University of Virginia Library

'Soundings'

Crabtree Falls: An Experience

By John Casteen

If you turn off route 29 south
onto route 56 west, about three
miles below Lovingston, you drive
for maybe 20 miles, through rolling,
occasionally lush farm land at
first, and then up into the heart of
the mid-section of the Blue Ridge.
As you drive into the mountains,
the road becomes steeper and dangerously
crooked, and you find
yourself downshifting and using the
brakes in order to keep your car
under control. You cross and recross
the meandering Tye River,
and if you are lucky you pass a few
hardy winter-time trout fishermen,
standing knee-deep in the shallows
and waiting for the single nibble
that perhaps waits for them behind
an ice-covered rock.

The river shrinks as you climb
until finally it is a barely noticeable
brook, dancing and sloshing over
rocks and fallen trees, and leaving
foamy crusts of ice along its banks.
Then, far up in the mountains, in
country that seems more like the
wild Rockies than the civilized Blue
Ridge, you come to a barely
marked stopping place from which
you can climb the face of Crabtree
Falls, if you have stamina enough
and if the wind is not so cold that it
cuts through your extra layer of
pants and leather coat.

Crabtree Falls begin near the
top of the Blue Ridge in Crabtree
Meadows, a hauntingly beautiful
natural bowl perched between the
gently curved slopes of the Priest
and Maintop, two of the highest
mountains in the chain. If you have
all day to walk, you can walk
slowly and carefully, stopping often
to lean against a tree and warm
yourself in the little slivers of sunlight
that filter down through the
hemlocks and barren oaks. And
maybe, if you stick with it, you can
climb all the way to the top.

On the way up the trail zigzags
and sometimes seems almost to run
out. From time to time it crosses
the falls, which are really a long
series of little falls strung out over a
run of perhaps two miles and dropping
several hundred feet. When the
trail crosses the falls, or when you
call time-out from the climb and
find yourself a perch beside the
falls, you can see eerie ice formations,
formed by the cascading
water. Some of them seem almost
to suspend the falls in mid-air.
Others are great, bubbling heads of
foam, hanging by the slenderest of
threads to a treacherous rock face.
There are icicles, some six or eight
feet long, and little chunks of ice
sculpture - bottles, glasses, doll
babies, crosses, and even alabaster
eggs - carved out and flung away
by the tumbling water.

The vegetation becomes sparse
as you climb. Oaks become fewer,
and still-green stands of mountain
laurel and running cedar blend in
with the hemlocks overhead. Near
the top, you cross the falls for the
last time, and finally, maybe three
hours after the start you find yourself
standing, exhausted and panting,
in the crystal-clear, icy silent
air of the meadows.

The meadows are weirdly like a
huge deserted amphitheatre. No
one farms them. No animals graze
them. And no timber crews browse
across them. You find yourself staring
in awe at the clear, blue-white
vault of the sky and listening reverently
to the clear, almost shrill
gurgle of the scores of tiny streams
that race together across the
meadow to form the headwaters of
the falls. If you stand quietly and
watch, you can see deer grazing,
and perhaps an occasional black
bear lumbering clumsily through
the underbrush at the very edge of
the bowl. If you walk along one of
the streams, and watch the soft
banks, you can pick out tiny dainty
deer tracks that look like they were
carved in glass, and huge, heavy
bear tracks with all five toes clearly
marked out.

If you are like I am, and if you
climb into the meadows in the early
afternoon of an especially cold,
especially clear day, perhaps right
around Christmas, you will feel like
you have invaded something that
perhaps does not belong to you.
You stand under a crab apple tree,
its limbs stripped naked by winter
winds and looking for all the world
like dead things, and you have the
feeling that if you make a sound
you will shatter something and
make all of it come jangling and
clinking down, like a mistuned
piano.

But you don't. You stand almost
reverently for a while, and
maybe hold hands with your red-faced,
almost frozen girl. Then you
turn around, walk quietly away,
and begin the sliding, tumbling trek
back down the two miles of trail to
your car.

It's a good experience.