Seneca Creek Backcountry & Dolly Sods Wilderness, Monongahela National Forest, West Virginia

I’ll just tell this harrowing winter tale for my future self to remember:

The guy I usually backpack with is a schoolteacher, so we have to schedule our treks far in advance.  We typically do a winter backpacking trip just after Christmas, while he’s still on break.  This time, we selected the Seneca Creek Backcountry in the Monongahela National Forest, West Virginia, at the foot of that state’s highest peak, Spruce Knob.

The purpose of these photos is to capture the condition of the roads into said backcountry… The roads down there are dodgy in the best of weather: unpaved and narrow as driveways with steep drops off to one side and never any guardrails.  But here?  Here the narrow lane out to the tiny hamlet of Whitmer was patchily maintained.  A snowplow had made a cursory swipe through there at some point, and sand and gravel had been scattered thinly on the slippery surface for traction.  But shortly after Whitmer, the roads were completely untreated and untraveled.  We made the first set of tracks for about 7 miles in 10 inches of snow.  It was a little unreal.  

The unrealest thing of all was when we gave up on the snowy roads, found a trailhead, and decided to set up camp close to the car on our first night.  It was a meager 13 degrees and painfully windy.  My friend and I were walking around in the afternoon light, looking for a good place to pitch the tents—a level place, out of the wind—when he said, “What’s that noise?  It sounds like something…cracking.”  Exactly then, the unseen ice beneath his feet broke, and he sank into 5 feet of water…with a 40 pound pack on his back.  We had unwittingly ventured out onto a beaver pond that was hidden under snow.  Murderous beavers!  We managed to pull him out of the icy waters.  He was drenched, as was all his clothing, shelter, and gear.  I insisted—against his loud protestations—that we get a cabin for the night and try camping again the next night.  He unwillingly saw the wisdom of that, but it turns out that booking a same-night cabin on New Year’s Day isn’t all that easy.

Several state parks nearby do rent out cabins, but they were all closed.  And on a holiday, it can be hard to get a same-day booking through Airbnb and Verbo.  Others were not willing to rent out cabins for just a single night.  But then we found The Renovated Barn at Seneca Rocks…the little place pictured here, with a pet pig, and a few goats as well as chickens and ducks to keep you company.  We were so grateful for this place, even though it was a bit small for two old Gen X guys who didn’t want to share a bed…

My friend seemed really bent on conveying to our hostess the fact that he and I were not a couple!  I didn’t care.  She had a Great Lakes accent anyway, and I’m sure she’s seen plenty of same-sex couples coming through her doors.  We just needed a place to get warm, dry out his gear, and regroup.  Instead of looking at the stars from an outdoor fireside in the frigid woods, we lounged in this pleasant old barn and watched The Revenant on Netflix.  Of course, it had to be The Revenant.  Isn’t that the adventurous life we were pretending to live out there, away from our quiet suburban selves?  

I’ve never seen trees caked in snow and ice the way they were in the higher reaches of the mountains on that trip.

We would learn the next night, out on the trail, that collecting firewood isn’t easy when all the fallen wood is covered in ice and snow.  

The next day, with everything dry and ready to go, we decided to hike into our original destination from a different direction, crossing up and over the ridge of Spruce Mountain and going down the other side to Seneca creek.  But the fever dream of the previous day had us feeling a little edgy, so we quickly tucked tail and returned to the familiar safety of nearby Dolly Sods for a single-night camp in terrain where we didn’t feel so endangered by beavers and other unseen threats….

Here’s Weiss Knob, which is the pinnacle of Cabin Mountain.  It’s still an unclaimed peak in my online peak-bagging club, and just barely within the bounds of national forest lands.  There are many such unclaimed peaks in West Virginia, and I would have great fun coming down here to bag a half dozen of them in a long day of climbing.  But alas, I’d have to rent a reliable car to do such a thing…

Dolly Sods…again.  What can I say?  We hiked northward up Red Creek about 1.5 miles and found a streamside spot to call home for the night.  You don’t often get the Sods all to yourself, but we only saw two other hikers on this trip, and they were not camping.  Just one of the many reasons I love the month of January.

The day was less cold; it got up to 27 degrees, which felt absolutely balmy…

The skies were dramatic that night, with a bright full moon and irritable clouds drifting rapidly overhead.

We spent a few hours setting up camp and collecting dead wood for a fire—a wild conflagration that brightened and warmed the night till about 11pm, when we finally went to bed.  See how the firelight illumines its small ring in orange, while the moon casts pale shadows on the snowy forest floor all around.  We’d been sure to put our tents beneath the shelter of some low hemlock trees, which offered much protection from the cold wind.

And then?  Then I sat by the fire and took to snapping pictures of the night’s dramatic light-show through the trees.

It almost felt like a movie...a really quiet one without a strong plot.

Steam rose off my saturated socks as I warmed my numb feet by the fire.  We had decided beforehand to sleep in our own separate tents, even though a shared tent with shared body heat is a huge help when camping out in the winter.  I spent a bitterly cold night with insufficient gear—in a cheap “0-degree bag” from Dunham’s that kept me plenty cold till I finally and fully woke up around 4:00am, only to read a hilarious P.G. Wodehouse novel with numb fingers by the light of a headlamp.

But I did get some awesome photos of the changing light among the trees in early January in the mountains.