Retreat to Roaring Plains West Wilderness

This is the Roaring Plains West Wilderness--a remoter and lesser-visited alternative to Dolly Sods.  I did indeed retreat to this lonesome place.  Getting there was no easy task, since the bridge across Red Creek is out, which I discovered the hard way; I had to drive all the way round to the Bear Rocks entrance.  (I forgot to bring my excellent Purple Lizard map and thus missed out on the Forest Road 19 entrance, which I vaguely recall taking long ago.)  My goal was to set up a little camp in the wilderness where I could read, and think, and just be--which is so unlike the hurried, stressful thing I was trying to do on the Standing Stone Trail.  Roaring Plains is an excellent place to go if you just want to sit beneath a rainfly and...be.  Because the bridge was out at the south end of the Sods, there was absolutely no one anywhere near the little gated Forest Road 70, south of the Sods, which leads three miles into Roaring Plains.  Driving south along the perimeter of Dolly Sods, I only saw two other cars beyond the public campground.  After that, it was about six miles of absolute solitude.  Arriving on a Sunday afternoon, it felt eerily and sweetly abandoned, and in fact I saw not another human being till Wednesday afternoon.

The road is just a little grassy lane, closed to motor vehicles, but it makes a quick expressway to the Roaring Plains, much faster than the trails which also go in.  After three miles it meets a gas pipeline swath that cuts through the forest, and just across the swath, the Roaring Plains Trail plunges into the woods.  It was here I made my camp, at the second site just inside the forest and very near to a beautiful little stony brook whose waters run tea-colored from the tannins in the hemlocks.  It was so nice to be in a place where there was water--unlike Central Pennsylvania, where a drought put an end to my last foolish woodland venture.  (If interested in that tragicomedy, go HERE.)  The purpose of this trip was mostly to serve as a retreat, so I made a far more luxurious camp than usual.  I brought my big two-person tent, which I rarely use anymore, in addition to my hammock tent, plus a small folding chair and three books!  Heavy books!  1) Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation, by Kristin Kobes Du Mez--very highly recommended.  2) The Complete Fairytales of the Brothers Grimm, a massive paperback which alone weighs 2 lbs.  I'm interested in fairytales as folk mythologies, and there's a whole lot more to the Grimms than Snow White and Sleeping Beauty.  3) My handwritten journal, which I've kept since the beginning of my sabbatical on June 1.  I knew that I'd only be carrying the pack for three miles on a relatively easy surface, so I didn't mind the weight.  It was still far lighter than carrying all that water on the Standing Stone.  I didn't make a fire.  It was rainy, so I just set up the folding chair beneath the rainfly of the hammock tent and read and journaled until about 7:30pm, when I settled into the spacious two-person tent to read and watch a movie that I'd downloaded onto my phone.  I know it's cheating, but I love to watch movies when I backpack alone...  It was chilly, and it rained all night, so it was fun to lie inside the warm tent and catch a flick.

Monday, my first full day on the Roaring Plains.  It didn't rain all day, but the fog was outrageous and blinding.  It was both stifling and exhilarating.  I had intended to explore the wilderness area a bit, but the thick mist that settled over these high plateaus made that impossible.  There were no vistas; everything was socked in.  But in a way it was fun being locked into my campsite, sitting under the rainfly to shelter myself from the dripping of the trees, sipping coffee, gazing out into the mysterious and partly hidden forest, all the while reading medieval German folklore about...misty forests where people get lost, or meet ogres, or come upon enchanted castles or witches.

By evening I had begun to feel a little depressed by the fog.  No, not "depressed."  I felt "oppressed" by it.  It was fun early in the day, even comforting.  But it was dank and chilly, and it placed so many limitations on what I could do.  I thought a fire would be just the thing to drive away the foggy gloom and cold, but alas!  Wet conditions are such a part of life in these highlands that all the wood I could find was "punky."  That's to say soft and waterlogged.  In fact, the fire ring at my campsite had evidence that the camper before me had the exact same problem--charred branches, but none of them burned to ash.  I got a small fire going for about an hour.  Strange how companionable a fire can be!  Surely civilizations, and societies, and the stories that define us all originated around prehistoric campfires.

Tuesday morning saw the same clouds lingering over the forests, but they lifted in the afternoon.  Having forgotten to bring a map, I formed a theory that if I followed the pipeline northward, away from the great rim that overlooks the world, it would join up with the other end of the Roaring Plains Trail.  My goal was to catch some view of the legendary Mount Porte Crayon--where there is no path.  The only way out to it is on the far end of the Roaring Plains Trail, but I didn't want to go there.  Not yet.  I just wanted to see it.  

I was wrong.  The swath does not cross the Roaring Plains Trail, but it was a pleasant walk out to the heliport, which is used for emergency evacuations of hikers who come unprepared, or who fall into crevasses, or get mauled by bears...  Mt. Porte Crayon is named after a local man who became a well-known illustrator and writer in the 19th century and went by the pen name "Porte Crayon," which means "Carries Pencil" or "Pencil Box."

But Mt. Porte Crayon eluded me that day.  Instead I decided to make my way to a place called the Sliding Board on the Boar's Nest Trail.  It's a place where the trail, already wet and slippery, comes to an extremely steep descent--a sliding board.  I'd read that there were good views out over the wooded southern end of Dolly Sods from the top of the sliding board.  This, too, was about a three-mile hike.  But it was wet, and my feet got soaked.  Here's Breathed Mountain and "Lion's Head" in Dolly Sods.

This is another view from the top of the Sliding Board.  Breathed Mountain is surely named after some long forgotten family who once owned it.  When it's a family name, the word "Breathed" is pronounced in such a way that it would rhyme with the word "Tethered" if you said it with a British English accent: TEH-thed, BREH-thed.  I always tell other hikers this when they pronounce the name like the past tense of the verb "breathe," as in, "Mom, he breathed on me!"  I get blank looks.

One of the pleasures of hiking in the Sods or Roaring Plains in mid-August is the wild blueberries!  They're everywhere, small and flavorful.

That evening, just before dark, I took another three-mile roundtrip hike out to the place where the pipeline swath plunges over the rim to the valleys below--just to see what I could see.

In these photos, I was trying to capture the mystery and the wonder of those faraway mountains on the horizon--their beckoning beauty.  But a cellphone camera is not equal to the task.

This little spot on the Roaring Plains is not new to me.  In fact, I've put up photos taken from this very place in a previous entry, I think.  There's the evil but lovely North Fork Mountain, the summit in the distance with the rocky cliffs along the ridge.  That's the place where I may or may not have encountered a serial killer...  For that tragicomedy, go HERE.  (It does sound a little hysterical...but I have since discovered that this area of West Virginia has had a number of unsolved murders in recent years--which is quite strange for a rural place.)

On the fourth day, Wednesday, I was running out of food.  But I treated it just like all the other days with reading, and lazing, and coffee-drinking, and exploring.  It was finally partly sunny, and I was surprised by how nice it was to see my old frenemy--that glaring orb--we have such a complicated relationship.  I took the Roaring Plains Trail in search of Mt. Porte Crayon.  Roaring Plains is much like Dolly Sods minus the grassy meadows with views out over the world.  It gets a whole lot fewer visitors, too.  As I followed the trail through a seemingly endless thicket of rhododendron and blueberries, I found myself thinking, "It would be nice if the vegetation would clear up a little and allow for some views.  Roaring Plains, why can't you be more like your sister, Dolly?"

There are those rare instances when the views are large, but they are often not anywhere near the main trail.  You have to really seek them out.  As I wandered the somewhat undramatic Roaring Plains Trail, I found myself thinking that this wilderness is the person you meet unexpectedly at a social event who really captures your imagination.  You really like them--their wit, their intelligence, their personality, maybe even their beauty.  But there's a guardedness to them.  They never want to tell you anything about themselves.  They never quite let you in.  You find yourself thinking, "Just open up!  I want to see more!  I know there's a lot to see and that it's magnificent.  Why can't you draw back the veil?"  In this case, a veil of rhododendrons.

After about 2 miles on the trail, the upland thickets end, and you enter a fairytale forest worthy of the Brothers Grimm.  In another half-mile, there's a lovely campsite in the pines with a view out over the rim.  When I set off that morning, I did notice a dog's fresh footprint on the trail.  Someone must have brought a dog through here last night--while I was hiking the pipeline in the evening or maybe even while I was sleeping?  Well here at this perfect campsite with long views and a soft pine needle floor, a hammock tent was strung up in the trees.  No one was there, but I didn't want to approach it.  Too bad because I did want to take a look at the view and see if Mt. Porte Crayon was visible.

Here's the view from a nearby spot.  After this campsite the trail gets very, very wet, and faint, and overgrown.  I was already hiking in wet socks and shoes from yesterday's adventures.  I HATE putting on wet socks, but I only brought one pair.  Nothing dries overnight in this kind of damp.

I went to the 3-mile point, and I began to see this summit peeking at me from the south.  At first I thought it might just be the legendary Mt. Porte Crayon, but then I noticed that it's got a radio tower on top.  And where there's a radio tower, there's got to be a maintenance road, right?  This can't be the mountain I'm looking for, can it?  There are some YouTube videos out there that try to show the way to this elusive place.  And I read that when they named the mountain in honor of the 19th century illustrator, back in 1940, they held a ceremony atop the mountain--which means there must have been a route to the top.

The Roaring Plains Trail turned into this.  A vast blueberry field, all in fruit.  You could probably pick your way through it, and you might find a faint rut beneath the foliage to indicate the trail, but it looked like a good place to turn around to me.  

As I headed back to my campsite, I ran into the fellow who got that perfect site that I'd just passed.  He's a sixth grade teacher from Ohio who just wanted to do a lone wilderness trek with his dog before school starts back up next week.  Nice guy.  He came in on Tuesday at 4:00pm and walked past my campsite without ever noticing it--thinking that he was totally alone out here in the Roaring Plains, 5.5 miles from his car.  Actually, this occurred on Wednesday afternoon; he was the first person I'd seen since the hitchhiker I'd picked up on my way in on Sunday afternoon.  (I know it's dangerous to pick up hitchhikers, especially with a serial killer roaming the mountains, but he was clearly a backpacker trying to get back to his car on the main Dolly Sods road.)

The views along my last stroll on the Plains were broad and pleasant, and I stopped to pick a lot of blueberries on my way.  Back at camp, I made lunch--Indian Korma, the last of my dehydrated just-add-water meals.  I made coffee, read some fairytales--taking notes for how to use them as sermon illustrations--and generally delayed my departure.  But about 4:00pm it was time to hike the three miles back to the car and then make the three-hour trip back to Pittsburgh.

I had really installed myself into this little spot on the Roaring Plains.  It served its purpose, too.  It gave me four days of pleasant solitude and just a little bit of beauty and discovery to boot.

Your campsite can feel like a real home for a few days, but it's never permanent.  Nothing is.  The impermanence of things is both their beauty and their tragedy.  If I come back here, I'm making for the campsite that other guy got, even if it's 2.5 miles further up.

My socks and boots were still soaked, so I did a foolhardy thing.  I hiked three miles along this road in flip-flops with my pack on my back. 

Driving down Forest Road 19, this is the view at the bottom of the mountain.  This place is just so lovely, even if there is a serial killer afoot....