Cheat Mountain

My farm is in West Virginia's Greenbrier River valley.

The eastern wall of the valley is the sailplane pilots' legendary endless mountain, Allegheny. Cattle graze the old farms on the eroded, irregular ridges of that thousand-mile-long upland. When the wind is westerly, as it usually is, lift develops on Allegheny's slopes. I like to surf the wave in my Piper J–3 Cub or Breezy. Passengers love ripping along at treetop level, mixing it up with the hawks, bumping along in the irregular, rising currents of air while we look east and west at great valleys and seemingly endless waves of parallel blue ridges.

Allegheny is a very cool rock, but my favorite mountain is Cheat, which forms the western wall of my valley. A mere comma to Allegheny's continental length, Cheat is a bit higher and much wider, about 10 miles across. And it is a wild, empty place.

The southern end of the mountain is just a few miles from my farm. Here, on Cheat's highest summits, perches the Snowshoe Mountain ski resort. Most of the ski runs are on the north-facing slopes. These slopes drain into creeks that form the headwaters of Cheat River, a superb trout stream.

The river runs northeast, grooving the mountain's crest like a molar and eventually dividing it into two separate ridges. Collecting its tributaries, the river meanders on northward to join the Monongahela at Point Marion, Pennsylvania. The mighty river flows on to Pittsburgh, where it joins the Allegheny and assumes yet another name, Ohio.

North of the ski resort the entire mountain — with a 200-acre exception — is national forest, devoid of farms and homes and junkyards and trash piles. Cheat is my favorite place to fly.

Yesterday evening a cold front came through the area, cleaning out the sky. I lay on my porch and stared deep into the Milky Way with binoculars. No light pollution here. This morning is the fifteenth of August, the temperature is 47 degrees. The fog burned from the valley by 8 a.m., revealing a pristine blue sky. As the morning progresses the air warms, the summer haze returns, making the sky gauzy. Clouds begin forming. I get out the J–3 Cub and head for Cheat.

Skimming the mountain in my J–3, I fly over the river and a growing coniferous forest and the eroded landforms of an ancient place. Yet Cheat wasn't always like this. In fact, the travails of this mountain are symptomatic of the forces that have racked America throughout its history.

At the end of the ice age, the coniferous forest of the far north retreated up the mountain slopes. Oaks and hickories took over the lower slopes and valleys. Northern hardwoods, primarily sugar maples and beeches, survived on the high slopes. Only on the tops of the ridges did the refugees from the north woods survive — red spruce, Fraser fir, and yellow birch. The mountains were covered by virgin timber when the first white men arrived. The valleys were home to huge herds of elk and buffalo, which the pioneers hunted to extinction. Only the hardiest mountaineers ascended the mountains, building tiny cabins of huge logs. When the Civil War raged through these mountains the ancient forest was still essentially undisturbed. It remained that way until the coming of the railroads.

At the turn of the twentieth century Cheat Mountain was raped. Cheat was apparently one of the last areas of virgin timber remaining in the Appalachians north of the Great Smokies, no doubt because access was so difficult. Logging railroads were constructed up the sides of the mountain and up the valley of the Cheat River. The spruce forest was clear-cut. Tens of millions of board feet of timber were taken off this mountain. The detritus burned.

Forest fires ravaged the mountain until the snows of winter extinguished them, burning so fiercely that in places the soil was consumed. The creatures of the forest — turkey, whitetail deer, mountain lion, black bear, squirrels, and all the rest — were wiped out. Worse than the fires were the floods. The rivers became sterile places choked with sawdust, ash, and mud.

ùventually, with the help of the Civilian Conservation Corps and Mother Nature, the forest regenerated itself. After World War II, the trees had again reached timber size, so the logging of Cheat began again, this time with trucks as well as trains.

Today the Cass Scenic Railroad, near Snowshoe, runs on one of the logging railroads, using the mountain engines to pull trainloads of tourists to the top of Cheat every day, May through October.

Coming up over Cheat this morning, I see a column of coal smoke billowing from the locomotive, which is pushing eight carloads of tourists through the forest toward the overlook on Bald Knob. I can't resist. I fly through the smoke, inhaling a good lungful of that slightly sulfurous hard-coal smell.

No one in the cars notices the little yellow Cub until suddenly there is a break in the trees and everyone waves. I wave back, and continue westward, across Cheat River toward the restored strip mines that cover the western ridge. After World War II the company that owned the southern end of Cheat from where the ski resort now stands north to U.S. Route 250 — the old Staunton-to-Parkersburg turnpike — secured mining permits and began stripping coal. The company removed the last of the coal just a few years ago and restored the land to more-or-less its original contour. The naked earth was reseeded with grass and trees, mainly white pine and spruce, endless rows of them, like corn. Years before, with the end of the timber and coal in sight, the company donated the land to the public, reserving some timber and mining rights, and took a massive tax write-off. The southern end of Cheat Mountain joined the northern end as part of the Monongahela National Forest.

The strippers built settlement ponds to treat the acid mine drainage, iron and heavy metals. Today in my J–3 the red creeks are quite prominent against the green grass and trees. I see that beavers have moved into some of the drainage ponds, constructing dams to hold more water.

There are roads here, mine inspection roads, with barriers every few miles to keep out adventurers with Jeeps and SUVs. Off-road vehicles — ATVs and unlicensed motorcycles — are not allowed in Monongahela National Forest. Apparently the Forest Service doesn't want people up on Cheat unless they are walking, riding a mountain bike, or driving a street-legal vehicle. Or flying.

Of course there are a few roads open to taxpayers, but they are empty. Wait! There is a car, a white sedan, bumping slowly along over a rough road. The intrepid motorists appear to be enjoying the fantastic view off the ridge to the west. I fly over, waving madly.

Then I circle an abandoned fire tower. The road to the tower is washed out, overgrown. The Forest Service abandoned all the fire towers on Cheat years ago, left them for hawks and eagles to use as perches. Yes, there are bald eagles here. They too have returned, as have bears, mountain lions, and deer. Of course, this being America, infested with bureaucracies, the Forest Service closes most of the public roads in the fall, the ones without permanent barricades. Access to Cheat is so difficult in the fall that the deer are lightly hunted; some of the most magnificent trophy whitetail bucks east of the Mississippi live here. Occasionally some hardy soul hikes in, kills a 12- or 14-pointer, then has the adventure of a lifetime packing it out.

I swing over Cheat River and look at the old log lodge, a two-story structure that began life a hundred years ago as a whorehouse. Today huge vacation homes are sprouting around it on the 200 acres that the timber company didn't give to the government. This is the only private land on Cheat.

Above this private tract, on a ridge overlooking the old Staunton-Parkersburg turnpike, is Cheat Summit Fort, built here by Union soldiers in the summer of 1861. Robert E. Lee was learning to be a general when he arrived in September. He planned an attack on the fort, then, characteristically, left it to a colonel to carry out. The credulous colonel questioned several captured Yankee pickets, who told him the fort contained 4,300 men, 4,000 more than it actually did. The rebel colonel abandoned the attack and marched away with his troops without firing a shot. What Lee thought of this fiasco we can only guess. The Federals spent a horrible winter here, snowed in, starving, and dying like flies. Many lie in unmarked graves.

I fly down Cheat River, a rocky, boulder-strewn, scenic river rich in trout and empty of fishermen. The best access is from Route 250, yet not a soul is visible on the river today. One of the railroads that carried the coal and trees away runs alongside the river, and in places its roadbed is the only access to the river. A tourist train, the Salamander, runs up and down these tracks every day in summer. Alas, unless you fly an airplane, riding the Cass Railway or the Salamander is about the only way to see great expanses of Cheat Mountain.

On the eastern edge of the mountain, south of Route 250, lies Gaudineer Knob, a scenic area maintained by the state of West Virginia. On the top is a mossy rain-microforest usually shrouded in cloud, a magic wonderland that is home to some of the rarest salamanders on earth.

Just beneath the knob is a patch of virgin forest, a few dozen acres that survived the logging because of a surveyor's error. The spruce trees here are about 300 years old and dying of old age. Here, and only here, can a visitor sense the magnificence of the primeval forest that once covered Cheat.

Today I fly by the Gaudineer Knob scenic overlook. As usual, the bench at the overlook is empty. And that is sad.

Because I have a little airplane and fly low, I own Cheat Mountain. I don't have legal title, but the equitable title is mine. I have skimmed over, looked at, savored, and loved every square foot of it. This is my place, my piece of the main.

Maybe someday the government will designate Cheat a national park, combine it with portions of Allegheny Mountain and the upper reaches of the Greenbrier River. Trails could be built, the roads improved, campgrounds and septic systems installed, and little signs erected that tell you nifty stuff. Then the public could be invited to my mountain.

With timber sales completely stopped, the forest would gradually mature and the long process of replacing the lost soil would begin. It would take several millennia for the forest to become the way it was before the logging trains ascended the mountain, but in 50 or 100 years the trees would again become magnificent. In two or three centuries this forest would be as near to wilderness as one would find north of the Smokies. That would be a sublime gift for the Americans yet unborn.

Until that happy day, I'll share Cheat Mountain with you, if you fly an airplane. Please be careful of the hawks and eagles — we share the sky with them.

Stephen Coonts is the author of nine New York Times bestsellers. His latest novel is Saucer, published in March by St. Martins/Griffin.