Time Travel with a View

So much unspoiled land in Southwest Virginia, with so much life teeming beneath the quiet forest canopy and the bucolic fields. Chickens and ducks and geese, and cattle grazing in lush meadows. Goats sparring and munching. Herds of deer fleeting through the woods, and hawks circling high overhead.

Clear mountain creeks tumbling noisily through dark rhododendron groves, mist rising from deep hollows, and long-range views so gorgeous they make you gasp.

Meet the new Grayson Gravel Traverse trail, a rugged 72-mile bicycle route linking two of Southwest Virginia’s better-known and much tamer rails-to-trails bike paths: the 33-mile Virginia Creeper trail and the 57-mile New River Trail State Park (which also welcomes walkers and horseback riders).

Although the new Gravel Traverse trail was designed and is being marketed as an adventure for “bikepackers,” that is, cyclists in top physical condition and with suitably tough gear, it really is much more, as I found out when I toured the route this spring by car with a friend. You see, this new bike “trail” is laid out completely on public roads—some dirt, some gravel, and some paved. That means it is highly accessible to motorists.

The Grayson Gravel Traverse trail definitely is not appropriate for kiddies on their first two-wheelers or grandparents (like me) who might prefer a scenic but relatively level bicycle outing. But it turns out to be both an experiment in economic stimulus and a trip through early American history and backwoods Appalachian culture. There’s beauty at every turn.

This trail is great, whether tackled as a muscle-busting two- or three-day bike challenge or as a leisurely journey of discovery by car over months or even years.

Taking it from the top

News of the new trail had been swirling about my adopted hometown of Fries, Virginia, for a few months. Fries, pronounced “Freeze,” sits at the beginning of the New River Trail State Park, where my bicycling friend Deb and I meet up and ride eight or ten miles at a time when the weather is nice, chatting all the way.

Such are the pleasures of the New River trail that I had been too lazy to visit the famed Virginia Creeper trail, even though its upper terminus lies within our own Grayson County. The Gravel Traverse trail sounded cool as heck, so we made plans to drive the whole thing one day this May and scope it out. No way were we going to bike that thing: it looked too steep, with long ascents and descents along a route starting at 5,520 feet elevation and ending at 2,185 feet. Good call.

The drive from Fries to our starting point, Whitetop Station, was just 50 miles but took well over an hour, and as we neared that beautiful spot the air grew cooler and cooler. I was the driver and Deb the navigator; she had downloaded the GPS directions for the entire traverse trail beforehand, as well as printing out the turn-by-turn “cue sheet” available on the well-designed Ride With GPS app on the trail website.

Before hitting the trail we stopped at the delightful Railroad Market & Cafe at Whitetop. This local gathering place offers a full range of groceries, as well as some fine examples of traditional handicrafts for sale—quilts, wooden boxes, crocheted hats and scarves, plus kitchen wares and artisan knives—and I stocked up on gifts for family and friends. Fortunately, we also stocked up on food and beverages for the long ride ahead; the retro-style cafe had hot steak biscuits ready to go.

Then it was off to find the beginning of the trail. Although there’s no signage (yet) we had no trouble coordinating from the Whitetop Station end of the Virginia Creeper trail. Off we went, and for the next four hours we threaded our way through the back roads of Grayson County: past old farmsteads and a few new housing developments, past log cabins and barns and antique churches; in and out of the forest. The trees were just leafing out in mid-May, and there were still delicate wildflowers sprinkled here and there.

Deb called out each turn coming up, and we analyzed the route for potential hazards. As an experienced motorcyclist, she quickly concluded that the Grayson Gravel Traverse trail could be dangerous for motorcycles … gravel surfaces, steep descents, and tight turns all added up for her to a big NO.

Bicyclists, we agreed, would need to prepare for the extreme isolation of the region. Cell phone service is scanty at best, and while there was water everywhere in creeks, the presence of farm animals meant that it might not be potable; a water filtration device would be helpful, along with first aid and tire repair supplies in case of accidents. Lodging places are few and far between, and there are almost no places to recharge an electric-assist bicycle battery. Grayson County has no bike shops—yet.

Except for the few portions of the trail on busy U.S. 58—narrow and heavily used by logging trucks and farm vehicles—we saw almost no people and only one other car. Bliss, to experience these roads without distractions like billboards and trash, and we realized that we were driving through history. The old mountain communities had to rely on themselves and their neighbors; today’s commercial world has not intruded.

We stopped for lunch in the county seat, Independence, and then plunged back into the quiet, quiet back country. One of the last sections of the trail, before it ends in Fries, is perhaps the most dramatic of all: a segment of Elk Creek called Clito (pronounced CLYtoe). Here, along a pounding, rocky cascade, an industrial mill once operated. Today it’s a place to pull off the dirt road for a picnic, a snooze, or some fishing.

“A community of communities”

The thrill of our excursion stayed with me for weeks, and I decided to learn how this trail had come about. My first call was to Grayson County’s tourism director, Tracy Cornett. She reminded me that in addition to the traverse trail, the designer, David Landis of Harrisonburg, Virginia, had devised two even longer routes to create other challenging and scenic routes nearby. One is the 150-mile Grayson Gravel Long Haul, which takes cyclists from Abingdon to Pulaski via the New River Trail State Park. The other is the 143-mile Grayson Gravel Circuit, which takes bikers back to Whitetop on a northerly route by way of Comers Rock.

They all provide variations on the themes of extreme ruggedness and isolation, startling natural beauty, and significant historical interest.

“It’s for adventure cyclists,” Tracy agreed. “It’s early yet. The only feedback that we know is that it’s being used. There’s website traffic and it’s starting to heat up. We included as many stops as we could, where you can stay, camp, resupply, places to eat. Serious cyclists can do it in about two days.”

She explained that e-bike riders, especially, must use caution. “It’s very remote. You can’t use that e-bike as a mini-bike. You’ve got to peddle that bike some. If you don’t peddle you may have to get picked up along the way.”

Landis, the designer, is founder and president of an international adventure bike trail development company called Village to Village, or V2V, in Harrisonburg. “He rode every gravel road in Grayson County. He knew this was going to be a challenging ride. He rode them all to find the easiest way to get from the Creeper trail to the New River trail.”

This endeavor began four or five years ago with some of Grayson County’s elected officials and other supporters of economic development and outdoor fitness. “It has evolved,” county supervisor John Fant told me. “Several years ago we started thinking about economic development, with tourism one of the big opportunities that we have, because it leverages some of the natural resources.

“We’ve got a lot of communities that have been left behind in the county: schools close, post offices close, kids move away. The driver for a lot of things I think about is population retention and recruitment.”

There was plenty of support and encouragement as the outlines of a plan took shape, and then Landis got involved. “What can we do that doesn’t cost a lot of money?” Fant wondered. “We realized that we have the Creeper trail in the west, the New River trail in the east. What if we linked the two? We are a community of communities. We all still live in clusters in communities like Bridal Creek, Baywood, Elk Creek. How do we link that and preserve that, and tell about the communities?”

Now that the new trail is completely mapped out, Fant and others in the county are waiting to see how it’s used. He emphasized that it is a multi-purpose trail and doesn’t have to be done all at one go … or only by cyclists. His verdict on the biking option: “It’s a crusher route, it’s unreal. Not for the faint of heart.”

Regardless of who uses the trail—and how—the Grayson Gravel Traverse trail represents a clean, green future. “We are really pumped about the opportunity and potential.”

About the author: Writer Nan K. Chase volunteers as the tourism director for Fries, Virginia, where she can hop on her old peddle bike anytime for a ride along the nice, flat New River Trail.