New River Gorge National Park

When we first decided to travel about in an RV back in 2015, the first thing we did was create a master electronic map where we’d put e-push pins everywhere we wanted to visit. It’s likely no surprise that among the first pins to make it to the map were the National Parks in the US and Canada. About a year ago, I read a NY Times article about the New River Gorge National Park in West Virginia. Hmmm… this isn’t on our map. How’d that happen? It turns out that although the New River has been a protected river (no dams/development) since 1978, it was re-designated as a National Park in 2020. We added a push pin.

We decided visiting New River Gorge would fit in nicely on this trip. Although hiking was listed as an activity in the park on the website, there wasn’t much detail. Not a problem, as most National Parks have great information on hiking and all kinds of interesting stuff at their Visitor Centers. Many of the National Parks have a 3-D relief map of themselves in their Visitor Centers which put the whole park in perspective. Once we saw the relief map, we got it…

In West Virginia, the Applachian Plateau is a rugged plateau just west of the Applachian Mountains. The New River (it’s not really new – as rivers go, it’s quite old, actually – but nobody knew about it when it was discovered so that’s what they named it…) runs through it, carving a 53-mile canyon from the plateau that’s nearly 900 feet deep and half a mile wide in places. The carved walls revealed massive seams of coal. In 1873, a railroad was built along the river, providing access to the coal and forming the core of the well-known coal mining and railroad history of the area. With most of the accessible coal extracted by 1940, most of the small mining towns are now ruins with stories to tell.

Where to hike is a complicated question… There are eight distinct areas of the park – 2 are predominantly for paddlers, 1 is dedicated to mountain/trail biking, 3 feature ruins from the coal mining/railroad heyday, and 2 have interesting hiking trails. We focused on the latter 2 areas.

The New River Gorge Bridge, completed in 1977, is one of the park’s most recognizable sights, situated in the Lansing area in the north of the park. The view from the bridge revealed a wall of rock in the distance along the edge of the canyon. The park rangers had suggested we hike the Endless Wall trail, which looked to be in that same direction. This advice we took, and we’re glad we did! The trailhead was a short distance along the plateau from the Visitor Center, and the hike was a walk over to and then along the edge of the canyon rim. We walked the edge, peeking over and around awesome rock cliffs, always in view of the river below. The colorful rocks and early fall foliage on a brilliantly clear, cool day made for a wonderful hike.

The Grandview area (interesting name, wonder why they call it that?) was a circuitous, hour-and-a-half drive from our camp and featured several interesting, short hikes. However, we found that we could hike from our lovely camp site on the New River to the top of the canyon rim, arrive at Grandview in not much more time than it would’ve taken to drive, check out a handful of the short trails around Grandview and hike back down the way we came. That worked a treat! The Little Laurel trail – our ‘commute’ up to the rim – was a delightful walk along the contours of the gorge with a steady but very manageable grade. From there, we found a series of short hikes to gorgeous overlooks (pun intended) and the famed Castle Rock trail that followed the base of the rock cliffs at the rim.

We’ve learned that New River Gorge National Park is a haven for paddlers, people who fish, rock climbers, mountain bikers and coal/railroad history buffs. And we found just enough to satisfy those who share our passion for hiking.

For anyone who’s interested, more Endless Wall, Grandview and camp pix…