High Adventure! - Fayetteville, West Virginia

Visited May 24-26, 2022

By Janell

West Virginia, here we are!!

Marty and I had driven through West Virginia over 25 years ago but had never really visited the state. So, now we can say we've visited West Virginia and so has the Beast! Check out our USA map of the states we've visited so far, and you'll see we've filled in the little gap that is West Virginia!

Just to get you in the mood, let's start off with a bit of music that will take you back (well, most of you anyway)!

Take Me Home, Country Roads

John Denver

We were in WV for just three nights/two days, but as you'll soon see they were adventure-filled days! As the sign above states, "Wild and Wonderful", and that it was! We stayed in Fayetteville at a nice, quiet, little campground called Rifrafters Campground, and it was just a few minutes drive to the main attraction where we spent all of our time: the New River Gorge. 

The River: The New River is one of North America's oldest rivers. According to ncpa.org (National Parks Conservation Association), the New River is widely regarded as the oldest river in North America, formed an estimated 260 million to 325 million years ago. However, not all scientists agree on the details; I don't blame them -- since none of us were around that long ago, how would anyone know? 

But, what's up with the name New River, especially if it's such an old river? Legend has it that two colonists, who came across the river for the first time in their exploration of the area in 1671, noted it as "new" on their map. It was assumed that the river would be named later. That didn't happen, and "New River" was included in the official record and on all subsequent maps

The Bridge: The New River Gorge Bridge is the longest single-arch bridge in the western hemisphere and the third longest single-arch bridge in the world. It measures 3,030' long. When the bridge was completed in October 1977, it was the longest in the world, but now that designation belongs to a bridge in China. At 876' high, the New River Gorge Bridge is the third highest bridge in the U.S.

The New River Gorge Bridge is one of the most photographed places in West Virginia, and West Virginia is rightfully proud of it. In fact, the next time you have coins in your hand, see if one happens to be the commemorative quarter for West Virginia, (released in 2005), and you will see this bridge.

The Park: New River Gorge National Park is the United States' newest national park. Congress designated the New River as a national park and preserve in December 2020, making it our nation's 63rd national park.

Bridge Day: Once a year (the third Saturday in October), the Fayetteville Chamber of Commerce hosts what they call "Bridge Day". The first Bridge Day was held in 1980, when the bridge was three years old. On that first day, two parachutists jumped from a plane onto the bridge. They were joined by three more parachutists, and all five then jumped from the bridge into the gorge. This is known as "BASE jumping", which is defined as: "jumping from a Building, Antenna (tower), Span (arch or bridge), and Earth (cliff or natural formation)". 

These days Bridge Day brings thousands of spectators who can walk across the bridge and watch hundreds of BASE jumpers "fly" 876' into the gorge below. It's West Virginia's largest single day festival. 

Okay, back to us. After all that lead-in, you're probably expecting me to say that we jumped off the bridge or something dramatic like that. Um, no.

Activity #1: A walk across the New River Gorge Bridge. There's a catwalk that's 25' beneath the bridge's surface where the cars travel. 

Um, yikes?!

On the shuttle bus ride from the tour office to the bridge, Hannah, our guide, asked how everyone was with heights. She said to just give her a "thumbs up", "thumbs down", or . . . she showed us a thumbs sideways signal. Everyone in our group of seven tourists gave a thumbs up except me. I gave the thumbs sideways signal. 

Honestly, I know some thumbs down people (regarding heights), and they wouldn't even consider this activity. So, I was pretty comfortable stating that I was a "thumbs sideways" gal. I don't have a problem looking down from a great height if there's no danger of me miss-stepping and falling. For instance, if I'm standing at a glass wall, and literally there's no way I'm going over the edge -- I'm okay with that. Or, as in the case of this bridge, the catwalk was wide enough at 24", there were handrails, and of course, we were harnessed and hooked in. Ironically, this last piece gives me the least bit of peace. Seriously, imagine swinging freely from that cable!!! (I have done a bit of zip-lining before, which takes every ounce of courage I have to step off; but this cable looks even wimpier than what a zipline offers.)

Hannah clips me in!

Let's do this!

Here I am, daring to look over the edge while we're stopped and listening to Hannah.

You can't see my right hand, but I'm pretty sure I had at least one hand on the rail at all times. Yeah . . .  like that one hand was ever going to be the thing preventing me from falling into the abyss . . . 

That's a Class 5 rapid below. (Remember this photo for later in the post.)

Hannah took some pics of us

This is the halfway point.

Due to the arch of the bridge, this is the only point at which you can see both ends of the walk.

Walk with us!

Here's a different view of the bridge. After the bridge walk we went to the National Park's Visitor Center and walked out to this view point. See my orange arrow pointing to the catwalk where we walked for the bridge walk?

Activity #2: A three-mile hike on the Endless Wall Trail in New River Gorge National Park. It was a very lush, green trail.

There were tons of rhododendron plants throughout the trail.  Unfortunately, unlike the one above, most were not in bloom yet. Just imagine if they'd all been in bloom, how spectacular that would've been! In the photo below, those are all rhododendron plants behind me! The forest was thick with them!

There were a couple of view points along the trail with views of the New River.

The best view! We could see far and wide!

Activity #3: A high-adventure white water rafting trip on the New River! We've done a few white water rafting trips before, so when Marty asked me, I said "sure"! And then the day of the trip was upon us, and it was a gray, cool and drizzly day. Hmmm, not what I think of as rafting weather. 

Adding to my unease, was the fact that the river was incredibly high at that time. There had been a lot of rain in North Carolina, and the New River originates near Blowing Rock in North Carolina and flows primarily south to north (seems as if that's against the laws of nature, but what do I know?). Only a handful of rivers in the world have this unique feature. The Nile is one of them. 

Here's our ride to and from the river.

Ready or not, here we go!

You can see how high the water level is. Just two days before we arrived in Fayetteville, the river had been running at 5,000 cubic feet per second; on the day we rafted it was 20,000 cubic feet per second! 

A quick group selfie! Marty and I are the two front paddlers, and you can see our guide, Liam at the back.

The New River Gorge Bridge is in sight. And you can see our "buddy" raft ahead on the right.

Liam took a photo of his crew.

The rafting company had someone on shore take these two photos. Unfortunately, the clarity is not as good as they should be, but you get the gist. You can see the two of us in the front of the raft, smiling as we approach the next rapid.

And here, you can't see me at all and can barely see Marty, because the rapid has overtaken us!!

Elevated water levels certainly created a high adventure rafting trip for us! We had three Class 5 rapids (the third of these, photographed from the bridge walk, was shown earlier in the post) and numerous Class 3 & 4's. 

According to paddling.com, the International Rating system considers Class 5 rapids "extremely difficult" (thank goodness Liam knew what he was doing and was good at giving us directions). Class 6 is the highest classification, and is considered "extraordinarily difficult" and "this violent whitewater should be left to paddlers of Olympic ability". The rafting company doesn't even run trips when/if there are Class 6 rapids. Phew! 

The photo above may have been the one where I felt as if I'd been given a double eye wash! Literally, my eyes were wide open, and water flushed them out vigorously. I could still feel the strangeness of it for several seconds afterward. If I had been wearing contacts, I'm sure they would've been washed away. 

Again and again, I was amazed that I was still in the raft! At one point, the front of the raft, where Marty and I were seated, was lifted up so much that I thought for sure we must've lost someone out of the raft. I turned around just in time to see our guide, Liam with his arm behind the woman in the back, propping her up.

Our take-out spot was just before the New River Gorge Bridge. Our total time on the river was two hours and four minutes (I overheard the guides say this.) We put in much further upriver than normal for this half-day trip, because the river was running so high and so fast. Normally the piece of river that we covered would've taken five hours! And we did it in just over two!

This is the only mural we saw in Fayetteville, but it's got it all!

I took this photo from the Beast as we crossed the New River Gorge Bridge and departed Fayetteville. You can see the foggy morning mist rising from the gorge. Pretty ordinary looking bridge from the top side, huh? You'd never know what's going on right underneath it.