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Dates Visited
Conditions
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After a few days in Pennsylvania,
I entered into West Virginia for a short whirl of easy county highpoints near Morgantown, and the state highpoint at Spruce Knob. Storms came in the night before and stayed with me the whole time, so views weren't the greatest.
In Morgantown I went east on Interstate-68 to the Coopers Rock exit, then north and north again at a fork, following a steep road up the hill to a camping area and the end of the pavement. The road goes another couple miles to near the summit, but the county line is drawn below the top, so I had to gauge its location as best as I could using landmarks and common sense, plus some walking around. In all, not a terribly exciting visit.
I spent maybe 30 minutes on the drive out and back to the interstate. It had been a long day and the weather was getting pretty nasty very fast, so I hightailed it back to Morgantown and stayed dry and warm in a hotel.
The following day started wet and gloomy. I was heading south toward Backbone Mountain for the Maryland state highpoint, and these two were on the way, so what the hey, I figured. On US-119 about 10 miles south of Morgantown, I drove until I hit the Taylor county line sign. This is the Marion County highpoint. This point is actually a three-way junction of Monongalia, Taylor and Marion counties. To make it count, I parked, walked a bit, took a photo of a historical marker, and ticked it off my list!
Right at the Taylor county line sign on the east side of the highway is Carl Zinn Road. I drove in about 0.4 mile
through a residential area to a dirt-road on my right (south). A small hill immediately in the area, just south of Carl Zinn
Road, is the Taylor county highpoint. I crossed the fence and hiked up about 30 vertical feet and about 150 feet overall to the wet, grassy, unexciting top. Actually, the top is in Monongalia county, but the county line cuts just south of the top. Good enough for me. Both these highpoints took about 30 minutes total.
The Maryland state highpoint was next, not far south of here.
Backbone Mountain extends across Maryland and West Virginia and also provides the Preston (W.V.) County highpoint. After my Maryland highpoint hike, I backtracked out to highway US-219 back in West Virginia, then drove just about 2 miles more south to another dirt road on the east side of the highway with a big gate across it. A big sign at this road mentions the wilderness area and also mentions hiking is welcome. So I parked and started in. The hike follows the road up and makes one hard left so that the route trends northeasterly at a moderate grade. Soon, I came to a cleared path that appeared to be where a set of power lines once stood, perpendicular to the road I was hiking on. This cleared path extends all the way down the mountain in a straight line, and up and over the hills farther out, so it was definitely a power-line right-of-way, although all poles have long since been removed. I decided to make a right turn and hike up this very steep portion to the main ridge.
The highpoint is in the woods south a bit of the clearing at the ridge where I stood. I just entered the woods and stayed close to the ridge, trying to avoid obvious obstacles like downed trees, jumbly undergrowth and large rocks. The bushwhacking wasn't too bad- mostly ferns and vines down low, with about a 6-inch padding of leaves and moss on the ground. I had to step carefully as sometimes I would break through this mat into a hole or something. Anyway, I just hiked, surmounting rock piles and always spotting higher land a bit further south. After about 20 minutes I came to a very large rocky outcrop that was significantly higher than the land around it. I climbed these rocks, and out to a pillar set off by itself that appeared to be the highest point, and scanned the area. The land to the south now visibly started to drop in elevation. I was pretty sure I had climbed the highpoint and a later review of the map showed that I had almost certainly done so (I was afraid of an isolated jumble of rocks much further south not visible to me, but the map shows a steady increase in gain to the 3,400-foot contour, roughly 1,500 feet south of the power-lines which do appear on the map).
The hike out was simple, and I was back to my car, an overall round trip of about 80-90 minutes and about 2.5 miles round trip and 400 feet of gain.
From here I proceeded to the West Virginia highpoint at Spruce Knob.
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(c) 2001, 2007 Scott Surgent. For entertainment purposes only. This report is not meant to replace maps, compass, gps and other common sense hiking/navigation items. Neither I nor the webhost can be held responsible for unfortunate situations that may arise based on these trip reports. Conditions (physical and legal) change over time! Some of these hikes are major mountaineering or backpacking endeavors that require skill, proper gear, proper fitness and general experience. |