylvania to Virginia that we never hiked?
Waterdog set out to answer this question before he moves to the west coast next month. He posted a section hike of this mystery trail for us to backpack over the Memorial Day weekend. Five pioneering backpackers signed to join him: Mark (“Brightside”), Maddie, Chet, Mu, and me, Spider-Man). He chose Section 2 of the trail which technically goes from Blackwater Falls State Park, just south of Davis, WV, to Cass Scenic Railroad 92 miles due south. However, with only a long weekend to work with, Waterdog chose to have us hike from Blackwater to Durbin, WV, lowering the mileage to 73 miles. He planned aggressive splits for us of 2 miles, 25 miles, 25 miles, 19 miles, and 2 miles.
Mu and I set up a shuttle for ourselves Thursday afternoon, since we each had the whole day available to do this chore. We met at the East Fork Campground in Durbin to leave my car. In Davis, we treated ourselves to a traditional West Virginia meal to fortify us before entering the wilderness. At a restaurant named Milo’s, we ordered “poke bowls.” This West Virginia delicacy is a bowl of rice with vegetables, seaweed, and raw fish with a sweet/tangy sauce. We ate it like real West Virginians with each of us using two small sticks instead of forks. It was truly a unique cultural experience. We felt like true Mountaineers.
We drove to the nearby Blackwater Falls SP to park Mu’s car, after registering it at the lodge. The women who registered us noted the cold rain and late time of the day (it was 8:00 p.m.). They suggested we start our hike the next day. When we insisted we would hike immediately I could tell Mu and I impressed them with our West Virginia-style bravery! Thus, we began our virgin hike on the Allegheny Trail southbound to Durbin.
Our first leg was to hike to a shelter two miles from the trailhead. A hundred yards from the trailhead was a raging stream swollen from days of recent rains. We didn’t want to get our feet wet so soon, so we opted to take a short road walk around it over a bridge. We need not have bothered. The wet weather had converted the path from a trail into a man-made stream. We sloshed through the water to the shelter, which itself was on top of a swamp. The area around the shelter must be constantly wet because the trail coordinators built a long boardwalk leading to it. One could not enter or leave the shelter without getting wet feet. Both Mu and I prefer sleeping in our tents to sleeping in shelters, but there was no good place to pitch our tents and the dry shelter really looked comfortable in comparison. We slept easily.
On Friday morning, we woke later than usual to start our hike to meet the rest of our crew another two miles down the trail. Our friends arrived in West Virginia late Thursday, after work, and had camped at East Fork Campground. They woke very early Friday and set up their shuttle on Canaan Loop Road, where we met them. All together, we started the trail in earnest.
Mu and I told our friends about how the trail was essentially a stream bed. However, from Cannan Loop Road south that was happily not the case. Nonetheless, our feet were constantly wet on this trail from the wet ground and frequent stream crossings. I expected the Allegheny Trail to be a bushwacking-like experience like West Virginia’s slogan, “Wild and Wonderful.” After all, the nearby West Virginia trails in Otter Creek and Dolly Sods are notoriously overgrown and muddy. So, I assumed this lesser-trekked trail would be even less well-maintained. I was wrong! The trail coordinators have done a terrific job building and maintaining this section of the trail. We saw constant evidence of recently cleared blowdowns, mowed meadow trails, excellent signage, and cut-backed foliage. The many shelters look brand new and feature unusual amenities, such as interior benches. It is one of the better maintained trails in the mid-Atlantic. The trail features “high water” routes—essentially roads to bypass low lying sections—and the website reports a dangerous washout. However, we took the “low water” routes without issue. It seems the trail coordinators may have re-routed the trail to minimize the need for using the “high water” route, but this is just speculation on my part. I don’t know why this isn’t a more well-known trail.
As Stefon would say, “this trail has everything.” It is a terrific West Virginia sampler. We walked along (and frequently through) bucolic mountain streams and rivers. We crossed mowed meadows. We hiked on a C&O Canal-style “rail trail.” We climbed Cheat Mountain. We walked on rural roads through small villages. Road walking is not my favorite, but we spent a very small percentage of our trip on them, and they were mostly gravel or dirt roads. The limited asphalt roads had almost no traffic. The elevation gains Friday and Saturday were evenly spread out over the course of our 25-mile days, so we did not feel any “climbs.” Physically, this is a relatively easy trail. Sunday was our only day with noticeable climbs. It was similar in effort to the “roller coaster” section of the Appalachian Trail in Virginia—with its series of pointless ups and downs. Primarily “up,” we ascended the mountain in a series of climbs with no soaring valley views. There were a few unimpressive overlooks. However, the forests and streams were postcard beautiful.
We passed through a variety of ecosystems. There were alpine forests of giant spruce trees with bright green moss carpeting the ground and rocks, grassy meadows with flowers, rhododendron covered stream beds, wetlands, and hardwood forests.
Even the weather was full of variety. Spring on the east coast can range from winter to summer weather. I packed for a mild winter-weather trip and was glad I did. I used my winter hat, puffer, and mittens in the evenings and mornings. During the days, the temperatures rose high enough that at one trail junction it was too hot to sit in the direct sunlight.
We generally hiked together as a group, which was very nice. Mu told us all about his PCT hike. Brightside, who previously hiked that trail, chipped in with comments of his own. Chet, a meteorologist, taught us about the concept of “self-destructing sunshine.” This is the thing where the hot sun heats up the ground, only for the radiating heat to produce clouds that then hide the sun, effectively blocking the sunshine. Brightside commented that “Self-Destructing Sunshine” would be a great name for a rock band. Everyone but Chet agreed. He simply put his face in his hands and shook his head in frustration.
For a time, I was hiking alongside Mu and Chet as they discussed retirement. Mu recently retired and Chet was dreaming of it. I had little to add to the conversation as retirement is far off my radar. So, I fast hiked ahead of them toward Waterdog and Brightside. The gap I closed was only 100 or 200 yards in distance but three decades in attitude. Brightside, who is closing out the final year of his 20s, and Waterdog, who is not much older, had us laughing at prior backpacking trip mishaps.
Maybe the discussion was an omen. On Saturday, Maddie became concerned about her knee. Long before our trip she suffered some mystery injury to it without knowing the cause. She thought the problem resolved itself. She adheres to a philosophy that many things “just fix themselves” called “self-fixism.” On a prior trip with her, when my car battery died, she famously suggested that the car would just fix itself. Despite the collective laughter at this naïve suggestion, she turned out to be right! Unfortunately, when it came to her knee, she was wrong. Concerned about aggravating her injury, especially so close to her wedding, she self-extracted using her satellite messenger to coordinate a ride home through her fiancé.
On Sunday, Chet’s trail runners disintegrated. The sole almost entirely ripped off the bottom of one shoe. When he taught us about “self-destructing sunshine,” he should have worried about the lesser-known concept of “self-destructing shoes.” He tried using duct tape to hold his shoes together, but that fix lasted only two miles. At a trail junction with a rail trail, he took off his dead shoes, donned flip flops, and committed to flip flopping 15 miles on that flat, smooth trail back to his car in Durbin. I find hiking on flat “rail trails” to be soulless, clearly Chet did, too, as he walked in footwear without soles. Anyway, Chet’s misfortune had a bright side. By taking this direct route, he got to his car well before Mu and me, and he left a couple of cans of beer for us under my car for a victory toast.
Also on Sunday, Brightside reached the car he pre-positioned 10 miles north of our destination in Durbin. Having taken a new job recently, he could not get leave on Memorial Day and needed to return home that evening. Waterdog, who had been suffering some digestive discomfort, found Brightside’s car too attractive to pass. Waterdog’s problem was so severe his infectiously enthusiastic demeanor dialed down below 11. He even said a few times that he was not enjoying the trail because of how he felt. It happens to all of us at some point.
This left Mu and me alone on Monday morning—just as we were alone together the previous Thursday evening when we started this trek. We hiked through the cold rain that evening, and now we were hiking through another cold rain Monday morning. We congratulated ourselves on completing this adventure, reversed the shuttle, and enjoyed a victory breakfast at the Blackwater Lodge. I requested the poke bowl, but this inauthentic restaurant did not know of West Virginia’s native dish. Satiated, we separately drove back to our off-trail lives—me to my job on Tuesday and Mu to his endless vacation called “retirement,” and to his return to the PCT.
Yes, as Stefon would say, the Allegheny Trail has everything—even ugly religious trees, a rock band called Self-Destructing Sunshine, “sole-less” rail-trail walking, self-fixism adherents, and classic West Virginia poke bowl cuisine. The only thing missing was a room of puppets doing karate. I’ll leave this suggestion for the trail coordinators. The trail provided the variety and good maintenance, and we brought the humor, camaraderie, adventure, and high daily mileage. This may have been the DC UL’s first foray on this trail; it will not be the last.
- David O (“Spider-Man”); Cover photo credit: Waterdog.
DC UL Backpacking 
Leave a comment