Babcock State Park

Working our way back to Indy, we stopped for two nights at Babcock State Park in the New River Gorge area of West Virginia. Jill has limited her hiking on this trip and didn’t do any hiking at this park. I pieced together a 4+ mile hike from the campground using several trails to make a loop. The sequence was:

• North Slope Trail (from campground via service road between campground and cabins)
• Ridge Top Trail
• Short Cut Trail
• Old Pond Trail (toward Old Pond)
• Rocky Trail (follow stream from pond until it crosses the Skyline Trail)
• Narrow Gauge Trail (and back to campground when it crosses the service road)

Mann’s Creek crosses the service road near where the North Slope Trail starts.

Ridge Top is a walk in the woods.

Rocky Trail, on the other hand, is (mostly) a stone staircase built by the CCC and is slowly detiorating.

Narrow Gauge Trail is the rail bed that ran between Sewell and Clifftop. There are a few places where the bed has collapsed or washed out, making the trail more challenging than expected. At the end, though, you are rewarded with the beginning of the rapids and falls as Mann’s Creek begins its descent into the gorge.