Monongahela National Forest

The Country Roads of West Viriginia, including Cannaan Heights Road are beautiful this time of year.

A largely undeveloped gravel bike trail outside of Thomas and Hedricks.

Most of the descend occurs in the 5 1/2 miles from Douglas, roughly 900 feet drop which works out to be an over 3% average grade, with a maximum grade of 3.75%.

It's much steeper then locomotives are engineered to safely climb, which is 2% or less, preferably less then 1.5%. It took at least two locomotives paired together climb, and heavy riding of the brakes down it and at least once in 1910s an out of control train crashed into the gorge below.

While not steep compared to many mountain roads, it's still a fun ride down and a good climb back up. Probably best done on a mountain bike, as the railroad gravel is fairly course on it

It was a very frosty morning to start out my first day camping up at Canaan Heights. It's been significantly colder there this year a few days compared to Albany, which is why most of the leaves are gone in the high country.

Got up early several mornings in National Forest to watch the sun rise. Not such a cold morning this day but still the sun felt good on my face.

I enjoyed having the same campsite all week long when I was camping up on the Monongahela National Forest during the last week of October in 2023.