Seneca Creek Backcountry

Last Saturday my wife and I took an overnight backpacking trip into the Seneca Creek Backcountry in WV. We started our hike at Spruce Knob, 4863 feet above sea level, the highest point in WV. Hiking down the Huckleberry Trail, the first couple of miles we stayed on top of the ridge, with a slight downhill grade. The trail was rather rocky in most places, making it difficult to traverse. The trail alternated between running through small spruce groves and high Alpine like meadows. Close to it's junction with Lumberjack Trail, Huckleberry Trail began to descend more rapidly. We stayed on Huckleberry to it's end, where it meets with High Meadows Trail for a short period before finally reaching the bottom of the valley and linking up with the Seneca Creek Trail. We camped along side Seneca Creek for the evening, with a beautiful view of the falls just upstream from our campsite. We started a small fire that evening (thanks to my wife), and Apollo enjoyed a refreshing swim in the stream. The next morning, we boiled some water out of the stream and refilled our water bottles. We decided to follow the creek up stream for a ways, keeping on Seneca Creek Trail. We had to cross the stream 3 times before finally arriving at Judy Spring. Seneca Creek is definately the most beautiful stream that I have witnessed in the state. Small waterfalls abound, and the surrounding valley is amazing. We hiked out of the valley via Judy Spring Trail, connecting back with Huckleberry Trail, and then back up, up , up to the Knob. Total mileage round trip ~12 miles. Elevation change ~1500 feet. We had a great time, although I believe we carried way to much weight. We need to buy new, lighter gear before our next outing. Pics are coming soon!

EDIT: I thought that I should point out that details for this hike can be obtained at http://www.midatlantichikes.com/id146.html . We elected to deviate from the route the author on this site had mapped out due to several reasons. We skipped the Lumberjack Trail / High Meadows Trail semi-loop due to time constraints, but we plan on returning and hiking this portion someday soon. Also, instead of taking Seneca Creek Trail out of the valley, we only hiked the portion up to Judy Spring Trail, taking it back to Huckleberry Trail and back tracking from there to the knob. If we had stayed on Seneca Creek Trail to it's head, we would've had to walk ~6 miles up forest road 112 to get back to our vehicle.