White Grass Ski Touring Center in Canaan Valley is the heart of eastern backcountry Nordic — a groomed and ungroomed network on the flank of Cabin Mountain with a legendary lodge culture around it. Canaan Valley National Wildlife Refuge and the Monongahela National Forest add ungroomed terrain.
White Grass is not just the best cross-country skiing in West Virginia — it's a place people drive four hours for, and the skiing is only part of the reason.
A converted farmhouse, a woodstove, soup, and fifty kilometers of trail climbing from 3,200 to over 4,000 feet on the flank of Cabin Mountain.
White Grass Ski Touring Center. Groomed and ungroomed, classic, skate, telemark and backcountry all coexisting, with upper trails holding snow when the valley floor is bare.
Full guide to White Grass Ski Touring Center →Ungroomed, flat, open wetland skiing across a 17,000-acre refuge, with wildlife and no trail fee.
Full guide to Canaan Valley →The Highland Scenic Highway when WV 150 closes to cars for the winter. Miles of unplowed pavement at 4,500 feet.
Full guide to Highland Scenic Highway →Elevation is everything here. The valley floor can be brown grass while Cabin Mountain has two feet. Always call for conditions rather than trusting the town forecast.
All terrain in West Virginia above 4,000 feet lies in this region, including Spruce Knob at 4,863 feet.
Rail-trails, limestone caves, gentle river paddlingThe Greenbrier Valley sits on Greenbrier limestone, producing karst topography: sinkholes, springs, sinking streams and extensive cave systems, several with more than forty miles of surveyed passage.
Seventy-eight miles from Cass to Caldwell on a former Chesapeake & Ohio logging grade, crossing 35 bridges and passing through 2 tunnels, following the Greenbrier River the entire way.
A 43-mile National Scenic Byway climbing over 4,500 feet across the Allegheny plateau between Richwood and US 219, with four major overlooks and access to Cranberry Glades, the Falls of Hills Creek and the Cranberry Wilderness.
A 57-foot falls where the Blackwater River drops into an eight-mile canyon, its water stained amber by hemlock and spruce tannins.
The highest large valley east of the Mississippi, at about 3,200 feet — a 14-mile-long bowl of wetland, bog, beaver meadow and northern hardwood that behaves climatically like central Canada.
The cultural heart of eastern backcountry Nordic skiing — a groomed and ungroomed network climbing the flank of Cabin Mountain from about 3,200 to over 4,000 feet, run out of a converted farmhouse with a soup-and-woodstove lodge culture that people drive four hours for.
Ten miles of former railroad grade from Thomas down the Blackwater Canyon to Hendricks, dropping through hemlock and past waterfalls with the river below.
A 12,747-acre state forest above the Cheat River Canyon.
A long-established private trail center in Preston County with dozens of miles of cross-country singletrack and doubletrack around a lake, plus camping.
The state's only resort park with lift-served downhill skiing, plus a lodge, cabins, a golf course, snow tubing and cross-country trails, sitting on the floor of Canaan Valley beside the national wildlife refuge..
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