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4
HIGHLAND OUTDOORS
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Presented by:
highland-outdoors.com
5
FROM THE EDITOR
6
HIGHLAND OUTDOORS
STAFF
Publisher, Editor-in-Chief Dylan Jones Senior Editor, Designer Nikki Forrester Copy Editor Amanda Larch Pretty Much Everything Else Dylan Jones, Nikki Forrester
CONTRIBUTORS
Perry Bennett, Patrick Coin, Jess Daddio, Gabe DeWitt, Josh Edwards, Nikki Forrester, Jeana Harrison, Mike Ivey, David Johnston, Dylan Jones, Amanda Larch, Bronson Lockwood, Kyle Mills, Cam Moore, Tara Morris, Ashley Rider, Frank Slider, Jesse Thornton, Tracey Toler, Molly Wolff
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EDITORIAL POLICY
our localized version of the lauded 1% for the Planet program. By keeping 100% of our contributions with amazing groups focused on fighting the good fight right here in the Mountain State, we hope these dollars will help affect positive change in Appalachia. But offsetting our carbon footprint and giving back are just two pieces of the environmental puzzle. Nikki and I believe in corporate social responsibility and look forward to finding other ways to reduce our impact. If you have any suggestions or ideas about how we can work together to do the right thing, I encourage you to send us an email. Hopefully this knowledge helps you feel a little bit better about picking up a print magazine in the era of climate change. We also encourage you to do your part by passing on this issue to a friend or recycling it when you’re done (unless you’re adding it to your collection, of course). Thanks for reading and enjoy the mag! w Dylan Jones
SPRING 2022
Our editorial content is not influenced by advertisers.
SUSTAINABILITY
Highland Outdoors is printed on ecofriendy paper and is a carbon-neutral business certifed by Aclymate. Please consider passing this issue along or recycling it when you’re done.
DISCLAIMER
Outdoor activities are inherently risky. Highland Outdoors will not be held responsible for your decision to play outdoors.
COVER
Hai Thai walks a highline above the Gunsight Notch at Seneca Rocks during a full moon. Photo by David Johnston. Copyright © 2022 by Highland Outdoors. All rights reserved.
Nikki Forrester
Howdy, friends! I am beyond thrilled for you to have our first issue of 2022 in your hands. It’s safe to say that 2021 wasn’t the year that we, as a society, expected, but we met the shared challenges and collectively muddled through once again. Fortunately, spring is here and the plants are poppin’ up like they do regardless of our human struggles. Despite the challenges, 2021 was a huge year of growth for the mag—something we could not have achieved without the support of our advertisers, subscribers, and, of course, readers like you. There’s a lot to be excited about this year. What I’m most proud to announce is that Highland Outdoors is officially a carbon-neutral business certified by Alcymate, a platform that helps small businesses like ours calculate and offset their carbon footprint. I used Aclymate to calculate our carbon footprint from January 1, 2020 to present, finally fulfilling the promise I made to readers way back in our spring 2020 issue. Although it took a while to get there, man-oh-man does it feel good to follow through! Based on the recommendation of a friend who’s an expert carbon auditor, I purchased carbon credits via reforestation projects in Kenya and Uganda that pay subsistence farmers to plant native trees on their lands. Highland Outdoors is proud to be the 12th business to earn the Aclymate Climate Leader certification. I’m also stoked to officially announce our 1% for West Virginia campaign, a new initiative that will donate one percent of our annual advertising sales revenue to select environmental and social nonprofits based in West Virginia. This is
CONTENTS 10
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14
22
BLACK WALNUTS ON THE BLACK FORK
MORE KIDS ON BIKES
SKYLINE
MASSACREENCE
By Dylan Jones
By Kyle Mills
NICA is Taking West Virgina by Storm
A Race for the Masses By Jess Daddio
By Amanda Larch
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LITTLE GEMS
SHOOT THE MOON
PRECARIOUS FLOW
By Dylan Jones
Adventures Don’t Have to be Extreme
By Nikki Forrester Gabe DeWitt
Competitors race down the Cheat Canyon in the Massacre-ence, pg. 22
By Tara Morris
EVERY ISSUE 8
BRIEFS
44
PROFILE
47
GALLERY
highland-outdoors.com
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BRIEFS
RAMP HARVESTING BANNED IN THREE NATIONAL PARK AREAS By HO Staff Fresh, green, stinky—and threatened. Ramps, the beloved spring edible, are on the decline in southern West Virginia, prompting the National Park Service (NPS) to step up its efforts to protect the few remaining populations. On January 1, 2022, the NPS banned ramp harvesting in the New River Gorge National Park and Preserve, the Gauley River National Recreation Area, and the Bluestone National Scenic River. “Ramps are known to have occurred historically in New River Gorge National Park and Preserve but recent surveys failed to detect ramps at several formerly occupied locations and additional occurrences were overwhelmingly small,” the NPS told Highland Outdoors. The NPS has conducted botanical surveys across the three parks for decades, but only a single ramp population was found in the New River Gorge National Park and Preserve, and the plants there
were too small to harvest. No ramps have been found in the Gauley River National Recreation Area or Bluestone National Scenic River, despite the availability of suitable habitats. “It was determined that this species was at risk of becoming extirpated from the park,” said the NPS. Ramps (Allium tricoccum) are native to hardwood forests in the eastern United States and Canada. Their garlicy bulbs remain underground all year, but their tender leaves typically emerge after the snow melts in March or April. While their aboveground lifespan is relatively short, it can take ramps seven to 10 years to flower and produce seeds. It also takes populations a long time to rebound after they’ve been harvested, especially if the bulbs are pulled from the ground. A 2004 paper published in the scientific journal Biological Conservation estimated that ramp populations that have been reduced by 95% via harvesting could take up to 148 years to recover. The study also showed
that a population reduction of just 5% still took two and half years to recover. The lengthy timespan needed for populations to rebound after even a small harvest combined with commercial interests in harvesting prompted the NPS to enact the ban. The NPS said it was also concerned about population declines across the entire species range. For instance, ramps are endangered in New York and considered a species of concern in Tennessee. Quebec banned commercial harvesting after discovering that nearly 20% of documented wild ramp populations disappeared. In 2021, the NPS began their first surveys dedicated to finding and monitoring ramp populations and will continue to do so until they can ensure the populations can recover and are no longer vulnerable to extirpation. “Ramps are a native species and are protected as part of the NPS mandate to preserve and protect the park’s natural and cultural resources for future generations to enjoy.”
If you’re interested in harvesting ramps sustainably, follow this general rule: use a knife and cut the leaves off above the bulb, and don’t harvest more than 10% of a population once every 10 years. Ramps are fairly easy to cultivate—try collecting seeds and growing your own patch to reduce pressure on native populations! w
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HIGHLAND OUTDOORS
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Dikki Jonester
Protecting wild ramp populations is about far more than ensuring their ecological vitality. Ramps occupy an irreplaceable nook in the heart of Appalachia. There’s the excitement of spotting that first pair of leaves popping up in thawed soil and the marvel of seeing an entire hillside transformed by a shiny, green sea of ramps. Their ephemeral nature ushers us into the woods to savor the earliest phases of spring. And then, just as quickly, they disappear back into the earth, stocking up on resources from which to sprout again the next year—as long as we let them.
WVU EXTENSION LAUNCHES SUSTAINABLE TOURISM WEBINAR SERIES By HO Staff As an adventure magazine in West Virginia, there’s nothing we debate about more than how to grow the state’s outdoor tourism scene in a way that protects our mountains and authentic culture. Tourism is a huge economic driver that can inspire folks to set down roots here, but it can also put a strain on local communities and negatively impact the environments we treasure. The question of how to develop tourism in a sustainable way is pressing, especially as the COVID-19 pandemic led to an explosion in visitation. But is sustainable tourism even possible? In January 2022, West Virginia University (WVU) Extension launched a free, monthly webinar series focusing on what sustainable tourism means and how to develop a strategy moving forward. “Sustainable tourism is a theoretical concept, but actually applying it and implementing a strategy and sustaining that strategy over time is extremely difficult to do,” said Doug Arbogast, a rural tourism specialist at WVU Extension who organized the webinar series. “I think the key for West Virginia is that we’re still in a position where we can think about sustainable tourism and plan for it.” In the first webinar, which took place on January 31, nearly 100 participants discussed the positive and negative impacts tourism is already having on the state’s economy, society, and environment. “I think capacity is our biggest challenge. In most parts of the state, and in many rural areas, there’s limited people, funding, and resources,” said Arbogast. Future webinars will explore how to conduct community assessments and measure tourism impacts, find funding opportunities, and develop and implement sustainable tourism plans. While the webinar series can’t provide a perfect solution, the organizers hope it will bring people together and inspire them to establish a common vision for the future of tourism in the Mountain State. “If everybody rallies around this and comes together, I think we can be an example here in West Virginia that other places would look to to try to get it right,” said Arbogast. The webinar series is open to anyone interested in sustainable tourism in the state: residents, community leaders, folks from convention and visitors bureaus, and local business owners are welcomed and encouraged to join. To register and learn more about the series, visit https://extension.wvu.edu/community-business-safety/ tourism-hospitality/sustainable-tourism. w
East of the Mississippi
By Cam Moore
Ahh, spring. Once the vernal equinox hits and late March rolls around, the minds of Mountain State denizens immediately turn to thoughts of wildflowers pushing through the damp soil, birds happily chirping among neon-green leaves, and people frolicking outside while wondering what the hell that large, orange thing in the sky is… right? While this may ring true for many of the lower-elevation valleys in West Virginia, this is most certainly not the case for Canaan Valley… wait for it… the highest large valley east of the Mississippi! With a sandstone-laden rim soaring up to 4,500 feet above a valley floor with an average elevation of 3,200 feet, Canaan (aka Can-Rain) Valley is one of those places that truly does create its own weather, and meteorological records show that weather is never hot. This beloved ovular valley is the archetypal example of a frost hollow—a bathtub-like landscape where dense, cold air sinks into the lowest of low spots in a valley on still, clear nights. In January 2022, the mercury plunged to -31 degrees Fahrenheit—twice!—at a professionally monitored weather station in the undeveloped northern end of the valley. While spring elsewhere in West Virginia is gloriously verdant, spring in Canaan remains quite brown. It is, however, a season of hoping for one last good snow to frantically hit the cross-country skiing trails in search of the coveted spring corn. Sometimes even Mother Nature herself seems perplexed by how late spring arrives. Every March like clockwork, a pair of Canada geese flies back to my yard from some sunny place in the South. On the day they arrive it is always 58 and sunny. But for the next six weeks, I watch them hurtle past my window at impressive speed as occasional blizzard conditions send them literally flying backwards across the valley. I always wonder, “Why in God’s name are they here right now?” Then, suddenly, one warm evening in May, all the world is new and green again. The setting sun lights up a slowly undulating orb of fog banked against the mountains that rim the valley while a choir of spring peepers sing exultation to the world. After I search for 20 minutes to find a spot in which the geese haven’t yet pooped, I lie in the yard beside them, and we give each other a knowing nod of approval that spring has finally arrived in the Land of Canaan. w Cam Moore is a resident of Canaan Valley, the highest large val—hey, we said that already!—and a lover of all things West Virginia. highland-outdoors.com
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BLACK WALNUTS ON THE BLACK FORK CITIZEN SCIENCE CLOSE TO HOME
O
ur feet crunched along the snowy path as we stared up at the small forest canopy. I stopped at a decently large tree, its straight trunk criss-crossed with ridges of thick, gray bark. “What about this one,” I asked my good friend Frank Slider. As a certified West Virginia Master Naturalist, Frank knows his trees. He also knows his spring ephemerals, flowering shrubs, berries, mosses, and mushrooms, and, well, pretty much everything else you can find in the hills and hollows of the Mountain State.
A classic overcast winter sky lay draped over the ancient rolling ridges of Appalachia. My nostrils iced up with each inhalation of the frozen air being steadily ushered down the gorge of the Black Fork River, which drains some of the highest terrain in the Alleghenies. Forming at the confluence of the Dry Fork and Blackwater rivers, the Black Fork flows just two miles—making it West Virginia’s shortest river—before reaching its confluence with the Shavers Fork River in the rural town of Parsons.
“Pretty sure that’s a black locust,” Frank returned with a hint of uncertainty as he stared intently at the fissures in the bark. “You can look around the base of the trunk for debris,” he added. Identifying deciduous trees in the winter isn’t always about looking up, and this was my crash course in how to identify eastern black walnut (Juglans nigra) in the dormant season–meaning the tree has effectively shut down and offers no leaves with which to aid the observer.
After regaining my bearings, I began scanning the ground. The sound of the river riffling over its shallow bottom created a pleasantly ambient soundscape, providing a moment of Zen as we scoured the leaf litter for evidence of walnut husks. “Here’s some shells,” Frank shouted from down the trail. Just as he found his nutshell, I noticed a sapling with branches and twigs at headheight. I grabbed one of the soft and slender twigs in my hand, bringing it close to my face to discover the black walnut’s tell-tale “monkey face” leaf scar, which features three vascular bundles that once sent nutrients to the stem that has since fallen from the twig.
We were acting as citizen scientists, searching for eastern black walnut trees to geolocate and sample for the Adventure Scientists Timber Tracking Project—a project that seeks to create a database of genetic signatures of tree species that are targeted by illegal logging operations. 10 HIGHLAND OUTDOORS
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Having successfully identified several black walnuts, it was time to get to work collecting various data points: geographical
Dylan Jones
By Dylan Jones
location, tree measurements, twigs, and a core sample chock-full of unique DNA. Frank stood by and took photos while I followed the dormant season sampling protocol. “Man, this is legit,” Frank said as I pulled out the sampling kit containing all the accouterments—bar-coded envelopes, measuring tape, a fun saw-toss tool, an increment borer, beeswax, alcohol wipes, and silica desiccant—required to complete the process. After sampling, labels are scanned and the location is recorded via smartphone, and samples are sent back to Adventure Scientists, where the Timber Tracking database is built to aid in the fight against illegal logging. So far, Adventure Scientists has completed data collection for five threatened species: bigleaf maple, western redcedar, Alaska yellow cedar, coast redwood, and most recently, eastern black walnut.
Top, middle: Frank Slider. Bottom: Dylan Jones
According to Adventure Scientists volunteer manager Katya Koepsel, forest forensics is an up-and-coming field that can help prevent poachers from funneling illegal harvests into the global wood supply. Eastern black walnut, highly coveted for its richly colored and straightgrained wood, was once widely distributed across the country, but is now in decline as high lumber prices have ramped up the illicit efforts of timber poachers. Human DNA is unique, meaning typical criminal forensics are used to match a DNA sample to its individual owner. But with trees, regional genetic markers exist within communal sections of a species’ range. “Those genetic markers are going to be different between Vermont and Florida,” Koepsel said. “When a volunteer goes out and finds a tree and gets GPS coordinates to associate the tree with its genetic markers, that enables law enforcement to have a certain degree of confidence in identifying where the poached tree came from.” In 2004, the first case of forest genetics being successfully used to catch illegal logging played out in Indiana after researchers at Purdue University were able to match the genetic material from eastern black walnut and black cherry logs seized by authorities at a lumber yard to their original stumps over 60 miles away.
The first use of forest forensics in a federal criminal trial came in 2021 after a group of timber poachers in Washington State’s Olympic National Forest unintentionally started a massive forest fire in 2018 while trying to burn a wasp nest after cutting bigleaf maple trees under the cover of night. Tree DNA showed that timber they cut and sold to a local mill matched that of several stumps from the area where the fire had been started. Interestingly, the black walnut’s attributes aren’t all desirable: the species possesses fascinating natural properties as well. Black walnut is an allelopathic plant, meaning it secretes toxic chemicals that harm neighbors and prevent competition. Juglans nigra’s special cocktail is hydrojuglone, a nontoxic chemical that converts to toxic juglone when exposed to air. Juglone is insoluble in water and causes wilting of foliage in susceptible plants like woody shrubs and pines.
Adventure Scientists helps to show that sometimes, the destination—in this case, stopping illegal logging—is paramount to the journey. If you’re interested in participating in citizen science, check out the ongoing projects at www.adventurescientists.org. w Dylan Jones is publisher of Highland Outdoors and enjoyed his journey from Canaan Valley down to the mountain to the big city of Parsons.
After I completed the detailed steps of the sampling protocol, I sealed the envelope and walked down to shoot some photos of the Black Fork River. While taking in the stunning setting, I thought back to previous adventures during which I collected data for Adventure Scientists. From searching for pikas in the mountains of the American West to collecting water samples for the Global Microplastics project in Thailand, Costa Rica, Patagonia, and right here in West Virginia, contributing data to various Adventure Scientists projects has been at the core of my travels for a decade. Even though I was just a handful of casual miles from home after a half-day of work, I felt the same rush of excitement and accomplishment as I did while bottling glacial runoff on an untrodden trekking route in Chilean Patagonia. That is what’s so beautifully transcendent about citizen science—being part of something much larger than your own selfish outdoor pursuits adds intangible value to even the most mundane of outings. Decades of tired adventure writing tropes, focused solely on the self, have taught us that adventure is all about the journey, not the destination. But science is science and field work is important, regardless of the location or the journey required to get there. By beautifully blending the two concepts in its name,
Top, middle: The author extracts a core sample from an eastern black walnut. Bottom: Twigs are collected and a barcode is scanned with a GIS smartphone app to record geolocation data before the sample is mailed to a lab for processing.
highland-outdoors.com 11
MORE KIDS ON BIKES NICA IS TAKING WEST VIRGINIA BY STORM By Amanda Larch
Getting more kids on bikes is the primary goal of the National Interscholastic Cycling Association (NICA). The West Virginia Interscholastic Cycling League (WVICL) is the Mountain State’s branch of NICA, one of 31 state-specific leagues putting kids on pedals across the nation. NICA is an inclusive club open to any student in sixth through 12th grade that attends a public, private, or home school. Cassie Smith, WVICL league director and legendary West Virginia Mountain Bike Association (WVMBA) racer, has been integral throughout NICA’s rise in the Mountain State. “I’ve raced for a good many years in the local [WVMBA] series, and when I heard about NICA, I thought ‘We need this in West Virginia,’” Smith said. “West Virginia really is the grassroots of mountain biking.” When Smith saw the potential that NICA held, she rounded up an initial crew of administrators and submitted a successful bid to NICA’s national organization in 2016. WVICL was officially formed in 2017 with a year of league training followed by the inaugural race season in 2018. According to Smith, the original NICA bid planned for just 80 competitors but ended up with nearly 130 at the end of the first year. Now, just four years in, WVICL has nearly 400 student athletes competing on 14 teams across the state. According to Jodi Mondy, head coach of the Putnam County Pedalers, NICA is a great way for young students to get involved in a rewarding after-school program—especially for kids who may not find themselves in traditional school sports. “We all have the same goal throughout the state: to get more kids on bikes, to get them outside, to get them off 12 HIGHLAND OUTDOORS
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their phones, and help them build friendships and confidence,” Mondy said. Mondy’s son Kirk joined NICA in 2018, which sparked her involvement in the program. Since then, Mondy participated as WVICL league photographer and as a course marshal before becoming head coach of her own team. The Putnam County Pedalers split from the Kanawha River Wildcats in 2020 to accommodate the growing number of student athletes in the Putnam-Kanawha county region. “Our coaches start out as parents, just like myself,” Mondy said. “You do not have to be a great rider to be a fantastic coach.” For Hayden Smith, a 10th grader at Cabell Midland High School, participation in NICA has been transformative. Growing up hitting the slopes, skiing was Smith’s favorite sport and first outdoor love—until he discovered mountain biking. “It’s such a friendly environment, and everyone’s so positive; if you fall, no one laughs,” he said. “I’ve met all kinds of people who are so friendly and love the outdoors like I do.” With encouragement from Ed Curtis, Smith’s neighbor and coach of the Huntington Express WVICL team, Smith joined NICA and became an avid rider. Smith is so dedicated that he hand-cuts his own practice trails on his grandparents’ property. “I fell in love with the sport and dove in headfirst,” he said. “It’s improved my skills, endurance and my mental health in general, too, because all I can think about is mountain biking.” Mondy is also active in getting more girls on bikes and champions the national Girls Riding Together (GRiT) program. GRiT is an aptly named offshoot of NICA that aims to increase female participation by eliminating barriers and providing equal access to support systems, mountain bikes, and NICA itself, through various sponsorships. Currently, female ridership represents just 20% of NICA participation; GRiT aims to increase it to 33% by 2023. The program also strives to recruit more
female coaches across the nation. According to Mondy, female participation in WVICL is already at 33%, and Mondy’s team has some of the highest percentages of female participation in the state for both athletes and coaches. She and her student athletes visit other teams for female-only rides. “We’ll offer to do rides and take all of our girls because one team may not have that many girls, so we’ll get them excited about the GRiT program,” she said. “It’s to empower these girls.” Ellie Hoblitzell had never been on a mountain bike before she was encouraged by her dad to join NICA in 2019. After her first practice and conquering what she considered a tough learning curve, she fell in love with the sport. Currently an eighth grader at Mountaineer Montessori Middle School in Charleston, Hoblitzell is now a GRiT ambassador. “GRiT has been a way for me to get better at mountain biking,” Hoblitzell said. “I’ve been riding with other female athletes who are better than me and I can learn from them and become better myself. I feel like when I tell other girls about how it was hard for me to learn at the beginning, that inspires them and shows anybody can be a mountain biker.” But NICA hasn’t always been easy going. One challenge Cassie Smith and her team at NICA initially faced was finding venues for league races. When NICA’s national-level trainers traveled to West Virginia to help scout race locations, they discovered that many of the state’s notoriously technical trails, strewn with roots, rocks, and drops, were just too tough—especially for beginner riders. To help get the wheels rolling, Steve Jones, the superintendent of North Bend State Park in Ritchie County, contacted Smith to find out how to host NICA races at the park. Jones secured funding through the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources (DNR) for the building of a NICA-spec racetrack, which must meet
Clockwise from top left: Tracy Toler, Josh Edwards, Ashley Rider, Jeana Harrison, Jeana Harrison
S
ince 2018, a rapidly growing group of middle and high school students across the Mountain State have been hopping on mountain bikes to challenge themselves and race against their peers in a good-natured, competitive atmosphere.
Mia Fox, head coach of the Kanawha River Wildcats and co-coordinator of GRiT
“[North Bend] not only gave us a place to hold our events, but it also gave beginner riders the opportunity to get out and get a taste of what mountain biking can be without being totally overwhelmed with the rocks, roots, and steep hills,” Smith said. “We appreciate the DNR’s tremendous support so much.” As WVICL expands, it continues to look for more venues to accommodate the growing number of teams and athletes. Smith said her team would especially welcome additional state parks to host events. When considering a venue, criteria like parking, infield space, onsite camping, and trails suitable for beginners are key. Mondy said one of her favorite aspects of NICA is the opportunity to visit different state parks throughout the race season, which runs from August through November. Each race weekend, teams arrive at the venue on Friday, pre-ride the course on Saturday, and race on Sunday. Camping out is a major component of race weekends. “The thing that’s so wonderful about being a part of NICA, especially in today’s society where everybody’s all looking down on their phones, is being a family again,” she said. “On the weekends, you go to a beautiful state park and tent camp or stay at the lodge or get a cabin. It’s very family-oriented.”
criteria like course width, number and style of trail features, steepness, and other technical aspects. After the first successful Defend the Bend race, DNR representatives immediately became interested in adding NICA-spec trails in other state parks. Now, Canaan, Cacapon, Watters Smith, and
Twin Falls state parks have NICA-specific race courses, allowing WVICL to hold its series of events and providing year-round practice venues for teams. The trails are also open to hikers and bikers, allowing anyone with a mountain bike to chase the same thrills and challenges experienced by the NICA athletes.
To find a team, get your kid involved, or become a coach, visit westvirginiamtb.org. w Amanda Larch is copy editor of Highland Outdoors and a lifelong West Virginian. She enjoys reading, hiking, and antiquing, and is considering giving mountain biking a try. highland-outdoors.com 13
SKYL On Easter Sunday in 1939, Don Hubbard, Sam Moore, and Paul Bradt shook the morning snow off their sleeping bags and gathered their equipment as daylight broke behind the towering fin of Seneca Rocks. They did not stay in camp long; the weather was far too cold to lounge around. The team had a lofty goal in mind: to climb the southern portion of Seneca’s serrated gray and white ridgeline. Seneca’s North Peak is accessible by a steep hike, but its South Peak stands isolated, protruding nearly 900 feet above the valley floor, a place where stone and sky unite. Prior to Hubbard, Moore, and Bradt’s climb, any tale of a South Peak 14 HIGHLAND OUTDOORS
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summit was nothing but a rumor. Armed with a thick hemp rope, a few soft-iron pitons to hammer into cracks for anchoring themselves to the rock, and just three new devices called carabiners, the team set off across an old swinging bridge
LINE By Kyle Mills
above the North Fork of the South Branch Potomac River. By nightfall, they would make history by completing their bold route that traversed the iconic skyline of Seneca’s South Peak.
STONE & CLOUD I started climbing at Seneca in 2007, and have nearly wrecked my truck several times looking up at its hulking form. I cannot help but become hypnotized by the juxtaposition of sharply angled stone and rounded clouds dominating the landscape, where the rushing waters of Seneca Creek join the wide bends of the Potomac. I know exactly which turn on Route 33 reveals the first view of the iconic rock formation. I always say, “There
she is,” even when I’m alone. Seneca is the distillation of everything wonderful about the Monongahela National Forest—it is wild; it is adventurous; it is magnificent. And it’s ours to explore; be it through binoculars or while clinging to its sheer quartzite walls. But only those of us who have hung from its thin edges with one hand—while the other searches desperately for a decent hold—can understand the vastly different experiences of climbing Seneca compared to staring at it from the parking lot at Yokum’s General Store. Dave Martin knows Seneca as well as anyone and better highland-outdoors.com 15
before, but I was curious as to exactly how they pulled off their historic first ascent. “Oh, it’s a great route,” Dave said in between bites, “we should go climb it.” Two weeks later, Dave and I stood at the base of Seneca’s South End, looking up at the same scene that Hubbard, Moore, and Bradt likely saw before they reconnoitered their way to the summit some 83 years ago. Bradt described their first ascent in the October 1939 edition of the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club (PATC) Bulletin as starting at a “place near the south end where a slab had broken off obliquely to form a sort of steep and exposed stairway.” Seneca, however, wasn’t a new place to these early climbers. In 1935, Bradt and Florence Perry made the first documented roped descent by rappelling from the top of the easily accessible North Peak. In 1938, Bradt further pioneered a route into the Gunsight Notch from the walls of the North Peak. But the stand-alone summit of the South Peak, not accessible by hiking and guarded by sandstone walls over 300 feet tall, had not been explored by the team prior to their first ascent. I was chalking my hands at the base of the route and could feel the familiar sensation of nervousness and excitement while looking high up into the air at where I was about to venture. The sheer scale of Seneca tends to distort things a bit. The way up often looks straightforward from the ground, but things can quickly become interesting as you climb your way through chimneys, over ledges, and up large plates of rock slowly flaking off the wall. This was certainly an ambitious and audacious position for the 1939 team to begin their ascent.
ELVIS & BROADWAY SHOW
than most. Once a climbing guide at Seneca Rocks Mountain Guides, Dave is now director of the Spruce Knob Mountain Center. He’s also been my boss since I started working at the Mountain Center in 2016. One day during our lunch break, we started talking about the generations of Seneca climbers that established progressively harder routes over the years. When the conversation turned to the Skyline Traverse, I thought how exhilarating it must have been to quest into the unknown while using such minimal and archaic equipment. When I climb at Seneca, I have an arsenal of specialized gear and knowledge of each route that has been collectively compiled in the Seneca Rocks climbing guidebook. I read about Hubbard, Moore, and Bradt’s original Skyline Traverse route, but the description seemed somewhat ambiguous. I knew the original 1939 route started at the southern end of the South Peak and climbed a stair-stepping buttress to a large ledge. From the ledge, the team climbed north across the famous skyline to gain the summit. I had climbed some of this route 16 HIGHLAND OUTDOORS
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Seneca is a place of dichotomies: where countless firsttime climbers have fallen in love with rock climbing and where countless others have completely unraveled from the exposure, immediately swearing off the vertical life forever. I thought back to the 39ers. The cold weather was likely a factor on top of the gut-wrenching exposure when they made their ascent, and the prospect of the leader traversing this 10-foot section around the corner and then climbing into a steep, unknown gully remains an incredibly daring and respectable feat. I was even more impressed by their tenacity. I knew they were true adventurers from the stories I’ve heard, but following in their handholds, I realized just how skilled they were in a time before the modern sport of rock climbing. My appreciation for the first ascensionists grew exponentially as I
Courtesy Don Hubbard Collection
Don Hubbard descending ropeless on the South Peak.
Soon after leaving the ground, my left leg was shaking out of control—a phenomenon known among climbers as “Elvis leg.” I adjusted my right hand into a vertical crack for balance while I wedged a piece of climbing gear into the rock for protection; this is happening all while hanging above the huge and heart-palpitating precipice of the South End. As I was looking straight down at all that air between my feet and the tops of tall trees, I felt that familiar, nervous lump in my throat.
topped out on Lower Broadway Ledge, a ten-foot-wide stage on the East Face of the rocks that sometimes seems as crowded as Midtown Manhattan. From Humphrey’s Head (the first prominent side profile-shaped spire seen on the right side of the Seneca skyline), a short scramble down and back up to the north brought us to the Cockscomb Chimney. This is where the 1939 team encountered the crux, or the hardest part, of the traverse. Bradt described this imposing feature as the “only real difficulty… the large overhanging Cockscomb halfway between the South End and the Gunsight Notch. Here I drove my first piton. Although we tested it with a lusty three-man jerk, I was glad it was needed only for moral support.” The Cockscomb Overhang is steep, exposed, contains loose rock, and offers very little opportunity for protection in the event of a fall. To play it safe, Dave and I elected to do a variation of the original route that bypasses the chimney called the Cockscomb Pine Tree Traverse. Even with modern climbing gear—the likes of which the 39ers could only dream—I was perfectly happy to take a look at the Cockscomb Overhang and appreciate its history before safely climbing around it.
Bronson Lockwood
RUDIMENTARY TECHNIQUES The 1939 team’s climbing techniques were vastly different from ours, largely due to the lack of modern equipment. The long, dynamic (meaning stretchy) climbing ropes of today are tied into multiple points of safety-tested harnesses. While one person leads the climb, the other belays with a specialized device and can safely and quickly arrest a fall by the leader. Conversely, the shorter hemp rope the 1939 party used had little dynamic stretch—especially since there were no harnesses. A belayer simply wrapped the rope directly around their waist to provide what was called a hip belay. A fall with this setup could have the climber’s head quickly meeting their knees as their body violently snapped in half. These rudimentary techniques were used in outstanding early first ascents—like the Skyline Traverse—all over the world. Yavor Pernev follows in the 1939 team’s handholds and footsteps.
Kyle Mills starts a pitch on Seneca’s South End while Yavor Pernev belays.
The main safety system for old-time climbers was a simple mantra: the leader must never fall.
Top left: Paul Bradt in the Cockscomb Chimney. Photo courtesy Don Hubbard Collection. Bottom left: A rusting relic from a climb long in the past. This softiron piton is similar to the few used by the 1939 team. Photo by Bronson Lockwood.
Climbing a route in many short pitches, or individual sections, was the norm back then, which means the time-consuming process of anchoring oneself to the rock wall at the end of a pitch had to happen more often. I use a vast array of gear while climbing to continually and safely attach the rope (and myself) to the rock. The 39ers primarily anchored to natural mountain features like trees and chockstones naturally wedged in cracks. To use natural features for protection as they ascended, the leader had to find a stable position, untie the rope from their waist, thread the rope through or around the natural point, and then tie back in. Dropping the rope was tantamount to a death wish. Advancements like iron pitons and metal carabiners would not become popular until after World War II when army surplus stores began carrying them, so the precious few available to climbers before the war were used sparingly—what are now relatively easy and safe ascents were extremely bold and dangerous back then.
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Nowadays, we have racks with advanced gear like spring-loaded cams, wired nuts, aluminum carabiners, nylon slings, and specialized shoes with the stickiest rubber imaginable. “If those guys had the gear we had today; they’d be climbing just as hard as anyone,” Dave said after we traversed the Cockscomb and began gearing up for the final pitch to the summit. “They definitely had the mentality,” I said between chugs of water. “That last pitch would have been exciting in clunky, hobnailed boots with the rock still completely covered with lichen.”
HIGH IN THE SKY With the Cockscomb climbed, the 39ers traversed a narrow ridge to the middle of Windy Corner, where they climbed a short, overhanging crack filled with chockstones to arrive on the Summit Ledge. From here, they cruised upward until there was nothing else above them. On the 2,197-foot summit of the South Peak, they built a small rock cairn to mark their achievement and took a picture of themselves triumphantly braced against the wind.
Bradt’s description in his PATC Bulletin write-up represents the first-known written description of the South Peak summit, providing context for anyone who had looked up at Seneca and wondered what it was like on top: “At this peak, the rock is about six feet wide, or one should say thick, and drops substantially vertically a couple hundred feet on both the east and west sides. To the north, the rock drops more gently for a hundred feet into the Gunsight Notch.”
Bronson Lockwood
Dave and I ate lunch on the summit in a warm summer breeze while turkey vultures soared high above the ground yet still far below our throne. I soaked in the exposure as clouds floated over the Allegheny Front seemingly at eye level to the west. Perched high in the sky on that giant Silurian-age sandcastle, I thought about our state motto of Montani Semper Liberi, Latin for “mountaineers are always free.” The freest I’ve ever felt are the days I’ve spent high on Seneca. The adrenaline rush of the climb faded as a rolling calm settled over me. I simply wanted to stay there in that South Summit moment forever, where time and the horizon line stretch off into the hazy blue of eternity.
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Left: Don Hubbard straddling the narrow summit of Seneca’s South Peak. Right: From left to right: Paul Bradt, Sam Moore, Don Hubbard.
“As the sun was getting low, we started exploring the way down into the Gunsight Notch. The two rocks which we had hoped to use as belays in roping down were not suitable; so we explored other possibilities. A climb directly from the South Peak into the Gunsight was abandoned as too doubtful for climbers who had been in the cold wind all day. Finally we climbed down part way, then Sam roped down the east side for fifty feet while I held the rope on a firm but small belay. Thus suspended, Sam was level with the notch and only about twenty feet from it; so it was an easy matter for him to run back and forth on the vertical wall until he was swinging enough to reach handholds in the notch. While this procedure was perfectly safe for anyone who knows the rope as Sam does, he said he would have felt a mite easier if it had been more like daylight at the time.”
Once in the Gunsight Notch, Bradt could follow the route to the North Peak he had scouted in 1938. But this time around, it was dark and Bradt had to use what he called the “touch system” to climb by feeling his way up a large ledge to reach the summit of the North Peak and the hiking trail. Halfway down the established trail from the top, the 39ers met a rescue party charging up the mountain to initiate a search since they had not returned before dark. If there is ever a beat-up white truck with a lot of stickers on it in the Seneca parking lot after dark, that’s me. I am somewhat 20 HIGHLAND OUTDOORS
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infamous for allowing myself to become benighted—watching the sunset from the South Peak never gets old. I’m also a caver and possess no qualms about rappelling in the dark. But there has been a memorable time (or three) where my headlamp was not in my pack and I had to stumble down the steep climber’s trail using Bradt’s touch system. While the 1939 Skyline Traverse was the first officially documented climb of Seneca’s South Peak, the 39ers found an inscription carved into the summit that read “D.B. Sept. 16, 1908.” Although the 1939 team clearly wasn’t the first to stand atop the South Peak, this legendary route remains an outstanding climb. This winding multi-pitch journey was likely the longest rock climb in eastern North America at the time, and it was done in bold style up an aesthetic and athletic route. Looking up at Seneca from the Discovery Center parking lot as we put our gear in the truck, my eyes traced the skyline and the route we had just climbed. I traced other imaginary routes over the towering face. All these routes present genuine opportunities for adventure like that experienced by Bradt, Hubbard, and Moore. I envisioned a lifetime’s worth of elevated days spent reigning atop the world. Just the thought of being in some of those exposed positions shot electricity into my toes, and I automatically started cracking my knuckles in anticipation of the next quartzite quest on Seneca. I thanked Dave for a great day as we got in the car. “We’ll have to come back soon,” he said. I took one more look up at the giant fin and took a deep breath. “I can’t wait.” w Kyle Mills is a writer, outdoor educator, and climbing guide. He lives at the Spruce Knob Mountain Center and is working on a book about his adventures in the North Fork Valley.
Courtesy Don Hubbard Collection
Seneca is a place of unrelenting balance and getting to the top is only half the adventure—one must also get down. In excellent style, the 39ers didn’t settle for going back the way they came. Bradt’s 1939 PATC Bulletin article details their continuation into the unknown:
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MASSACRE-ENCE
A RACE FOR THE
MASSES
WORDS BY JESS DADDIO PHOTOS BY GABE DEWITT
O
n the first Friday of May, a kaleidoscope of some 100 boaters will once again line bow-to-bow behind the bridge pylons on the Cheat River downstream from Albright for the start of the Cheat River Massacre-ence. Unofficially considered the largest mass-start downriver race in the country, the Massacre-ence marks the beginning of the spring paddling season for many in the Mid-Atlantic. It’s an annual tradition that has taken place in some form or fashion since 1996, the first year a motley crew of off-the-clock raft guides raced each other in hard boats through the 10.6-mile-long class III-IV Cheat Canyon. That a downriver race in rural West Virginia should not only survive but thrive for 26 years speaks to the region’s legacy of canoe and kayak racing. Just up the road in Friendsville, Maryland, the Upper Yough Race has been taking place every summer since 1981. Though popular among local paddlers and top-level wildwater racers, it wasn’t until whitewater slalom returned to the Summer Olympics in 1992 that regional fervor for whitewater racing truly exploded. In the spring of 1992, the U.S. Olympic Team Trials were held not far from the Cheat on the Savage River in western Maryland. A year later in the fall of 1993, the Upper Gauley in southern West Virginia hosted the Animal, its very first downriver race. It was only natural, then, that a few years later, the Cheat would host a river race of its own. Yet from the very beginning, it was clear that the race on the Cheat was different from those on the Upper Yough and Upper Gauley. Unlike the Youghiogheny and Gauley rivers, the Cheat is free-flowing for all 162 meandering miles of its length from the town of Parsons to Cheat Lake outside of Morgantown. That fact makes the Cheat not only wild in feel but also wildly inconsistent in flows. “The Cheat can go from 1.5 feet to 6 feet overnight,” says Rob Vorhees, organizer of the Cheat River Massacre-ence from 1996-1999. “There are five different tributaries that provide the Cheat with all of the water it needs to flow. Before the internet, you had to rely on telephone gauges and if you didn’t know the local Albright-ians Jimmy and Jeff Snyder and couldn’t pick their brains, you just didn’t know what levels you were getting.” Between 2.5 and 3.5 feet on the Albright river gauge, what many consider optimum race levels, the Cheat’s big waves and boulder-studded rapids are hardly technical, especially compared to those on the Upper Yough. But if it rained upstream across any of the Five Forks of the Cheat—the Black, Dry, Glady, Laurel, and Shavers forks— the Cheat’s play24 HIGHLAND OUTDOORS
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Above: The Sweets of the East, a women’s raft racing team based in Fayetteville. Right: Robert Goo happily paddled in the tandem kayak class with Bob Pollock.
ful nature could quickly turn monstrous. In 1985, the Cheat famously rose from 2.5 feet to 30 feet in 24 hours, unleashing a flood that effectively wiped Albright and many other Preston County towns in its watershed off the map. Early racer and present-day Cheat River Massacre-ence race organizer Heather Rau has experienced the power of a surging Cheat firsthand. The year was 2002 and race-day levels had crested five feet on the Albright gauge. Though Rau was a strong kayaker who paddled the Cheat often, she had never seen the river that big. Other than Colleen Laffey, the three-time women’s champion who was filming instead of racing that day, Rau was the only woman on the water. When then-race organizer Rick Gusic sounded the starting horn at 5:30 p.m., Rau could feel her heart hammering in her chest. “I was committed to doing it, but I was scared to death,” says Rau. “I remember getting to [the Colosseum rapid] and looking downstream and it just looked like a thunderous ocean. There was not one rock exposed.” A treacherous hole surfed Rau till she swam out of her kayak, but with the help of other racers, she recovered her gear and paddled safely to the finish at Jenkinsburg Bridge. Another racer in a wildwater boat—a long (14 ft, 9 in) and narrow (23.6 in) racing kayak—was not so lucky and was forced to walk the 2.5 miles back to Albright from the Big Nasty rapid after a massive hole munched his boat and broke it into pieces. Yet even when water levels are low or perfect, racing the Cheat is always turbulent. Unique to the race is its mass start, a format Vorhees borrowed from his motorcycle racing days. Imagine over 100 different kayaks and rafts—and nearly double that number in paddle blades—charging downstream, all vying for position as they head toward Decision, the first rapid of the Cheat Canyon section. “You’re just trying to survive the wake,” says Scott Stough, a veteran Cheat River racer who has competed in the Massacre-ence nearly every year since its inception. “The surge is just crazy. You’re getting washed all over the place.” Some years, Stough has witnessed the mayhem from afar. Other years, he’s been in the heart of it. At the start, Stough once nearly knocked a guy’s teeth out with his paddle blade. During a low-water year in the middle of the High Falls rapid, he saw local paddler Chara Whittemore piton bow-first into a rock so hard she broke her seat. Stough himself has broken boats and paddles numerous times while racing. He once had to swim at Decision after his paddle blade snapped off mid-stroke. highland-outdoors.com 25
A wildwater race boat is an ideal craft for slicing through the flatwater pools that punctuate the Cheat’s rowdy whitewater rapids.
Racing the Cheat is decidedly full-contact. Stough has been hit by other racers’ boats more times than he can count. Once, his boat cracked from the impact and took on water the rest of the race. Another time he was literally “speared” in the spine by a pointy boat, which not only knocked the wind out of him but also flipped his boat and made him swim. Stough, now 62, knows the Cheat better than most racers, but if there’s anything his 20-plus years of racing the Cheat has taught him, it’s that anything can happen during the Massacre-ence. “It’s kinda chaotic,” says seven-time overall champion Geoff Calhoun. “It’s an experience worth having if you’re a paddler, even if you’re not a competitive paddler. It’s a race for everyone.” Part of that inclusion is by design. There’s a class for every type of watercraft imaginable, from wildwater race boats to rafts and tandem kayaks. The river itself, when it’s not flooding, is welcoming, too. Though it is a remote canyon that requires solid class III-IV paddling skills, it’s drop-pool in nature, meaning the larger rapids are broken up by long flatwater pools. Three-time women’s champion Chara Whittemore says the race is special in that it meets boaters at every stage of their paddling. The Massacre-ence attracts paddlers of all kinds, from members of the U.S. Wildwater Team to 15-year-old playboaters and everyone in between. She herself has both raced to win but also to enjoy the experience of racing alongside her teenage daughter. “There’s always such a fun sense of rivalry,” she says. “The Cheat allows for a little more variety in who can race.” More than the unique race format or the region’s legacy of world-class paddlers, what has made the Cheat River Massacre-ence such a success for so many years is no doubt a reflection of the race’s longtime organizer Rick Gusick. A talented boater who deeply loved the Cheat River, Gusick was beloved for his quirky paddling videos and fun-first ethos. The race’s moniker “massacre-ence” was Gusick’s own play on the “mass occurrence” of chaos and kayaks that took place on the Cheat each spring. After a quiet battle with cancer, Rick Gusick passed away in 2019. “He looked at things differently than a lot of other people on the river,” Stough remembers of Gusick. “He was always trying to find a laugh and that’s probably the thing I miss about him the most.” This year’s Massacre-ence will be dedicated to the quick-witted, hard-paddling, river-loving man who organized the race for 20 years. Join us in honoring Gusick’s legacy with a weekend of paddling, camaraderie, and good times at this year’s Cheat River Festival, hosted by the Friends of the Cheat in Albright. w Jess Daddio is a Virginia-based multimedia journalist with a big soft spot for West Virginia. Her greatest achievement has been resisting the pandemic urge to make sourdough bread. When she is not neck-deep in a story, she can usually be found actively avoiding adulting in the woods.
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Little Gems
BY NIKKI FORRESTER
I
t’s nearly impossible for me to visualize spring as I stare out into the sepia expanse of Canaan Valley in March. The ground remains frozen, the grass is brittle, and the trees are still resting in their denuded states. Yet I can always recall the feeling I get when life—finally—returns to the landscape. I remember the warmth of the sun on my face, the rich smell of thawing soil, and the excitement of seeing those first sprouts of tender, neon leaves. The transition to spring feels simultaneously endless and abrupt. It’s a rejuvenation of life, stretched out just long enough to savor every bit and just short enough that I never take it for granted.
damage to their cells.
Perhaps no organisms have mastered this explosive revival better than the spring ephemerals. As their name suggests, these plants cram their entire aboveground lifespan into just two months, rushing to produce leaves, flowers, fruits, and seeds while the sunlight filters through naked treetops. They paint barren forest floors in lush, colorful mats, only to disappear underground once the temperatures rise and the canopies green.
In contrast to their aboveground, ephemeral nature, these plants are long-lived perennials. Researchers estimated that some trout lily populations are 200 to 300 years old and can be even older in undisturbed forests. This old age may be attributed to their ability to reproduce clonally though the growth and separation of their belowground structures. This form of reproduction is particularly important for spring ephemerals in North America, which often take a long time to produce flowers and seeds due to their slow growth rates. Trout lilies require eight years to mature; ramps typically take seven to ten years to grow from seed to a flowering plant.
“I love the intricate beauty of these wildflowers set in this wild, rugged terrain of West Virginia,” says Emily Grafton, a naturalist based in Vienna, West Virginia. “Exploring these deep hollows reveals one beautiful treasure after another. They’re like little gems in the forest.” Dwarf larkspur (Delphinium tricorne) hosts towering stalks of purple stars, while the flowers of spring beauties (Claytonia virginica) showcase fine pink and purple stripes. The flowers of Dutchman’s breeches (Dicentra cucullaria) look comically similar to inflated, upside-down pantaloons. Squirrel corn (Dicentra canadensis) features fluffy, fern-like leaves, while the mottled leaves of trout lily (Erythronium americanum) earn the plant its name. The magnificence of spring ephemerals is further emphasized when viewed from afar. Ramps (Allium tricoccum) and Virginia bluebells (Mertensia virginica) can coat every inch of a hillside in tender greens and cornflower blooms, if only for a moment.
ELEGANT ADAPTATIONS West Virginia’s ancient hills and hollows create an array of habitats for spring ephemerals, which typically sprout up in March and wither by late May or early June. While often small in stature, spring ephemerals have devised mighty adaptations to withstand the challenges of a thawing world. They absorb water and nutrients extremely efficiently at low soil temperatures, sometimes with the aid of mutualistic mycorrhizal fungi. Upgrades to their photosynthetic machinery allow spring ephemerals to rapidly convert intense sunlight into carbohydrates that fuel their growth, while avoiding
Although their aboveground life cycle is limited to a few months, spring ephemerals have belowground structures, such as bulbs, tubers, rhizomes, and corms, that help the plants persist throughout the rest of the year. As temperatures warm and tree leaves limit the sunlight reaching the forest floor, spring ephemerals begin to senesce, transferring nutrients from their leaves into their belowground structures. This energy will eventually be used to support shoot and root growth in the autumn, winter, and the following spring.
Along with adaptations to the environment, spring ephemerals have evolved specialized relationships with insects. Most spring ephemeral plants are pollinated by native solitary bees, bumble bees, and flies. “Trillium is thought to attract flies as its pollinator because of its stinkiness,” says Kristen Wickert, a naturalist currently based in Lewisburg, West Virginia. Although not technically a spring ephemeral because it keeps its leaves throughout the summer, red trillium (Trillium erectum) is also called stinking Benjamin. “It smells like rotting fruit and flesh. It’s putrid,” says Wickert. In exchange for pollination services, the spring ephemerals provide nectar and pollen to native insects, making them a critical food source early in the season. Ants are also critical partners that help many spring ephemerals, including trilliums, Dutchman’s breeches, squirrel corn, and trout lilies, spread their seeds throughout the forest. To entice the ants, the plants produce a special structure called an elaiosome. “It’s just a little attachment on the seed of fat and oil,” says Wickert. The ants, lured by the elaiosomes, carry the seeds back to their nests and discard the seeds in their nutrient-rich waste heaps. In this symbiotic relationship known as myrmecochory, the ants get a tasty treat and the seeds are transferred to suitable habitats, where they can germinate and avoid competition with their parent plants.
Clockwise from top left: Yellow trout lily, Virginia bluebells, dwarf ginseng, Dutchman’s breeches, bleeding heart, squirrel corn. All photos by David Johnston.
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60 YEARS OF WATCHING WILDFLOWERS
“People come from all levels of knowledge and interest. They just want to get out and see new wildflowers,” says Emily Grafton, who attended her first wildflower pilgrimage around 1976 and started leading field trips a decade later. A variety of field trips are offered that venture to Spruce Knob, Cathedral
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State Park, Fernow Forest, Otter Creek, and various places around Canaan Valley. Expert botanists are joined by birders to help participants identify species that they see and hear. “You see wildflowers, but you also see all the beauty of the topography, the geography, the geology, and the trees,” says Grafton. “Just seeing people’s eyes light up when you show them a plant and encourage them to look closer—the camaraderie and joy spreads to the whole group.” To learn more about the pilgrimage and pre-register, email Debbie McVey at debbie.l.mcvey@wv.gov or call 304-352-5160.
Dylan Jones
The West Virginia Wildflower Pilgrimage will celebrate its 60th anniversary this year. Hosted by the WV Garden Club and the WV Division of Natural Resources, the annual pilgrimage usually attracts 300 people from more than a dozen states. The 2022 pilgrimage will take place May 5 - 8 at the Blackwater Falls State Park Lodge and feature a weekend of field trips, workshops, and flower-fueled friendship.
PRESSURED POPULATIONS And yet, like so many other species, the lovely spring ephemerals are vulnerable to population declines due to invasive species, climate change, and deer browsing. Because spring ephemerals require ample amounts of water and nutrients, they are often limited to growing along waterways in rich forest soils. “The river and stream areas where we find some of the best spring ephemerals are some of the more biodiverse areas in the state,” says Doug Manning, a biologist at the New River Gorge National Park and Preserve, Gauley River National Recreation Area, and Bluestone National Scenic River. “They are also some of the most vulnerable places to plant invasion, particularly shrubs like bush honeysuckles, multiflora rose, and privet,” he says. Invasive plants can occupy spaces where spring ephemerals would otherwise grow and disrupt interactions between native plants and insects. For example, the West Virginia white (Pieris virginiensis) is an endangered butterfly in Appalachia that lays its eggs on cutleaf toothwort (Cardamine concatenata), a spring ephemeral. “But they get confused with the presence of garlic mustard because the plants are closely related. The adult butterfly will lay its eggs on the invasive garlic mustard, but the garlic mustard has a chemical compound that kills the caterpillars,” says Wickert, further threatening the already endangered species. “It’s only going to get worse if invasive species keep taking over the real estate that the endemic, native spring ephemerals once took up.” Climate change is also impacting interactions between spring ephemerals and their native pollinator species by potentially driving mismatches in when they emerge. As the planet warms, many flowering species have started blooming earlier. A study conducted in West Virginia found that two spring ephemeral species, cutleaf toothwort and the yellow trout lily, have started blooming six days earlier, on average. If there are fewer pollinators out at that time, then the spring ephemerals, which already have a short growing period, may have reduced reproductive rates that can ultimately lead to population declines. While climate change poses long-term risks, the abundant deer populations in West Virginia are already negatively impacting some spring ephemerals. “It’s tragic,” says Grafton, who describes walking along a steep slope down to a creek in Babcock State Park. “There was a velvety carpet of either squirrel corner or Dutchman’s breeches. It was amazing, but I don’t see that now. The deer don’t have anything else to eat, so they’re eating the ground cover.”
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A West Virginia white butterfly (left) lays its eggs on cutleaf toothwort, a native spring ephemeral (right). Photos by David Johnston.
Thankfully, Grafton says, West Virginia still hosts wonderful pockets of diverse spring ephemerals and there are actions we can take to ensure they stick around in the future. She encourages everyone to be mindful of where they’re hiking to avoid trampling spring wildflowers and to think carefully about what they plant in their gardens. Invasive and ornamental plants can escape and overrun natural areas currently occupied by spring ephemerals. Harvesting and transplanting spring ephemerals is also leading to population declines in some species, so it’s best to leave these precious plants in the ground. When I talked to Wickert, she had just planted some ramp seeds. “If you are planting them via seed, be patient. They require two years to establish and put out a leaf,” she says. “Spring ephemerals are in it for the long game.” Elaiosomes on bloodroot seeds. Photo by Patrick Coin.
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Their ability to persist deep in the soil for hundreds of years is precisely what permits them to burst into vibrant displays each spring that roll like waves across the ancient mountains of Appalachia. “You get to watch spring in stages,” says Manning. “It’s this unique time of year where you can be out in the woods with the sun shining and all these amazing flowers around you.” Protecting wildflowers and the habitats in which they grow preserves not only the rejuvenating feeling of spring, but also the knowledge that, in just a few fleeting months, we’ll be able to frolic among a sea of little gems. w Nikki Forrester is senior editor and designer of Highland Outdoors. She loves putting on her plantaloons and venturing into the spring woods to inspire her flowery writing.
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SHOOT THE MOON By Dylan Jones
I
n October of 2020, photographers Perry Bennett, David Johnston, and Jesse Thornton met in a field along Seneca Creek to point an arsenal of cameras at Seneca Rocks. Their lenses weren’t focused on the iconic twin peaks of the sandstone fin, but on the empty space in between and what occupied it—a human balanced on a thin piece of webbing, seemingly floating in the void. But disappointment for both parties filled the airwaves as messaged crackled between walkie talkies. Although the feat was indeed amazing, it was missing one quintessential element: the full moon. If you read Once in a Blue Moon in our winter 2020 issue, you’re likely familiar with this story. If not, welcome to the show, for this is one cosmic tale of grit, determination, calculation, and, ultimately, redemption.
A Prophetic Experience The origins of this project date back to 2015, when prolific slackliner Hai Thai was the first person to walk the distance of a highline strung above the Gunsight Notch— the void between Seneca’s North and South peaks. Slacklining is the act of walking on a one-inch-wide piece of webbing that is tensioned between two anchor points; highlining is the act of walking a line higher than ten meters above the ground, typically with a harness and safety tether to catch a fall. According to Thai, a 12-year slacklining veteran based in Washington, DC, the moon was full when the team originally rigged the line. Well aware of the potential photography opportunities presented by the Gunsight Notch, Thai prophetically named this new line Shoot the Moon after completing his initial walk. “The aesthetics of a highline are a big part of it,” Thai said. “We’re
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creating a bridge, and then we’re becoming the artists by being out on the line. I appreciate a line for the experience of being on it and looking out into the view.” Five years later, Thornton and Johnston were photographing a summer meteor shower above Seneca Rocks. The next morning, Thornton saw the Steel City Slackers—a Pittsburgh-based slackline group—walking the Gunsight highline and was astounded. He posted photos on social media and, with the help of Bennett, tracked down the slackers. Together, they hatched grand plans to realize Thai’s vision and shoot for the moon.
Astronomical Precision Bennett, Johnston, and Thornton would be the photography team on the ground and the Steel City slackers, led by Wade Desai, would rig and walk the line when the full moon was scheduled to rise within the Gunsight Notch. One major question stood in their way: when would this happen? Moreover, how would the photography team know exactly when and where to be on the ground? As they dug in, it became clear that this would require a feat of extreme precision. Johnston used a photography app, star charts, and some advanced mathematics to pinpoint the time and location for the shoot. “David’s a magician,” Thornton said. “I think anyone could eventually shot the moon in the notch just through trial and error, but the degree of precision that David is capable of is on a whole other level.” On October 28, 2020, the Blue Moon was scheduled to rise in the lower left corner of the Gunsight at 6:23 p.m. The various team members rallied in a field adjacent to Seneca Creek, sorting gear and going through plans for the shoot. The line was rigged, the cameras were set, Minutes after tensioning the line, a well-timed flock of birds made an appearance as Wade Desai completed his moonwalk. Photo by Perry Bennett
A missed opportunity: the full moon rose in the Gunsight Notch in November 2021 but the highliners called it off at the last minute due to a cloudy forecast. Photo by David Johnston
and the slackliners got into their positions on either end of the line. But the spiraling arms of a tropical storm to the south interfered. Instead of a full moon, the slackers appeared to walk in a thick, grey soup of clouds. The disappointment was palpable. “Is this actually possible?” Desai said. After the failed Blue Moon attempt, the team held its resolve. Although Johnston saw that the moon wouldn’t rise again in the Gunsight from their exact position in the field for another four years, he had a hunch they’d be able to try again much sooner. “When I expanded to all the open areas where you can see Seneca Rocks, I found a whole lot more opportunities,” Johnston said. It’s time for a crash course in object relativity. In photography, the apparent size of an object in an image can be changed simply by moving the shooting location toward or away from the object. For the moonshot, it was all about the distance from the Gunsight Notch. The moon is so far from Earth—238,900 miles—that it will look the same regardless of where you stand. “But how far you are from the notch does make a difference,” Johnston said. “The further you get, the notch appears smaller while the moon remains the same size. So, relatively speaking, the moon appears larger in the notch.” While a larger moon makes for a more dramatic image, it also ups the need for precision. The larger the moon appears in the frame, the less time you have you to nail the shot. “The moon moves approximately one diameter, meaning its lower edge passes where its upper edge was, about every two minutes,” Johnston said. “If there are only two moon-diameters in the notch, you’ve only got a few minutes. If you’re closer to the notch, meaning the moon will appear smaller, you’ve got more moon diameters and more time to get the shot.”
A Missed Opportunity Johnston and Thornton kept returning to Seneca to test each new spot to validate Johnston’s calculations. “I’ve got a pretty good catalog of the moon rising in the Gunsight Notch under various lighting conditions, but obviously it was missing that final element of the highliners,” Johnston said. That opportunity came in November 2021 when Johnston had identified that the full moon would rise in the notch on back-to-back evenings right at sunset (optimal for good lighting) and in the furthest possible viewing position along Seneca Creek (meaning the moon would appear larger in the notch). But once
Wade Desai is seen taping—the process of securing the backup line in intervals—the highline as the moon appears on-schedule in the Gunsight Notch. Just minutes, later Desai stood up to walk the line right as the moon rose into prime position. Photos by Jesse Thornton
again, the notoriously unpredictable weather of Central Appalachia looked to stymie things—at least according to meteorologists. The forecast called for 80% cloud cover, and the photography team told the slackers, who would be travelling from Pittsburgh, to call it off. “We didn’t recommend they drive all the way here and set up and do all this for nothing,” Johnston said. “It seemed like a pretty low likelihood of success.” Johnston and Thornton decided to go and see how the scene played out. The first night, the clouds appeared as expected. But the second night, a bright moon filled out the Gunsight Notch with nary a cloud in sight. The one-two punch of the failed Blue Moon attempt and the missed November opportunity galvanized the slackers. “We were kicking ourselves, and agreed the next time we were super committed regardless of the weather,” Thai said.
December to Remember The next opportunity was December 15, 2021, when Johnston had pinpointed a Gunsight moonrise right around 4 p.m. from a location in a field near the Seneca Rocks Discovery Center. The team started viewing the weather about a week out, seeing a marginal forecast calling for cloud cover yet again. But on the day of the attempt, morning clouds cleared out and a few wispy clouds lingered above North Fork Mountain to the east—things were finally looking up. Thai and Desai were the only two slackers who could make it down for this attempt, adding to the challenge. With only two people to haul gear, climb both of Seneca’s peaks, rig the line, and tension it, the bar had officially been raised. The dynamic duo, each schlepping a 50-pound pack, headed up Seneca’s sheer rock face. “We had given ourselves four hours of buffer, which seemed like enough, but we didn’t really factor in how long it would take with just two people because that doubles the time to rig,” Thai said.
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As the slackers climbed, the photography team set up at Johnston’s precise location. Each photog had two cameras to catch a variety of shots; Thornton also piloted a drone to film a bird’s eye view of the rigging. The slackers executed their rigging plan with precision, but time was passing quickly. The drama, soon to be followed by the moon, started rising. The anchor building and line rigging processes must be done properly, meaning the highliners had no room to cut corners. “While Wade was rigging the North Peak anchor, I was hanging out waiting and felt my stress levels rising,” Thai said. According to Johnston’s calculations, the line needed to be rigged by 4 p.m.; one of the slackers needed to be out standing on the line minutes after to appear in front of the moon as it drifted into position. “Wade climbed up behind me at 3:55, and we had some final last-minute things to check off,” Thai said. “He went over to check the North Peak anchor, and just as I finished padding the South Peak anchor, it was four o’clock on the dot.” The photography team radioed to the slackers that it was go-time. To come all this way and set up all this equipment just to miss the moon by a minute was not an option. “There was a lot of anticipation building,” Johnston said. “Watching the slackliners get everything into place literally one minute before, the tension was palpable.”
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Hai Thai triumphantly walks on the moon. Photo by David Johnston
As if it was scripted by a Hollywood director, Desai got out on the line and stood up right as the shot lined up for the photographers. “There’s this moment when you finally pull the line tight and you feel the tension and the energy out there,” Desai said. “I felt that in the moment we all saw the moon.” Thornton and Bennett couldn’t believe it was happening. “Even as it’s going on, I’m thinking something’s gonna go wrong,” Thornton said. “Like I forgot to put the memory card in the camera, or I’ve missed focus or something else. But everything came together perfectly. You couldn’t have orchestrated more perfect timing.”
A Cosmic Experience Although the photographers were focused on getting their shots, the visceral experience of witnessing the event was not lost on them. “When the moon appeared in the notch right as predicted, that was a thrill just as it had been the previous times,” Johnston said. “Seeing how big the moon looked compared to the slackliner in front of it, seeing that actually appear before our eyes, was pretty amazing.” As soon as Desai knew the team had achieved their first shots, he immediately dropped onto his safety tether and slide to the North Peak anchor so Hai could get out on the line for a few photos. “As soon as I heard David say they got it, I thought ‘This is
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only 50% done.’ I felt a sense of partnership with Hai. I don’t think it would have been the same without him to share it with.” Thai got out just in time to get the remaining minute in front of the moon before it drifted above the Gunsight Notch. “There was a lot of pressure on our shoulders with the timing of the day and all the months of buildup,” Thai said. “Once we heard those magic words of ‘We got the shot,’ the weight on our shoulders lifted.” The photography team was just as ecstatic. After they nabbed enough shots to call it a day, Johnston brought out a couple celebratory beers as the moon continued its upward trajectory among emerging stars. “We were jumping up and down, screaming that we got it,” Bennett said. “It was just so beautiful.” For Hai, the first person to walk the Shoot the Moon highline some seven years ago, this project was the ultimate manifestation of the lunar cycle. “It was the realization of a dream, of what we had imagined before we ever even rigged the line,” he said. “That dream comes into the mind when you look up at that notch and you imagine a person standing out there on a line in the moon. It was a really good feeling to see it come full circle.” w Dylan Jones was mega bummed to miss this successful event, but vows to be there for future projects (hint hint). Stay tuned!
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PRECARIOUS FLOW OUTDOOR ADVENTURING DOESN’T HAVE TO BE AN EXTREME FEAT By Tara Morris to heal my physical health.
I’m 39 years old and grew up ripping through the woods. I don’t intend to stop anytime soon, despite battling a debilitating low-back injury. Fourteen years ago, I dislocated my left sacroiliac joint, which attaches the pelvis to the lower spine and provides support, stability, and helps absorb impact when walking and lifting objects.
I’ve given up the things that hurt me (rafts, hardtail bikes, hot yoga, and cheap beer) and found the things my body can tolerate (an inflatable kayak, a full-suspension bike, easy yoga, and sparkling water). It wasn’t easy letting go of the things I once loved, but it was a necessary transition so I could keep adventuring outside. I don’t rip so much these days as precariously flow, and I rest and recover a lot. Now, I have shoes from a dozen categories: hikers, walkers, bike shoes, river shoes, seasonal shoes, Chacos (seven pairs), dress-up shoes, house shoes, work shoes, and yard shoes. They all serve a specific purpose, despite my husband’s confusion.
At the time, I was working as a raft guide on the Chattooga River in southeast Georgia and South Carolina. I was living in a bungalow, surrounded by friends, and had a flip phone I barely used. While loading rafts after a trip on a hot day in July 2008, I accidentally caught a 90-pound raft against my chest from the top of a school bus and was crushed to the ground. I heard and felt a pop and could hardly stand back up. Although I only took a few weeks off from work, sacroiliac joint dysfunction came in like a wrecking ball to my carefree twenties. I clung to the river scene for as long as I could, but the more I avoided acceptance the worse the pain and dysfunction got. I finally had to give up paddling to heal. In 2010, I ended my work as a raft guide, and I didn’t start paddling regularly again until 2018. During that time, I lost far more than my sport. I became disconnected from the community and Mother Nature. My mental health dwindled, forcing me to figure out how
Because I spent so much time ignoring my injury, it took so much longer to figure it out and fix it. My entire back became a rigid muscle spasm of severe pain and immobility. Although my chronic injury put me on a jarring roller coaster of emotion, I was determined to paddle and longed for river days with my friends and family. Over time, I put in the work to recover and build strength, and most importantly, I found the right toys and gear.
Once I had a decent handle on my haunting back injury, I started mountain biking. Even though I learned on a hardtail, I’ll never go back. Sure, a hardtail is more affordable, requires less maintenance, and some will argue that it teaches you to be a better rider, but what’s it worth if you’re fighting your bike or hurting after every ride? I saw a drastic improvement in my riding when I upgraded to a plush and joint-saving full-suspension mountain bike. Whether it’s your knees, wrists, back, or anything in between, the suspension will always soften the impact on your body. My bike came with a hefty price tag, but it’s the only way I can keep riding the rocky trails I love so dearly. I don’t ride
Courtesy Tara Morris
I
did most of my outdoor play as a child in barn boots, jellies, and cheap sneakers. I didn’t think twice about it—I was resilient and unscathed by the wear and tear of injuries. I didn’t have many shoes to choose from, nor did I need the variety. As a teenager, I went barefoot on the river but eventually upgraded to duct-taping cheap flip-flops to my feet. After graduating college, I purchased my first quality river sandals and hiking boots. Those were big splurges, but necessary as my outdoor endeavors became more demanding.
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an e-bike yet, but I sure will when I can no longer pedal without assistance. I think of my toys as investments in my health. That’s worth saving for, especially because I’m going for longevity, not toughness. The same goes for my choice of whitewater craft. When I worked as a raft guide, my preferred craft to paddle with friends was a raft. Now I paddle a U-Thrillseeker, also known as a ducky. The “U” stands for the special lightweight polyurethane material that allows the boat to weigh a svelte 20 pounds. This amazing craft is handmade by Attila Szilagyi, owner of Custom Inflatables in Reedsville, West Virginia. The ducky is easy to inflate, carry, and flip back over when I swim. It punches holes, rides waves, surfs, and makes technical moves beautifully on the rocky rivers the tri-state area is known for. Best of all, I can stretch my legs out, sit cross-legged, or jump in the water. Cramming myself into a hard boat certainly isn’t an option anymore. Bonus—Attila uses an orange glitter coating to protect the bottom of the boat. It’s everything a girl could ask for! Most importantly, my ducky allows me to be on the water. Paddling was my first outdoor love, and it broke my heart to lose it. Every time I’m on the water, I get a bit emotional with gratitude. It was a long battle to get back to it and, even though I don’t have the stamina to paddle more challenging rivers, I’ve come to terms with it. Nowadays, I happily paddle class III rivers—mainly the Lower Youghiogheny, Cassleman, and Cheat Narrows. I’ve tried many outdoor sports over the years—running, cross-country skiing, snowboarding—hoping my chronic injury wouldn’t hold me back from enjoying every season in these hills just to find they wreck my body. So I’ve settled on hiking, biking, and paddling—my favorite activities to begin with. My husband even custom-built a van to make camping more accessible for his work and my play. It’s quite the upgrade from tent camping, something that had become nearly impossible with my injury. He built a big bed with the best mattress on the market and made sure there was plenty of floor space for my recovery sessions. Sometimes I bring everything but the kitchen sink (which is already in the van) and my entire home gym with me just so I can function.
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Not all bodies are created equal, or minds, for that matter. Some of us can go harder or longer, but some of us need gentler options to keep going at all. Technology and design have come a long way in the toys and gear we use for outdoor play, allowing us to stay in the game for longer and get started more easily. Comfort is critical now that I’m, dare I say, middle-aged. Plus who cares what you’re paddling or riding as long as you’re safe and having fun? If you’re still comfortable wearing jellies and sleeping in a tent, that’s great. Over time, you may have to upgrade or modify to keep doing what you love. There may come a day that I’m in a diaper and bubble wrap in a cart, my husband still on a single-speed bike pulling me along; but at least I’ll still be in my element of the great outdoors. We only have one life, and I hope we can all find ways to keep doing what we love—diapers or not. w Tara Morris is the product of the hippies and hillbillies of the Pennsyltucky mountains, has planted roots in West by God, and plays outside every chance she gets. highland-outdoors.com 43
PROFILE
what Gene calls “subversive positive social change,” they raised two wonderful kids and had a hand in the personal and professional growth of countless other folks of all ages. The Kistlers, along with business partner and local climbing hero Kenny Parker, recently sold Water Stone Outdoors to new owners. Maura and Gene are now heading into the adventure of retirement, undoubtedly marking the end of an era and the start of a new one. I’ve been wanting to profile Maura for a long time and thought this transition marked the perfect opportunity to have a wonderful and inspiring discussion about her long, strange, and fantastical trip through life in West Virginia. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What’s your coming to WV story? I had Midwestern roots for sure. I was born in the North Side of Chicago. I lived in Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky. I graduated high school in Miami (Florida) and ended up at the University of Virginia, where I met Gene in my fourth year. Gene introduced me to rock climbing, though I had already firmly identified as an outdoor girl. We started climbing here in 1985. We were living in Charlottesville and going to Seneca Rocks almost every weekend.
Do you remember your first time climbing at Seneca?
By Dylan Jones I walked into Water Stone Outdoors in Fayetteville as a budding climber way back in 2010 to buy a harness and my first pair of climbing shoes. New to both the climbing scene and Fayetteville, I was instantly enamored with the hip little town and the cool gear store in which I stood. I was greeted by an athletic woman whose personality stood far larger than her svelte frame. She was stoked that I was there; she was interested in my background. But more importantly, she made me feel like I belonged. Little did I know that this woman, Maura Kistler, part-owner of the store, was a local celebrity in more ways than one. This interaction marked the beginning of my love affair with rock climbing and the New River Gorge, a place I spent the next decade visiting constantly, even spending one year living in a tent while working as a climbing guide. During this period, I, like so many others, formed a great friendship with Maura and her husband Gene. They were kind, welcoming, and still somehow possess endless positive energy. Maura and Gene were some of the first outdoorsy folks to set roots in Fayetteville and, along with other dedicated visionaries, poured their hearts and souls into cultivating the unmistakable flavor of the “coolest small town.” While they built their business and fomented 44 HIGHLAND OUTDOORS
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How did you discover the New River Gorge? Bruce Burgin, an early climber from Beckley, had taken a series of 8x10 black-and-white photos of the New River Gorge. He put them in a notebook and left it on the counter of the Gendarme and said, “You guys need to come down here to look at this shit.” It was an endless wall of climbing routes, basically an appetite whetter, and we started going to the gorge and camping under the bridge. It was nuts! At first, I was reluctant on the idea of switching to the gorge because I missed Seneca and hanging on the Gendarme porch. I was less motivated by first ascents and more motivated by hanging out, and there wasn’t a social scene at the gorge yet.
Do you recall your first visit to the New River Gorge? What I remember was that prelapsarian aspect to the deep woods that seemed very raw and rugged and new and fresh. I remember it feeling really wild. We would go hang out on the bridge. We’d sneak out underneath it and crawl all through it. That was our entertainment. Fayetteville was shut down and boarded-up. There was the Western Pancake House and the Okay Corral and Ben Franklin—that was it. There wasn’t a year-round outdoor community at all; the only year-rounders were the raft company owners. But I don’t want any of what I’m saying to be seen from the vacuum of the outdoor
Molly Wolff
MAURA KISTLER
Oh, I remember all my moments at Seneca because they usually involved crying. I’ve cried on every belay ledge at Seneca Rocks. I remember being on the second ledge of Ecstasy, I am 1,000-percent safe, but I’m in a panic and it’s freezing cold and I’m bawling. I didn’t take to climbing easily; I had to earn all my comfort. And Seneca is great for that, of course. I still call Seneca my home crag; I just love that place.
“I love the West Virginia grittiness and toughness. I think that’s in short supply in the world and I’m glad we have a deep well of that.” community because the power of this area is in the mix of people. I don’t want any perception that Fayetteville didn’t have it going on before we showed up to “make it happen.” It was essentially a moribund economy in an area that was hibernating before this slow reawakening to another economy and another way for this area to grow and succeed.
When did you decide to set roots in Fayetteville? We moved to Fayetteville full-time in April of 1991 when friends asked Gene to build their house. We rented this big old house in downtown Fayetteville right next to the mayor. It was so fun to have a place that could absorb a lot of people and be part of creating a platform for a scene to develop. It was a blast; I never know who I’d come downstairs and find in my kitchen. I raft-guided from 91 to 95; it was my first job outdoors. There weren’t many employment options, and I was really excited about the whole whitewater culture. I knew that I’d probably be able to get a teaching job eventually, but knew it might take a while. Working at Class VI for three seasons was a ball and gave me a lot of confidence. I was really fortunate to be trained by Joy Maher. There were really strong women who were at the forefront of the whole thing.
How did Water Stone Outdoors come about?
Courtesy Maura Kistler
We realized we loved it here and we didn’t want to leave. We bought Blue Ridge Outdoors (not the magazine! – editor), which originally was an outdoor store with two locations in Virginia, where I had worked. Gene got the idea to buy the business, and immediately got Kenny Parker involved to come here and open the third one. We sold the other two in Virginia and kept this one and Kenny became a 50/50 partner with us on this store.
How was running the store in those early days? My God, it was so dead for so long. We still laugh about it. Our first employee would just sit upstairs and smoke cigarettes and drink beers all day long. We made no money; we had pitiful salaries. Gene and I didn’t know jack about retail, and we would be nowhere without Kenny. I can’t emphasize enough that it was all built on Kenny’s back, especially in those early years. But the cool thing is we had all this fun shit to do while we were building the business. It just finally started getting going in the last couple years. The crux for us, and what we’re most proud of, is we were careful businesspeople who stayed within our means. I was recently on a Zoom call with a bunch of new women entrepreneurs. I said number one: pace yourselves. Be in it for the long haul. Be patient. You’ve got to find the fun because growing a business takes time; it took us forever!
You’ve sold the store to new owners and are retiring—can you reflect on your career at Water Stone? It has been so much fun reminiscing these last few weeks. I can’t even tell you how satisfying and rewarding it’s been. I’m so proud of Kenny and Gene and our genuine partnership. To be partners with somebody for 28 years and love and respect them even more than you did at the beginning is just amazing. I’ve been pondering the serendipity of what happened with the new buyers, Chris and Holly Fussell. We’re lucky because Water Stone is central to the community, and they want to carry that forward.
What are your plans for retirement? My plan is to play more and to drive around the country in our Eurovan, which is my happy place. It’s been really shocking to
Left: Maura on her first day of guide training on the Upper Gauley River in 1991, part of a photo series from photographer Mike Ivey. Center: Maura and Gene show off the climbing shoe selection at Water Stone Outdoors. Right: Maura leading Triple S (5.8+), a classic Seneca Rocks crack climb, in 1986.
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and not as supportive. Now that we finally got our moment to be in the international spotlight, I feel like we were ready. But people notice that it’s different. Now people are talking about how AirBnB is ruining the community, about how town is blown out and the parking lots are full, how the good old days are over. Now that we’re dealing with the challenges of growth, it can make us nostalgic for the old days. But the New River Gorge extends from Beckley to Summersville. This boom is elevating the New River Gorge region; it’s about more than just Fayetteville. And what we’re seeing now is that Oak Hill is rising; Summersville is rising. There’s a lot going on, and the concept of the outdoor economy, which is what we’ve been beating the drum on, is the answer—not tourism. Tourism is just one part of the outdoor economy. We believe deep down that the outdoor economy is a critical part of West Virginia’s future. We’re starting to see more areas understand that and get the grants for trails and river put-ins and access, and all of this is going to help West Virginia out. Once we get people here and they see for themselves what we have to offer and what we’re all about, their perception changes. We have a marvelous thing to share. If the national park designation is bringing us more people who are leaving here going, “Oh my God, I had no idea that that was West Virginia,” then I’m all about it because we deserve respect. Now that it’s happened, let’s get it right so that we can shine with that spotlight on us.
Top: Maura and Gene on a 1991 road trip through the Tetons in their 1968 International Travelall, complete with orange shag interior carpeting. Bottom: Kenny Parker and Maura share a laugh outside of Water Stone.
me how many people hear that you’re retiring and ask if you’re going to move. I cannot imagine leaving my community. Right now, I’ve kind of shucked off every single commitment that I have. Our goals are to play more music and to stay involved in our community and continue to be out and about having fun.
What changes or developments from over the years stand out the most? That slow, gradual growth from 20 years ago, where we were absorbing people and the outdoor community was growing, allowed our community to gel as a friendly, wacky, welcoming place that never got hijacked by sudden out-of-town interests. Now, we’re in a pressure zone because we completely underestimated the impact of the New River Gorge National Park redesignation. What I like about our slow, steady growth prior to that is we were ready for it, although certainly not in terms of our infrastructure. But our identity was very set in this town. That is our superpower.
What do you think of the National Park designation? My personal feelings have really vacillated. At first, I was a pretty enthusiastic supporter, but then I felt like with the [National Park Service’s] ongoing inability to deal with some of our infrastructure problems, I became really frustrated 46 HIGHLAND OUTDOORS
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I saw a different way to live my life here. I’ve never had a sense of place like I do in West Virginia. I love the West Virginia grittiness and toughness. I think that’s in short supply in the world and I’m glad we have a deep well of that. There were so many things that spoke to me and Gene on a deep level, and I knew pretty quick that this was it and that I never wanted to leave this place. Every time I come back from an adventure, and I drive across the bridge, I’m just so stoked. I’m still totally enamored by this place.
What do you want to see for the future in West Virginia? I’m gonna keep believing that we are going to get somewhere not just as an area, not as just as our little bubble, but as a whole state. I’m so encouraged by the folks that are moving here and their willingness to be part of that change. I remain excited because I have so much confidence in West Virginia and what an appealing package it is right now. We know now that what we as human organisms need above anything else is connection, and West Virginia provides that. w
Top: Courtesy Maura Kistler. Bottom: Molly Wolff
What do you love most about West Virginia?
GALLERY
Originating high up in the Monongahela National Forest, Gandy Creek meanders through open pastoral meadows before it disappears under Yokum Knob, where it has carved a passage nearly a mile long through soft limestone. Upon emerging from a boulder-strewn cave on the other side, Grandy Creek begins its descent and winds among the shadows cast by the sprawling shoulders of Spruce Mountain before joining the Dry Fork near the town of Whitmer. This photo is from the upstream entrance of the Sinks of Gandy, where its water-scalloped limestone ceiling imparts the feeling of being swallowed by a giant whale. The further in you go, the more the belly of the beast consumes water and light alike. Photo and captain by Jesse Thornton.
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