The hot, steamy days of summer have arrived, and on this particular Saturday a week of intermittent rain had transformed the verdant cove forest along Quarry and Clay Runs in Coopers Rock State Forest into a muggy, dripping wonderland. Hardly surprising - Appalachia's cove forests are temperate rainforests, absorbing and slowly releasing enormous amounts of rainfall and creating the conditions for moss, fungi and ferns to grow on anything and everything that doesn't move, living and non-living. Photos above are from the ever gorgeous Mont Chateau Trail, which features a thousand foot elevation change from Cheat Lake to Henry Clay Iron Furnace, bordered on one side by a steep ravine and on the other by beathtaking rock formations and sprawling rhododendron thickets.
