Ever have one of those weekends when you kick yourself for not bringing your cross country skis instead of your mountain bike? Me neither. Ever had one of those weekends when you leave the access vehicle on the rack of your car because the hike will kick as much ass as riding? Me either. But sometimes, it does.
This was one of those weekends that is gonna be tough to come down from on a Monday morning. As Todd Snider says in "East Nashville Skyline": "discount cigarettes, liquour and wine, any where, any time, WV delivers" (I added the WV part). It happens every time I go to West By God Virginia, like finding one of the hundreds of cool waterfalls that lure you in with their sound, but then you realize there's no real trail down to it, just a faint opening down a steep slope through rocks and rhododendren. Damn, did Chris the Younger and I have a good time. That there is a swimming hole for the memory banks, boys!!:
The game plan was to ride the bikes down to the Cheat River by the Blue Hole and find a sweet tasty route along the eastern bank. Problem was that neither of us remembered exactly how to get down in there. And it was snowing. And we were about to drive down into a gorge. And we were going to do so on WV country roads. In the Nissan Altima Four Door Sedan. Now, the Nissan Altima Four Door Sedan has never let me down, and I love her almost as much as I love my dear dog Supai but not even as close to as much as I love my lovely Artemis...uh....for taking care of me in some situations where she (the car) clearly does not have the requisite talent or design to perform in the manner I ask of her in a given particular hairbrained moment (I'm thinking of that time I tried to drive her all the way around the mountain on Loop Road in Davis, WV - what the hell, nobody said you couldn't do it! It's a road for Chrissake, isn't it? "Ha ha, foolish man," exclaimed the gods of the wilderness)
But the combined wisdom of a college kid with a hangover and a father who just made the final payment on his car, miraculously prevailed. So when things started to get slippery, snowy, and sketchus, we pulled into a driveway to reconnoiter, somewhere Out There. The gods of the wilderness must not be all that crazy, because as we were getting out of the car, here comes a local good-old-boy with a red beard in a pickup truck and a snowplow. He works for the township and he politely asks us (I shall paraphrase for effect here) "What the f*ck are you guys thinking about doing???" We convey our scheme to him, and he opines for us to "not go down there, even I don't want to go down there" on that road. He had no choice since he was plowing.
Fortunately, God gives fools choices, and sometimes he works through mysterious characters such as Red Beard. So our new-found, if ephemeral friend, gives us directions for a better way down to the river, by driving in to Masontown (former home of the All Good festival) and taking a right at the Main Pharmacy building (you can't miss it), then looking for Bull Run Road. I had google-earthed the area many times, dreaming of a gravel road route that would loop into the Cheat Canyon and back out. I had also seen video footage of dumbasses paddling Bull Run in kayaks (Bull Run and nearby Decker's Creek
are two of the ggggggnarliest steep creek runs in all of WV). Red Beard seems like a good dude. In fact, most of the people I have met in WV are genuinely good, friendly people who love their state and go out of their way to be kindly to outsiders who want to enjoy it as much as they do.
So it's off to Bull Run, as the snow begins to fall heavily. We make it into town with out incident:
Despite the two school buses sitting on blocks in the front yard of the only house in "Bull Run," the only children at play there are the drunken college kids who have managed not to kill themselves by jumping off the bridge in the summertime.
The plowing of the road ends. I do an Austin-Powers-On-A-Forklift turn-around with the car, so as not to get stuck between a soft spot and a slippery place. (Yes, we heard banjos - say it and get it out of your system)
I had to break the news to the access vehicles that they had to stay on the rack: too much snow, too rocky, and the Chris the Younger's face was still a bit greenish.
The walk down to the bridge kicks ass:
We get to the bridge:
The Cheat Canyon:
I'm unhappy to report a complete lack of success in finding a route along the river on the eastern bank as planned, Colonel. However, there appears to be a sweet tasty four wheeler/two track on the western bank, where I'm sure many a man has thrown his woman into the river and watched her wash down, then regret he did it, and have to drink some moonshine to feel better about things, as the traditional bluegrass song goes.
Heck, boah, lets just check out the Blue Hole. Mighty sketchus the approach be, but like everything else in WV, all the good shit is hidden. Fortunately, Chris the Younger has an eagle eye, and we found the path through the rhodo.
Watch yer step, boah! The next one's a doozy! He he he....
The water does actually have a blue tone to it. Kinda cool.
We decided not to linger too long because the snow was beginning to fall heavily.
Up Next: discovering a NEW PLACE (the swimming hole at Red Beard Falls), a Gunnar Shogren sighting, freezing my chestnuts off while camping in 15 degree weather, and a sweet ride at Cooper's Rock
(to be continued)
*The dude with the red beard
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