ATTENTION HIKERS!

Come join the KVVP for a hike of the Stone Cliff Trail (part of the New River Gorge Trail System) near Thurmond, West Virginia, on Saturday, May 20, 2017. The Stone Cliff trail is along the New River in Raleigh County. This hike continues our KVVP “old growth forest” theme. RSVP to Ron Graham at (304) 400-8710 or rongraham.crw@suddenlink.net.

Hikers will meet at the Kanawha City Mall parking lot, between Chase Bank and the WV Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), just off of 57^th Street SE. A carpool will be organized and depart from the Kanawha Mall parking lot promptly at 8:30 am. The trail head is an hour and half drive from Charleston.

The website http://www.oldgrowthforest.net/stonecliff---new-river-gorge-wv states the following:

Although almost all forests in the New River Gorge National River were logged in the past, there is one small eleven-acre patch spared the lumberman’s axe at the end of the Stone Cliff Trail. There, you will find a forest consisting of chinquapin oaks, northern red oaks, bitternut hickories, and buckeyes that exhibit old-growth characteristics (large live and dead standing trees, abundant large trunks on the ground, and tip-up root mounds). These large over-story trees are two to three feet in diameter, and are estimated to be 100 to 200 years old, or greater. One more interesting characteristic of this old-growth forest is the soil, which is high in pH and more characteristic of the limestone country found in Greenbrier Valley to the east.