#cheat river

[vandaliatraveler]

Spring in the Cheat River Canyon.

From top: lowbush blueberry (Vaccinium pallidum); the pendulous green flowers of striped maple (Acer pensylvanicum); sweet white violet (Viola blanda), which loves cool, moist forests; wild strawberry (Fragaria virginiana), which has been hybridized with a South American species to produce commercial strawberries; marsh blue violet (Viola cucullata), an elegant, gregarious violet found growing in seeps and along streambanks; smooth Solomon's seal (Polygonatum biflorum); great white trillium (Trillium grandiflorum); a West Virginia white (Pieris virginiensis) sipping nectar from a sweet white violet; and broadleaf toothwort (Cardamine diphylla), the larval host plant for the West Virginia white.

Note: this hauntingly beautiful butterfly, a flitting ghost in Appalachia's April forests, is in serious decline because it confuses invasive garlic mustard for its host plant, Cardamine. Garlic mustard is toxic to its larvae. Another example of how an invasive species can wreak havoc on the vital lifecycles of our native ecosystems.

[appalachianbacchus]

I mentioned Cooper’s Rock a few posts ago but I wanted to talk about it again.

The last day trip I talked about was very rainy and foggy. This one, in the first week of May 2024, was on a much clearer day.

I focused more on the striations of water erosion on the boulders. The ancient river we eventually called the Cheat River (a tributary of the Monongahela River) changed speeds and volumes in different eras. You can see this in the different ways it affected the boulders as it lapped against them.

The more narrow bands were a more placid river while the wider bands were stronger rapids.

The sunlight was great on the oak leaves and the rhododendron blooms. These rhododendrons were at their peak on this day while the ferns were just starting to open.

[rjzimmerman]

Acid mine drainage devastates streams, but there are surprising efforts underway in Coal Country.

Good story. People wanted to restore the Cheat River, so they started, got messed around, restarted, encountered a new obstacle, resumes, got screwed with, and the finally, it paid off.

The Cheat River, Cheat River Canyon in West Virginia. Photo © Kent Mason

Excerpt:

When coal seams are ripped from the earth, rocks containing sulfur-bearing minerals get exposed to air and water, creating toxic cocktails of sulfuric acid and dissolved metals, usually iron.

This acid mine drainage (AMD) can excise all life from a stream. And even where the kill is incomplete, iron precipitate can render the streambed unfit for fish spawning and benthic life by coating it with an armor-like layer of red, orange or yellow sediment — “yellow boy,” as it’s called.

AMD also dissolves such toxic metals as copper, lead and mercury, poisoning ground and surface water.

Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky, Maryland, Indiana, Illinois, Oklahoma, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Tennessee, Virginia, Alabama and Georgia are blighted by AMD.

But some spectacular remediation is underway, especially in Appalachia. Consider the rebirth of West Virginia’s Cheat River.

[vandaliatraveler]

Short vid of the storm clouds over Cheat River Canyon on Sunday. I went mushroom hunting up at Snake Hill Wildlife Management Area, but the wet, muggy, hot weather took most of the joy out of it. The Cheat River is running high and brown with sediment from the storm runoff. Not quite ideal for the whitewater rafters, I would guess. More rain coming later this week.

[vandaliatraveler]

I'm forever drawn to places where the Earth's geologic past has been thrust up from the mantle and opened like a crusty, craggy history book for all to read. The act of simply touching a rock formation that is hundreds of millions of years in the making and simultaneously connecting with the continent's primeval origins is both sacred and profound. Every layer of rock tells a story of its own. Against these accumulated histories, our mayfly existences barely register. Rock City at Coopers Rock State Forest is one of those very special places where the Earth has revealed her deepest secrets. The Pottsville Formation that underlies this part of Central Appalachia is estimated to be 300 hundred million years old. The massive slabs in the photos above are Connoquenessing sandstone, an erosion-resistant sedimentary rock that evokes the incredible drama of Earth's formation wherever it breaks through the crust.

[vandaliatraveler]

I snuck in a late spring hike in Cheat River Canyon yesterday, before the dreaded heat dome builds in early next week. Between Brazil's Pantanal going up in flames and the massive heat spikes in North America and elsewhere, I wonder what will be left of this planet's beautiful wild places in twenty to thirty years. For now, I celebrate and cherish every day the glorious diversity of living things that nature has gifted us. This includes the magnificent poke milkweed (Asclepias exaltata), a shade tolerant member of the dogbane family, which feeds and hosts a great many of those living things, such as the extraordinary Himmelman's plume moth (Geina tenuidactylus). Or the comical-looking rock harlequin (Corydalis sempervirens), which clings to the rocky outcrops of the canyon. And the exquisite downy skullcap (Scutellaria incana), a gregarious summer mint that associates with wild bergamot and tall thimbleweed at forest edges. And how about the peculiar dangling flowers of Indian cucumber (Medeola virginiana) or the pale, ghostly stems and bracts of the parasitic Indian pipe (Monotropa uniflora), just now emerging from the forest floor? In a couple of weeks, the rhododendron bloom will start in the canyon and summer will be in full swing.

[vandaliatraveler]

Damp, cool, and overcast are the prevailing themes of this year's fall season. But even on the darkest of days, nature's inner light cannot be denied. On days like this, as a photographer, I get the benefit of longer exposure shots, which make the colors of the fall forest all the more vivid, expressive, and moody. My early morning hike in Cheat River Canyon reminded me how mist, carotenoids, sandstone, and moss can cast a magical spell that brings joy even on the darkest days.

[vandaliatraveler]

Shavers Fork of the Cheat River at Stuart Recreation Area in the Monongahela National Forest.