Trails on the New River Gorge

Though I've driven though West Virginia on a couple of occasions, I'd never really stopped to see what this beautiful state has to offer.  That changed as our area churches put together a rafting trip in the New River Gorge.  We came down for a couple of days to raft and to enjoy other activities.  I used extra free time to piece together a couple of trail runs.  I had begun to do some research on what the trails look like in the area and had some ideas in mind.  In the end, time allowed me to explore the Canyon Rim Trail (there may be another name for it) and the Endless Wall Trail.  The Canyon Rim trail heads northwest out of the parking lot at Adventures on the Gorge resort.  There is no signage and the beginning of the trail is actually there frisbee golf course.  This makes the beginning a bit hard to follow, but a good common sense idea for a trail eventually will follow it out of the frisbee golf area.

Starved Rock State Park - River Trail

Route Name: River Trail
Trailhead Elevation: 624 ft.
Low Point: 453 ft.
Distance: 6.56 mi.
Elevation Gain: 1,549 ft. (GEarth estimate, seems high)
Start Time: 2:16pm
End Time: 6:40pm

Trip Report:

It had been many years since we'd made the trek down to Starved Rock.  The last time I could say I was there was in the fall of 2002 when Sarah and I began dating again.  It was one of our first big dates together.  For this time around, my boys and I happened to be staying with my parents in the Chicago area and were looking for something fun to do on a Saturday.  Being an outdoors family, looking for a good hiking day seemed to be the right choice.