(upbeat rock music) - I am Eric Hanson, and this week on "Epic Trails," I'm exploring wintry West Virginia in the New River Gorge.

Let's do this!

(Eric yelling) Yeah.

Woo!

(goat bleating) It's gonna be good.

Oh no, I thought we had it.

(upbeat rock music continues) I am Eric Hanson.

When I see a trail, I see more than a path from point A to point B.

A good trail is the ultimate opportunity to explore, to discover new landscapes, and to challenge myself.

When I don't have a pack on my back, I'm thinking about my next big adventure because my mission is simple.

My mission is to discover the world's most epic trails.

Funding for Epic Trails is provided by Discover the World.

Collette offers small group explorations tours, destinations and local experiences designed especially for small groups.

Explorations by Collette guided travels since 1918.

The Alinker three wheeled walking bike.

Assisting people with an active mindset to regain mobility and access the outdoors.

Keeping users active and engaged in life.

More information at Alinker.com In4Adventure.com Inspiring, educating and encouraging outdoor adventure and by these additional sponsors.

(peaceful music) (country music) West Virginia is the only state to be completely covered by the Appalachian Mountains.

It's known for its rugged landscapes, winding rivers, and warm hospitality.

It is a worthy destination and should be on everyone's travel list.

As John Denver so eloquently put it in his classic tune, "take me home, country roads," West Virginia just feels like the place I belong.

It's mid-January, and the typically snowy mountains have been hit with a recent bout of rainy weather.

Luckily, the highest points of West Virginia, the knobs, are tall enough to have scraped ice from the sky, leaving behind a fantastically beautiful frosted landscape.

West Virginia is the East Coast's outdoor playground.

Despite being less than a half day's drive from the busiest cities in the us, West Virginia is home to a huge amount of wilderness and trails, and that my friends, is music to my ears.

(upbeat music) The Otter Creek Wilderness is one of the prized wilderness areas of West Virginia.

It is an old area that has been logged and cut before, but thankfully a lot of these places have been recognized as unique and worth protecting.

So they've been designated as wilderness areas.

The rock would be cool, but it's gonna be sloppy.

Ooh!

Slippery.

I found a nice little dry spot right here at the creek.

Beautiful place, and I'm gonna make some lunch.

Brought out some bacon.

(laughs) (bacon sizzling) got some onions, peppers, cabbage, a little bit of butter in there, and a little bit of green chili.

It's gonna make a real fine lunch special here.

Don't need to cook this at all, just need to get it warm so that it's satisfying.

I don't think we're gonna have a problem with that.

(upbeat music continues) That's the way to do lunch.

Uh oh is this the way you came?

Oh yeah.

Oh, with grace and style, my friends, we made it back, pack's even lighter, time to keep moving.

(peaceful music) So I'm meeting up with Brooke, who is one of the rangers out here for the US Forest Service, and it is a cool opportunity to be able to get to hike with somebody who has a lot of local expertise, but also just brings a lot of passion for the way that she cares about the landscape and wants to inspire people to experience West Virginia in a safe way and in a responsible way, but still in a way that's playful and fun and that allows people to really fall in love with these landscapes.

- While we're here in Tucker County, but Otter Creek Wilderness, this is a congressionally designated wilderness area.

We have eight on the forest and this area compromises about 21,000 acres almost.

- Okay.

- Of designated wilderness.

And overall in the forest, we're at about 115,000 acres.

So Otter Creek Wilderness really offers opportunities to really get a chance at self-reliance because Otter Creek is wild, and because it's a wilderness area, you often have to traverse those stream crossings without any kind of assistance or reassurance that you're still on the trail.

So it's definitely not for everybody and it's not for the faint of heart, especially 'cause the mud there will probably suck you right in at times.

Or the river could take you away with it if you're not being careful.

(peaceful music continues) (upbeat music) Well, I think these, there might be a campsite up here.

There seems to be a trail.

Get us a little ways away from the creek.

That'd be nice.

- Okay.

- Let's see.

- Cool.

- Well welcome.

Take a load off.

- Yeah.

Where am I gonna put my tent?

As we're going, we're hiking through this really kind of different ecosystem, this different landscape.

It's very damp and wet, but with the wet nature of this hike, you know, in my mind I'm starting to think like, I kind of want to have a campfire tonight.

I hope that we're able to get all of this wood to be able to burn, to have a fire if we so desire.

So it might be a problem.

You think this will go?

- I hope so.

- Otherwise we did all that work for nothing.

In my mind I was like, Hey, I'm gonna show Brooke my wild man skills and start a fire with, you know, just like one little click of the lighter here.

It's gonna be no problem.

- Yeah, yeah.

Get in there little guys, little guys.

- It didn't go as planned.

No, oh no.

I thought we had it.

It turns out that it's actually really difficult to start a campfire out here in West Virginia in winter in one of the wettest wilderness areas in the state.

I was, I was feeling a little bit humbled, so we did successfully get a fire going, but the wood was constantly wet.

It was constantly needing attention.

It was tricky.

It humbled me.

I feel like less of a person.

I feel cold.

I don't know who I am anymore.

Am I an outdoorsman?

Am I skilled?

Do I have value?

Am I worthwhile?

Yes, I am.

(peaceful music) Seneca Rocks is this really interesting place because you essentially have an old seabed, a layer of sandstone that somehow through geologic time gets completely flipped vertically.

And you just have this really narrow spine of rock that looks like a rock climber's playground and it just stands like this tall monolith in the valley that is so strange and not at all what I expected to see in West Virginia.

Are the bold eagles plentiful here?

- [Brooke] Yes, definitely.

We even have golden eagles come through too.

- Really?

- Yep.

- Oh, that's so cool.

- Yeah.

They're considerably bigger though.

- Yeah so impressive.

That was amazing that we just got to spot an eagle right there.

- Yeah.

So this is the observation deck for Seneca Rocks?

- Yep when you're hiking up the rocks, this is the best viewpoint you can get.

- Yeah.

- And if you're a rock climber you can try your hand at actually climbing the rocks.

- This is really interesting to see the valleys and the mountains of West Virginia.

You know, I'm from, I'm from the west and I think that I didn't have a concept of the mountains of West Virginia, but it's, it's beautiful, and there's some, definitely some vertical mountains here.

- Yep.

We keep it pretty steep sometimes.

- Yeah, it's impressive.

I love it.

(peaceful music continues) (upbeat music) Today I'm meeting up with Rod, who's one of the main ski patrol guys here at Canaan Valley.

We're at here kind of at a funky time.

We're kind of in between some storms and we've had a little bit of some warm weather that's melted out a bit of the snow, but that won't stop us from having a good old time here.

So we're about to go drop into one of the steeps here and have some fun, ready Rod?

(upbeat rock music) (Eric laughing) (upbeat rock music continues) - [Eric] It really has a feel of you're skiing in the woods.

There's no commercialization anywhere.

There's no houses hanging out over a trail.

You're not skiing under a road.

- Yeah.

- And that, that to me is, is really cool because most of the resorts have really just sold out to the commercialism and so it just gets that feel that you are in your backyard kind of thing, you know?

- Yeah.

- It's amazing that even though the conditions aren't prime, it still just feels so good out here.

Riding with Rod is great and honestly, any day you're on the slopes is a great day.

(upbeat rock music continues) (peaceful music) So I'm heading to Babcock State Park and the Gristmill, which is one of the iconic places here for West Virginia.

So I show up today and it just happens to be perfect weather.

We just had the rain turn into snow.

Everything is dusted with white, it's pristine, it's beautiful, and it's just got this quiet, peaceful charm to it.

Something that's really cool about being here in the winter and the off season, frankly, of when most people are traveling to West Virginia is that no one is here.

I'm at some of these iconic places and I have them all to myself.

(peaceful music continues) So getting to walk around the old grist mill at Babcock State Park with literally by myself, getting to go to Cathedral Falls by myself and some of these really otherwise maybe highly visited places are just empty, and it allows me an opportunity to just sit and reflect and think and soak it in and really just have such a unique opportunity to experience this like few people get to do.

One of the most popular trails in all of the National Park system is the Endless Wall Trail, which is truly iconic.

It's beautiful.

You've got this stunning sandstone, kind of gorge cliff, kind of like what you see out west, but this outcropping of rock that protrudes out from the canopy of the forest and really provides this dramatic landscape within the Greater Gorge.

(peaceful music continues) So woke up to a blanket of snow and I'm meeting up with Phil with Arrowhead Bike Farm and today we are going mountain biking.

- Nice to meet you.

- Yeah, nice to meet you.

- Are you for a pretty exciting bike ride?

- This is different than I was expecting out here.

When I woke up today, I was thinking, I was like, man, I don't know if today's gonna be a good day for mountain biking or if it's gonna work, and got there and Phil was like, no problem.

It's still just gonna be another great day out here.

So he wasn't bothered by it.

So we got all our kit together and decided, you know what, let's just go for it, charge the trails.

- And it was super fun riding through all these snowy trails.

(upbeat rock music) Whoa!

- Tight.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

We hike the rest of the way?

- Hike the rest of the way.

- Okay, cool.

- Little short little quarter mile out to the rocky point.

- Yeah.

- I used to come down here while I was a teenager, backpacking, or whitewater rafting.

- Oh yeah?

- It's fun to be back here now.

(upbeat music) I've lived in a lot of places you know, I've lived in Bolivia and China, Colorado, California.

- Really?

And nowhere compares to just the awesomeness that is West Virginia.

It's almost heaven.

- That's high praise.

Hey.

And it is almost heaven.

So this bridge is obviously a super iconic bridge.

- It used to be the world's highest, I mean, single large bridge.

And then I think a, a bridge in China has beat out now.

So now it's the highest single large bridge in the Western Hemisphere.

- Okay.

We'll maintain that for a while.

- Yeah, exactly, you know?

So it is almost a thousand feet tall.

It's over a thousand feet long.

There is one day a year that you're allowed to jump off of it.

Bridge day in the fall, and it's a big base jumping festival.

- This is stunning.

- I know.

Let's keep riding and we will ride across the bridge itself.

It is gonna be amazing.

- We get to ride across the bridge?

- We can ride across the bridge.

It's gonna be really awesome.

- Okay.

- And then we'll actually drop all the way down to Nuttallburg and check out some cool ruins.

- Okay.

- Yeah, we've got a big ride ahead of us.

(upbeat rock music) - [Eric] Riding a bike across that bridge, that's when you really notice just how large and massive this bridge is.

It is pretty stunning and pretty wild to be out there.

(uplifting music) (upbeat music) West Virginia obviously has a huge history tied in with coal and so it was pretty interesting to be able to ride through the old coal mines that are no longer operational, but you can still see the mining tracks, the ovens, the infrastructure that was left behind.

That's a pretty interesting part of this national park here.

(upbeat music continues) So when was this place operating?

- [Phil] John Nettle came exploring for coal in the 1870s and opened the mine by 1873.

And then he and his family managed it until 1920 when Henry Ford bought the mine.

And so then the mine continued to operate under various different owners until 1958.

- [Eric] And so now we can ride our bikes and hike or whatever, people can explore these trails.

- [Phil] Yeah so there's just a kind of a web of trails here that we're allowed to ride through and then hike through.

Of course, don't go climbing on any of the equipment or anything.

It is rusty and falling apart and it could be a, a really bad day.

(upbeat music) (bouncy music) - [Eric] So I am here at the Ace Adventure Park and this is one of the best ways to experience the winter adventures here in West Virginia - During the winter you can zip on all year round, you can rock climb, you're just gonna have some really cold hands.

Same goes for rafting.

You can raft, but again, you're gonna want that wetsuit.

- I didn't really know what to expect.

You know, I've done a lot of these kind of high adventure kind of things before and I was thinking that maybe it was gonna be just kind of a ho hum fun experience.

And on the first zip I was like, whoa, this is awesome.

- All right you ready?

- Yeah.

- Three, two, one.

See ya.

- Here we go.

(line whirring) Woohoo.

Whoa!

That was really, really fun.

What a great thrill to kick things off here, and the team assures me it only gets better from here.

Lindsay, how many zips are there for the day today?

- [Lindsay] We've got nine zip lines and two sky bridges.

- [Eric] So are you just like kind of testing to see if I've got what it takes to make it through here?

- Oh, for sure.

That first one is the test.

- Okay.

- If you can do that first one we're not worried about the rest.

- Oh, okay.

Whew, I've passed the test.

I'm good.

- You did great.

- [Eric] Nice.

(upbeat rock music) - My favorite zip line is the plunge.

Nothing beats that heart pumping feeling of jumping off that thing.

Whether you're going towards or backwards, it really catches your stomach.

- Should I be nervous?

I'm feeling a little bit nervous.

- Got it.

Both hands?

Stay crossed okay?

Three, two, one, see ya.

(Eric yelling and cheering) - [Eric] This is such a fun way to, to go have a thrill, to conquer your fear of heights, to get your adrenaline up and just to have a really dang good time.

Get a shot of that max.

Well, I have never done anything quite like that.

That is a zip line and a half.

So, so much fun, such a great experience here, and with this cold, crisp, beautiful weather.

Mm, couldn't ask for a better day.

Thanks to the team here for leading me here at Ace Adventure Park, and I am a happy camper.

So I've ridden across the bridge, I've hiked around the bridge.

Now it's time to hike under the bridge.

The bridge walk is a pretty popular way to experience the bridge.

And for those inclined to really just see a lot of exposure, to see the gorge from a really unique perspective, the best thing to do is to go for the bridge walk.

And you see the infrastructure, you see all the old architecture and all of these leading lines and arches and curves.

It's really pretty fascinating to see it from underneath.

(country music) I feel like West Virginia is a true gem of the East Coast and it has it all here.

If you wanna ski, if you wanna mountain bike, if you wanna hike, paddle, climb, whatever you wanna do, even here in the winter, you can do it, and this has been a revelation here for me, and I am truly thankful for this whole time, and honestly, what more could you ask for?

(country music continues) (upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) Funding for Epic Trails is provided by Discover the World.

Collette offers small group explorations tours, destinations and local experiences designed especially for small groups.

Explorations by Collette guided travels since 1918.

The Alinker three wheeled walking bike.

Assisting people with an active mindset to regain mobility and access the outdoors.

Keeping users active and engaged in life.

More information at Alinker.com In4Adventure.com Inspiring, educating and encouraging outdoor adventure and by these additional sponsors.