Chimney Top and North Fork Mountain, West Virginia

This place is magnificent.  I got there on a foggy, wet day.  I checked the forecast beforehand and knew that it would be rainy and cloudy, but I didn't care.  The moment was finally upon me to visit the wondrous North Fork Mountain, and I didn't care if I got wet doing it.  This is a view from the lower reaches of the ridgeline.  

Of course, that kind of resolve is fine when you're sitting in your living room in Pittsburgh and looking at photos of North Fork Mountain online.  Actually, I'd encourage you to do that!  My photos are all too misty to capture the real magic of this place.  

I got about halfway up the mountain and it began to sprinkle, so I set up camp before reaching the vistas, not knowing that this view out over the valley of the South Fork of the Potomac River was within a quarter mile.  My plan was to have a dry base camp from which I could spend the rest of the day and much of the next exploring the rocky ridge.

Seen from afar--as from Roaring Plains--North Fork Mountain is unique because it has a series of large stone cliffs all along its western summit.  Here I am on top of those cliffs, and they are worth the hike.  It's about three miles from the small parking area on Smoke Hole Road, up the North Fork Mountain Trail--with close to 2,000 foot elevation gain--to the summit at a place called Chimney Top.

Chimney Top is a popular destination because of its enormous and unusual rock formations.  It's accessed by an unmarked side trail that you can't miss because it's worn just about as much as the main trail that it branches off from.

See the little white forms in the misty valley far below?  Those are houses on a hillside just above the Potomac.

It's hard to tell in this photo just how large these rocks are.  They're gargantuan.  I can't be sure because of the clouds, but I think you'd be looking in the direction of Dolly Sods in this shot.

There were scary little tunnels among these great rocks, and narrow ledges, and slippery-looking places where I'm sure more adventurous folk than I might venture.

I met two hikers on the way back down to my camp who told me this place was called Chimney Top.  I've since claimed it on my Peakery page, but since climbing Mt. Columbia, none of these Eastern summits seems like much.  "Comparison is the thief of joy."

Now for the strange part of my story... You know I don't scare easy, right?  I mean, I've spent the night alone in some dark and eerie places and had myself a great old time.  The forest causes you to confront whatever you're carrying around with you, and if it's fear, then it's fear you'll find among the trees.  I don't find fear.  I find beauty, and solitude, and a spiritual haven.

But my camp on North Fork Mountain just felt spooky.  When I first got to the trailhead, there was a haunted-looking guy hanging out there.  Something about his demeanor and face just felt unsavory.  He wouldn't look at me, wouldn't reply when I greeted him, but then as I was leaving to go up the mountain, I saw him staring with a spooky, intense look on his face.  I set up camp and went on up to Chimney Top and never thought about the guy again...until I saw him coming down the mountain past my campsite.  (I almost always make camp in a place invisible from the trail, but like I said, it had started to rain, so I hastily set up in the first spot I saw.)

I don't know at what point he passed me on his way up the mountain, or if he went past silently as I was setting up camp.  But it made me a little uneasy to know that the guy who gave me that weird look knew where I was camping.  I tried to put it out of my mind and went about my nightly trail rituals.  I took some books and maps and went back to one of the nearer overlooks, but there was not much to see with all the fog.  I came back and built a beautiful fire despite the rain.  But I couldn't quiet the nagging unease about my campsite, and the feeling in the woods in that place, and the weird look that scary-looking guy had given me.  Then at about 9:00pm I got an overwhelming urge to break camp and get the hell out of there, which I did.  "Trust your instincts," I told myself.  "Unless you have good reason not to, you should always trust your instincts."  Never before in all my hiking life have I done such a thing.  I stamped out the fire, threw my wet tent and all supplies into the pack willy-nilly, strapped my headlamp on and hiked two miles in the pitch dark down the mountain and to the car.  Then!  Then as I was coming upon the parking area at about 10pm, I saw through the trees another car pull in and park.  A man got out.  He was alone.  As I drew nearer I saw that it was him.  The creepy guy who gave me a weird vibe and a spooky look, the one who knew where my campsite was, he had come back at 10:00pm in the pouring rain.  Why?

I'm not saying he's the North Fork Mountain serial killer or that he had come back to murder me in my sleep...but I was sure glad to put a locked door between myself and the night.  I had seen two little motels on the outskirts of Petersburg, West Virginia, just 7 miles to the east.  Both of those were fully booked, but the kind old lady at the smaller one sent me to the Park Motel in the center of town--a very old hotel with narrow halls, rickety stairs, and bare bulbs overhead.  From the outside at night it looked kind of inviting, with hanging baskets of flowers on a broad front porch with many chairs.  Of 32 rooms, they had only six vacancies.  The motel business in Petersburg is hopping.  The eccentric old fellow at the front desk told me, "It's nothing fancy, but you'll get a clean room with a comfortable bed."  Not a bad deal for $60.

He was exactly right.  I almost thought I'd stepped into a broom closet.  A bare room with a bare bulb and no other light.  No reading lamps, no coffee pot, no carpet, no bedside table, no telephone, no internet, no curtain in the window--just a worn out venetian blind with three broken slats.  There was a small TV on a table, which I did not turn on, an old entertainment unit with a refrigerator in it, and an old kitchen chair.  The Park Motel in Petersburg, West Virginia, is basic at best.  But it was a fun discovery, and it was so much better than my campsite on North Fork Mountain.