"The Bridge to Terrorbithia"
or...
"How I Learned to Stop Worrying
and Love the Bridge"

American Society of Civil Engineers
Virginia Tech Student Chapter
New River Gorge Bridge Trip
9/30/5
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Through a series of tremendous strokes of luck, I managed to join virginia Tech's student chapter of the American Society of Civil Engineers just in time to join their mailing list in just enough time to recieve an email saying that the very next day was the last day to sign up for this amazing trip! It was really really really cool because... well, I'll just let you find out as the trip progressed. Suffice to say, there was no way I was going to miss this trip if I had anything to say about it.

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Visitor's Center | Side of the Road | The Flip Side

     

Section 1:
At The Visitor's Center

Yes, I've been here four times in the last year now. But hey, it's really cool, it gave us a place to park, and they've got some awesome views of the gorge, the rapids, and the bridge.

I was going to take some pictures of the road and the bridge on the way up, but my camera was in the trunk. So we're just jumping right in here.

OK, so we arrived at the gorge after a 2 hour trip down from Blacksburg. On the way, one of the 5 cars (rentals and cars from the VT Motor Pool) got pulled over for speeding. Same thing (different car) on the way back. Interesting to note.

So anyway, this is the wonderous New River Gorge. The New is said to be, ironically, one of the oldest rivers in North America. A hundred years ago, when coal mining was really big in this area, this picture would probably have contained no trees whatsoever, as an interesting side note.
So after walking down the nice, handicapped accessible boardwalk, you get your first peek of the bridge. The whole visitors' center complex is very artfully designed, giving you first this peek of the bridge seemingly leaping out of the trees, from the edge of the gorge. Anyway, after traveling down a very non-handicapped accessible 260-some stairs, you start to get better views. Such as...

...this view of class IV Lower Kaymore rapid and the old Fayette Station bridge. (WARNING: ENTERING TANGENT LAND) For those of you who've rafted on the New Before, the part just upstream of the bridge is where they usually let you swim. You can see two big rocks almost totally blocking the river. This is called "thread the needle," and you get sucked right between them and sometimes down in these tiny vortex things and then popped back up and it's really fun and interesting, especially if you're watching other people doing this. (Tangent now over).

Anyway, this little barely-one-lane-wide bridge used to be the only way to get across the gorge. With all the switchbacks, it'd take a good 45 minutes to get across. Then, in the 1970s, they decided to put through the "Appalachian Corridor," a 4 lane, high speed, well graded highway through the mountainous heartland of West Virginia. This road obviously wasn't going to cut it. So they built...
...the New River Gorge Bridge. Check out all its majesty! A trimph of modern engineering, the bridge was the longest single-span arch bridge in the world for almost 30 years. Blahdey, blahdey, blahdey, blah. I could go on and on about construction and costs and weight and the like, but I'll suffice to say that it is no longer (get it?) the longest arch span in the world. That goes to a bridge in China (see this site for some cool pictures) that broke the record by a paltry 100 feet. But the NRGB is still the longest of its type.

Here's the group snapping all of their 20 bajillion pictures. I got a few with me in them, but the guy who took them had my head in front of the whole bridge. And I didn't want anybody saying anything about me having a big head or anything. Plus, they were fuzzy. But then we went on a little drive over to Highway 19, the road that zooms across the top of the bridge.

Visitor's Center | Side of the Road | The Flip Side


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