WV Monongahela National Forest: Forest Road 75

FR 75

Forest Road 75 cuts across the high plateau north-south through the Dolly Sods Wilderness area and acts as a transect line that accesses a range of wetland types, forests types, and heath glades. All the popular trails through the Sods connect directly or via connector trails to this road but the trailheads on this day were very busy. I chose instead to avoid the high traffic areas and simply pulled off here and there to explore, taking a few short trails or by bushwhacking in. I used my Purple Lizard map for the Dolly Sods/Seneca Rocks area to find all those cool places most people miss or skip. 

Autumn Meadowhawk

The wetland complex that is the Dolly Sods Wilderness contains exceptional ecological treasures from moss and cotton grass bogs to beaver meadows to vast heathland swamps. But because they are high altitude at 4,000 feet or higher, these places are also highly sensitive to things like air pollution and warming. Numerous research sites are sprinkled throughout the wilderness area that collect data on how much pollution these wetlands are absorbing and more importantly, how very little it takes to alter the functionality of the wetlands - or even kill them off.  It is a wild but extremely fragile landscape. 

   

Beaver lodge and pond

The mystery of this place, however, is its ability to withstand change and recover from the trouncing human activities have inflicted upon it. How does something so wild and wet and lush claim once to be am artillery range or to have suffered a complete deforestation of old growth red Spruce forests?  How does a place so water-logged and sloggy hold  memory of fires so intense that sods were incinerated to dust? 

Garter Snake and Frog-Supper

This ability to withstand sometimes catastrophic change is the beauty and the beast of the Central Appalachian Highlands. It seems the harder we tried to destroy it the harder it embraces the rebound. I had to giggle a little when reading reviews on AllTrails about the various trails that spider-web across the highlands. "God-awful bloody mud!" "What idiot decided this place was good to hike in?" "Everything is wet! Water everywhere?!" Seems like a few hikers could not embrace the literal suck.

A grass bald with Red Spruce glade ringed with heath layers

Narrowleaf Bottle Gentian 

At the trailhead to the North Forest Loop Trail I parked in the shade of a Hemlock and Spruce transition woods and walked the road a bit before plunging down the trail. As I walked a group of very vocal Red Squirrels, screaming and chucking, came blasting to the edge of the woods and scattered in an explosion of fur and noise. My heart jumped into my throat as a big Fisher appeared, dark and thick and growling as chased a Red Squirrel into the open  road but when it saw me standing feet from it, it careened off into the shadows. The squirrel shot one way, fisher the other.

Stag-horn Clubmoss

Once on the loop trail I found the little Stag-Horn Clubmoss almost everywhere up to the very edges of a beautiful grass bald. Lycopods were once the dominate plant family in these ancient landscapes from 425 million years ago through the Carboniferous Age and its remains along with ferns formed the bulk of the organic carbons locked up in West Virginia's coalbeds. Some Lycopod species grew up to 100 feet tall while other species grew at every layer in the forest column.  The little Stag-Horn forest that lined the trail hosted a bunch of beautiful Smooth-tailed Hover Flies that sat warming in the patches of sun at the edge. Such beautiful little flies but my camera phone was inadequate for the capture. 

Inside a Red Spruce glade

Also missed by my phone camera was a very exciting sighting of a Yellow-Banded Bumble Bee, a rare sight anymore in the Mid-Atlantic except for these high altitude wetland meadows. I stood and watched two males bob and weave among the low Cranberry mat that grew tight against the edge of a Spruce Glade. Again, I wished I had brought my better camera and lens, both of which still need repair ($$).

Iconic Yellow Birch waiting for its next fan photos

Yellow Birch

Of course I had to stop to pay my respects to one of FR 75's most iconic trees, an old gangly Yellow Birch that grew up in a sunny glade now surrounded by young Spruce and Pine. Thanks to social media, this old soul has become something of a Dolly Sods celebrity for selfies and family portraits. I waited in line (!) to get my chance to photograph this great tree without people posing for the cameras. It was hugged on, patted, even kissed. A family was thrilled to have found it and told me that after the Sycamore on Hadrian's Wall was attacked by vandals (sawed down) they have made it their mission to find and photograph themselves with as many of the "great trees of our region" as they could this year. They named a dozen or more Champion and iconic trees in western PA, Virginia, and West Virginia they'd located each weekend since mid-summer. 

Tawny Cotton Grass

I stopped to explore several other wetlands and was so happy to add Smooth Greensnake to my list but again, unable to photograph it with my phone before it slithered away into the underbrush that encircled a beautiful Cotton Grass meadow. Old logging roads and a walk out to a hawk watch station led me to a field of red-berried  Mountain Ash and past some very impressive Allegheny Mound Builder ant mounds, where the ants were busy provisioning for winter.

Agueweed

American Mountain Ash

Witch-Hazel 

After hours and hours exploring along FR75 the intersection with the steep and winding FR19 had been reached, and so my exit for now from Dolly Sods. My ears popped as my truck angled down and down for the valley below with a stop to examine an outcrop of shale and the small shale barrens plant community that surrounded it. But it was not a safe place to be parked for long on a hairpin curve!

Notes:

Purple Lizard Maps are my favorite maps to use in the Mid-Atlantic and if you had one you'd know why. I used the Dolly Sods and Seneca Rocks map on this trip. Beautiful map!