One of the fun parts about a trip to West Virginia is driving the country roads. Winding, twisty mountain roads through farmland and forests. There are roadside attractions aplenty, from the historic to the quirky. Adventures and misadventures abound. Continue reading
Tag Archives: Dolly Sods Wilderness
Almost Heaven: Bear Rocks and Bogs
We came to the end of the road – and found a trail.
To the north of the Dolly Sods Wilderness Area in West Virginia lies Bear Rocks, a spectacular outcropping of white sandstone and quartz perched on the Allegheny Front. The rocks are surrounded by the 477-acre Bear Rocks Preserve, owned by the Nature Conservancy, which has been instrumental in preserving and protecting land in the Dolly Sods. After touring Dolly Sods by car, Robb, Don and I were eager to get out and explore on foot, stretch our legs a little.
A view of the Bear Rocks trail. No, that’s not a creek, it’s a trail. A very wet trail. After a lot of puddle-jumping, we turned back. The trail doesn’t go to Bear Rocks, which is what we were interested in. So we followed a cobweb of informal trails through the heath barrens to the ridge.
I’ve been using the word “heath” a lot. What is it?
“Heaths” are a family of acid-tolerant, low-growing plants. Huckleberry, blueberry, sheep and mountain laurel (left), rhododendron, tea berry, bear oak.
All of these plants are old friends of ours from the low-lying but acidic NJ Pine Barrens. Time and again, we find them in the higher elevations of the Appalachians.
Here they inhabit tundra-like meadows known locally as “huckleberry plains.”
Flagged red spruce trees on Bear Rocks.
The view east from the ridge. The Allegheny Front drops 2000’ here to the valley of the South Branch of the Potomac River. Rumor has it that on a clear day, a visitor can see seven mountain ridges, and on the clearest days, Hawksbill and Stony Man peaks in Shenandoah National Park. This wasn’t a clear day. I still can count four ridgelines.
Rocks, rhododendron and red spruce.
We had a lot of fun clambering all over Bear Rocks. Finding our way back through the heath to the main trail was a little challenging. We were glad the plants were so short that we could see right over them.
On the way back through Dolly Sods, we had time for one more stop, the interpretive Northland Loop Nature Trail. Lots of different ecosystems on one short trail.
Also a stern warning about unexploded ordnance. The Dolly Sods was a training area during World War II.
We managed to survive the walk with all limbs intact.
The trail started through a typical forest of red spruce and rhododendrons.
It was raining, still, which gave me some nice water droplets to play with.
Except for a few unidentified birds, this was the only wildlife we saw in Dolly Sods. No deer, no chipmunks, NO BEARS. Somehow that absence made this snail all the more welcome.
The highlight of the Northland Loop is Alder Run Bog, a large northern peat bog. Bogs are waterlogged ecosystems where the plants actually grow on the surface of the water. They are unusual at high altitudes, but not in Dolly Sods.
The margins of Alder Run Bog are populated by spruce trees, heaths, sedges and ferns. A boardwalk leads out into the bog, which is covered in sphagnum moss and…
Sundews! This is a much-loved carnivorous plant we see sometimes in the Pine Barrens. We were unprepared for the vastness of the sundew stands here in Alder Run Bog.
FUN FACT: No more than a couple of inches high, these tiny plants attract insects with a sweet secretion, than trap them with the sticky mucilage of their moveable tentacles. The prey dies of exhaustion or asphyxiation, whereupon the plant digests it. Charming, aren’t they?
Back through the forest, we came upon a river of rocks.
Among the rocks we found some white reindeer moss. Not a moss but a lichen, it’s common in the Pine Barrens, just like sphagnum moss and sundews. The similarities between the plant life of the Pinelands and that of high-altitude acidic Appalachian ecosystems continues to amaze us.
The road home. We had a wonderful day exploring Dolly Sods, despite the mist and rain. But our time in West Virginia was drawing to a close.
While doing some research for these posts, I have seen many images of Dolly Sods and Bear Rocks unlike any of mine. Photos of clear blue skies, mountain ranges rolling off into the distance, meadows abloom with flowers, heaths ablaze in autumnal reds and golds. Something to aspire to, I guess. Something for a return visit (or two!) to West Virginia. I could spend several days right here in Dolly Sods.
Maybe I’d even see a bear…
Almost Heaven: Hello, Dolly!
Dolly Sods.
The name conjures a magical image in my mind: a rugged, windswept summit of jagged sandstone boulders ablaze with crimson heath. Sometime long ago, I saw photographs of this place, and I vowed that, should the chance ever arise, I would go to see it for myself. I’m not sure I even knew where it was, only that I was captivated.
Well, I know where Dolly Sods is now! I am still captivated, all the more so for having been there. It was both like and unlike the images in my mind. Though the Sods wore a deep summer green rather than the reds and auburns of fall, the landscape was indeed rocky and immense, wild and windswept.
My companions and I spent our last full day in West Virginia exploring Dolly Sods. True to form, it rained lightly most of the day, with a few heavier showers. Our original plan was to park at the picnic area – home to the shortest rustic toilet I have ever encountered – and walk a loop in the southern portion of the Dolly Sods Wilderness.
Plans change quickly. The southern end of the Sods is a dense cove forest along the Red Creek drainage. We’d seen plenty of forest, and were itching to see the heath barrens, bogs and sods we had heard about, and the stunted trees Don remembered from a previous visit. So our walking tour was abandoned in favor of driving north, deeper into the Sods.
We hadn’t driven far before the forest opened up to a heath layer with scattered small trees. Everywhere, boulders beckoned. We haven’t met a rock yet that we could resist.
The greater Dolly Sods area spreads over 32,000 acres in northeastern West Virginia, and includes a federal Wilderness Area of 17,371 acres, as well as a Nature Conservancy preserve known as Bear Rocks.
Where does the name “Dolly Sods” come from? A year ago, Don and I encountered the Smoky Mountain high elevation meadows known as “balds.” Here in West Virginia, this type of mountaintop meadow is known as a “sod”.
“Dahle” was a German family that lived in the area in the 1700s; the place name was changed to “Dolly” by the locals some time later, and originally described a small mountaintop meadow near the present day picnic area (top photograph.)
“Someday, all this shall be yours, my son.”
Beyond the spruce trees, a grassy hilltop meadow. A sod.
A little further north, we found more impressive boulders to play around on. Robb went gamboling over them like a gazelle, Don following along in his wake. See that crack? Somehow I found myself in it up to my knee. Don’t know how that happened. (Grateful to come home with bruises, and not a plaster cast!)
Rock scrambling is not without its risks, especially on a rainy day.
The boulders are sandstone, much of it white. Streaks of deep rosy pink caught my eye. The lichens adorning the rocks were impressive in both their variety and sheer number. From a distance they give the rocks a salt and pepper appearance.
Equally impressive was the variety of rock formations. We marveled over the angle and the layered nature of the sandstone.
A few miles down the road we began to see the one-side trees Don remembered. These are called “flagged” trees; strong prevailing west winds encourage the red spruces to grow only on the eastern side. Weather in Dolly Sods is harsh, and changes rapidly. Daily temperature variation can be extreme. Mist, rain and snow are frequent, and the fog can roll in quickly.
Yet tiny beauties thrive here. Wild Bleeding Heart and lichens.
After eleven miles of hilly, potholed dirt roads, at elevations ranging from 3800 to 4000 feet, we reached the northern end of the Dolly Sods Wilderness Area. You might think the adventure would be over.
You would be wrong.
Coming up: Bear Rocks and Bogs
The Wild Edge 