If it's going on in the county, you'll find it here
APRIL
AROUND THE COUNTY
Thursdays in April • Star Lab • National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Green Bank • 304-456-2150 • gb.nrao.edu. Gather at the planetarium balloon every Thursday for a unique look at the sky. There is a $3.00 charge per person and reservations are suggested. Program begins at 2 p.m.
April 6 • Sci-Fi Film Fest • NRAO Science Center at 6:30 p.m. • 304-456-2150 • gb. nrao.edu. The hilarious movie "My Favorite Martian" (Disney’s remake) will be featured tonight. Stick around and discuss this one with the NRAO crew.
April 7 • Greenbrier River Trail Clean-up • 304-653-4387. It’s the Annual Spring Clean-up along the Greenbrier River Trail. Call for assigned areas to be cleaned. Bags and gloves will be provided. Make it a family event and bring the kids along to help! You might see some early flowers popping or a few birds that are returning after wintering in a warmer climate.
April 11 • High Tech Wednesday •NRAO, Green Bank • 456-2150 • gb.nrao.edu. Join us for a guided tour through parts of NRAO normally off limits to visitors – like lab areas where sensitive receivers are designed and built. The tour starts at 3:30 p.m. and space is limited to 15; cost is $3, so make reservations early.
April 13 • Live Music • Dan and Robin Kessinger • The BrazenHead Inn, Mingo • 449-6917, 866-339-6917 • brazenheadinn.com. Come see and hear two of the top flatpick guitarists in the nation. Dan is also an accomplished fiddler.
April 12-14 • String Break with Robin Kessinger • The BrazenHead Inn, Mingo • 449-6917, 866-339-6917 • brazenheadinn.com.
Guitar workshops with Robin Kessinger are something special, and that's what's in store – We're calling it "String Break!" A native-born living West Virginia flatpick guitar legend, Kessinger keeps a busy schedule, teaching beginner and advanced guitar students, and still finds time for memorable concerts, workshops and contests. Cost is $150 for all three days, which does not include lodging. Discounts on accommodations are available to all who attend the workshop. For more information about the workshop, contact Robin Kessinger. For information about lodging availability, contact The BrazenHead Inn by phone or e-mail. Reservations are strongly recommended on these dates.
April 14 • Star Party on the Patio • NRAO, Green Bank • 456-2150 • gb.nrao.edu. NRAO Staff will orient you to the star-filled sky and then view the night sky on the Star Party Patio. Bring optical telescopes and binoculars - you won’t believe the view! Program begins 30 minutes before dark. Nights are still chilly - dress appropriately!
April 20 • Live Music: Daniel Frechette • The BrazenHead Inn, Mingo • 449-6917, 866-339-6917 • brazenheadinn .com. Manitoba singer/songwriter Dan Frechette has a facility for adapting elemental folk forms – bluegrass, Celtic airs, country, ragtime, country blues – to his purpose.
April 21 • Live Music: Wolf Creek Session at the Opera House, Third Avenue, Marlinton • 7:30 p.m. • 304-799-6645 or 800-336-7009 • pocahontasoperahouse.org. Wolf Creek Session performs a unique blend of traditional Appalachian tunes, with traditional and contemporary Celtic roots music sprinkled between original songs and stories. Wolf Creek features rich male and female vocals over intricate instrumental arrangements, supported by a solid rhythmic bass.
April 21 • Live Music • Steve Gellman • The BrazenHead Inn, Mingo • 449-6917, 866-339-6917 • brazenheadinn .com. Gellman’s natural ability on stage enables an audience to not only enjoy the songs and stories, but to participate in the performance.
April 28 • Greenbrier River Race • Marlinton • 800-336-7009 •
greenbrierrivertrail.com. Come join this fun Triathlon event. Run, canoe, and bike for great prizes and glory in this annual race. Race starts promptly at 11 after a mandatory 10 am race meeting. All the fun starts and ends at Marlinton Municipal Park , right on the river. Après-race includes awards, a gourmet lunch and live music. Call the Pocahontas County CVB at 800-336-7009 for a registration form or go to the Greenbrier River Trail Website at greenbrierrivertrail.com for more information.
On The
Mountain
For more info about any events at Snowshoe, call 877-441-4FUN or visit
online at
www.snowshoemtn.com
March 31 • Last Hurrah. Celebrate the end to another great season of skiing and riding with Snowshoe's annual Last Hurrah weekend. The Pond Skimming Extravaganza, live entertainment, fun and games and more are just a few of the many things that make Last Hurrah a great way to round out the season.
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It's Spring!
Hit the Trail
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A pattern emerges out of the chaos... as Runners line up on Eighth Street in Marlinton for the start of last year’s race.
Photos courtesy The usual suspects
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The Great Greenbrier River Race
Bikers pass each other on the trail leg.
Photo courtesy PCCVB
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Many make this race a family affair, whether your family members are of the two or four-legged variety.
Photo courtesy PCCVB
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Some people mark early signs of spring by blooming daffodils, or indigo buntings returning to the area, but avid bicyclists and runners know the first sign of spring is The Great Greenbrier River Race. Saturday, April 28, is the big day for dozens of racing enthusiasts to take over Marlinton as they raise funds for the Greenbrier River Trail Association.
The triathlon is based again in downtown Marlinton at the Municipal Park adjacent to the Greenbrier River. “Marlinton treated us so well last year, that we selected the town again this year as the hub of the race,” said Leslee McCarty, President of the Greenbrier River Trail Association.
Many Racers Return year after year
Photo courtesy The usual suspects
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Robin draws the start/finish line before the race begins.
Photo courtesy The usual suspects
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The first leg of the race, the running leg, starts from the park and goes east on Eighth Street to the trail, north on the trail about a mile and then returns to the Greenbrier River where everyone jumps in their canoes or kayaks to see who can get to the blue bridge in Buckeye the fastest. Many a racer has been soaked when their canoe tips over in all of the enthusiasm.
Racers bicycle south on the trail and then return back to the municipal park, making it about a 10 mile bike trip and a 17 mile total trip of fun, challenges and personal exhilaration.
Proceeds from the sponsorships go to the Greenbrier River Trail Association which has been responsible for many improvements on the trail over the years, such as water, restrooms, trailhead parking, landscaping and new interpretive signs at popular trailheads.
Information about the race is online at greenbrierrivertrail.com and participants may register at www.iplayoutside.com. The Pocahontas County Tourism office at 800-336-7009 can be contacted for registration or any questions. Deadline for pre-registering is April 14. [Race fees increase by $10 after April 14]
Wolf Creek Session plays April 21, rounding out this year’s performance series.
Photo courtesy Wolf Creekt.
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Ireland meets Appalachia at the Opera House
Barbara Elliott
Contributing Writer
Although they will only actually travel from northern West Virginia to Pocahontas County, Wolf Creek Session will travel musically from Ireland to the hills of Appalachia when they perform at the Pocahontas County Opera House in Marlinton on Saturday, April 21, at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $5 and can be purchased at the door. Children 12 and under will be admitted free.
Bridging the common roots and branches of Appalachian and Celtic, Wolf Creek Session is a four-person group that takes the traditional Celtic musical style, blends it with traditional Appalachian sounds ,then sprinkles it all with an occasional contemporary folk gem, as well as their own original songs. They explore the heavy influences of Celtic roots music on their area’s rich Appalachian heritage.
Wolf Creek Session creates a wonderful infusion of instruments and vocals with Mike Broderick on fiddle, Alice Fleischman on a variety of Irish flutes and whistles, Keith Pitzer on guitar, harmonica, mandolin and vocals and Joan Pitzer on fretless bass, vocals and an occasional whistle. Their unique melodic sound features rich male and female vocals over intricate instrumental arrangements supported by a solid rhythmic bass. Their tunes range anywhere from driving jigs and reels to dance tunes. Their lineup includes Irish flutes and whistles, fiddle, guitar, mandolin, harmonica and electric bass.
Besides the coffeehouses, fairs and festivals, their music is quickly landing them on prestigious American stages like the Kennedy Center Millennium Stage in Washington ,D.C., the Cultural Center in Charleston, and internationally, with a spring tour of France.
The Pocahontas County Opera House is located at 818 Third Avenue in Marlinton. For further information, call (304) 799-6645. Performances at the Opera House are family friendly and open to all.
This concert is the final performance in the 2006-07 Performance Series sponsored by the Pocahontas County Opera House Foundation. Financial support is provided through a grant from the West Virginia Division of Culture and History and the National Endowment for the Arts, with approval from the West Virginia Commission on the Arts. Additional support is provided by Pocahontas County Drama, Fairs and Festivals.
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ADVENTURES IN GOOD EATING
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You might have to wait for a table for Ryder's Friday Night Special - prime rib dinner, cpmplete with a big baked potatoe, salad bar, dessert bar and homemade bread. But we guarantee you wont' leave hungry.
Photo by Pamela Pritt.
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Ryder’s Restaurant will surprise you
Pamela Pritt
Editor
If you’re the kind of traveler who wants to eat where the locals go, Ryder’s in Boyer should be on your list.
Open for breakfast, lunch and dinner, Ryder’s is bound to have something to tempt your taste buds.
While all three meals offer something special, Friday night’s special is enough to bring in the crowd from miles around. And it shows in the filled-to capacity restaurant where one table talks to another about the day’s local events.
Ryder’s serves a prime rib dinner complete with salad bar, baked potato, au jus and dessert bar every Friday.
The meat is cooked to your specifications and the generous portion comes quickly, so be ready.
Our prime rib was cooked so well that steak sauce would have detracted from the flavor.
Ryder's offers a charming banquet area available to local clubs. It's always decorated for the season, in this case, St Patrick's Day in March
Photo by Pamela Pritt.
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If you aren’t in the mood for a meal that big, Ryder’s has other entreés available to satisfy any size appetite including center cut pork chops, Virginia sugar cured ham, trout and the seafood platter.
The restaurant also has light dinners on the menu for the health conscious. Try the grilled skinless chicken breast or grilled flounder for a light, but tasty meal.
All dinners include one trip to the salad bar, a vegetable and homemade roll.
For lunch, Ryder’s has a variety of sandwiches including old favorites like hot roast beef with mashed potatoes and gravy, a BLT, or pizza-burger.
Polish sausage with peppers and onions also makes a delectable lunch, as does the grilled country ham served on a bun.
But it’s the burgers that they’ve made their signature lunch menu item.
The Big Jim Burger—named for longtime Ryder’s owner, the late Jim, Sr.—is described as only Jim, Sr., could. “Our own special mess” includes two beef patties, cheese, onion relish, and homemade sauce on a double decker bun.
The prime rib special comes with your own loaf of bread baked by Ellen Ryder. The butter melts on the bread and the bread melts in your mouth.
Photo by Pamela Pritt.
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People who knew him can almost hear him say it.
After his death in 2000, Jim, Jr., and wife, Ellen, took over the restaurant and Jim, Sr.’s widow, Violet (Tom to local folks), still works in the adjacent convenience store.
Ryder’s is also the place to start your day with a good, old-fashioned breakfast like the one your grandmother made.
Ryder’s offers eggs served the way you like, with a side of ham, bacon or sausage; french toast or pancakes served with butter and syrup, and hot and cold cereals. But it wouldn’t be breakfast in the country without biscuits and gravy and home fries, and Ryder’s doesn’t disappoint.
The Dessert bar has something for everyone, including fruit salad, carrot cake and fabulous chocolate brownine with icing.
Photo by Pamela Pritt.
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Good food is always better enjoyed with old friends and it was good to visit with Ellen — we started out in first grade together at Huntersville — and Jim, Jr., with whom we went to high school. A great dinner was further enhanced by catching up with people we hadn’t seen for a long time.
But even if you don’t know them when you go to Ryder’s for the first time, it’s an easy task to get to know them and their lovely daughter, Sarah.
Going to Ryder’s Restaurant is not only a dining experience, but a glimpse into a community of friends who get together over some fine food.
Ryder’s is north of Green Bank on Rt. 28.
Little more than three months old, a tiny brook trout swims along an indoor steel racerway housed in one of the hatchery's historic buildings, constructed in 1932 by the Civilian Conservation Corps.
Photos by Drew Tanner
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Edray Hatchery:
Fish are jumpin’!
Drew Tanner
Staff Writer
Countless stories tell of a West Virginia covered with virgin forests and clean, cool running streams teeming with native brook trout. Those self-sustaining trout populations were a source of food for early European settlers and the Native Americans before them.
Outdoor raceways hold larger fish awaiting stocking. Stocking season runs from January through May, with March through May being the hatchery's busiest months. The Hatchery also has a ten-week stocking period in the fall.
Photos by Drew Tanner
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A net full of wriggling brown trout fry. These fish hatched around mid-November.
Photos by Drew Tanner
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At the turn of the last century, commercial timbering gave rise to communities such as Cass, Campbelltown and Marlinton, but left the surrounding mountains bare, reducing streamside shade and increasing sediment deposits into the streams.
As the natural trout population declined, anglers spoke up with concerns about the state’s fisheries. Primitive efforts were undertaken by the state government to control stream pollution, while the federal government began supplying fingerling trout to restock West Virginia’s waters.
The Edray Hatchery was one of three state hatcheries built, along with two federal hatcheries, between 1920 and 1935, in an effort to provide more trout for restocking.
The buildings erected by the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1932 still stand today at the Edray Hatchery.
Most people don't buy fish food by the 50 pound bag, but when raising upwards of 130,000 trout ayear, the Edray Hatchery needs to have plenty on hand.
It takes approximately 1.4 pounds of feed to produce one pound of trout.
Photos by Drew Tanner
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While Edray and the other hatcheries produced millions of fingerling trout which were restocked throughout the state, few survived and grew to adult size in the face of severely altered stream habitats.
Since then, however, trout hatchery operation has grown into a well-developed science. With the introduction of pelletized trout feed and better disease treatment in the 1950s, hatcheries began to raise trout to a catchable size within 15 months. Such developments meant the state could stock adult trout economically so that anglers could immediately start fishing for them. In streams where trout could not grow or survive year-round, the state could provide trout fishing opportunities by stocking adult fish.
Jeff Williams, the assistant manager of Edray Hatchery, cleans a raceway full of young brook trout.
Photos by Drew Tanner
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The success of the program has led to the construction of four more hatcheries since the Edray Hatchery was built 75 years ago.
Despite its age, the Edray Hatchery still stocks more than 50 streams and impoundments throughout a wide area that includes Pocahontas County, Summersville, Beckley and Clay County.
Of those 50-plus streams and lakes stocked by the hatchery, just six are in Pocahontas County: the Cranberry and Williams Rivers, Knapps Creek, Hills Creek, Watoga’s Lake Killbuck and Seneca Lake. Streams in the northern end of the county, like the West and East Forks of the Greenbrier River are stocked by the Reeds Creek Hatchery near Franklin, said Jeff Williams, the hatchery’s assistant manager.
Cool, fresh
water - supplied by the Avril and McLaughlin springs - pours into the Edray' Hatchery's outdoor raceways. Trout can briefly tolerate water temperatures in the mid-70s, but they requir 50-60° water to thrive.
Photos by Drew Tanner
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Two springs, Avril and McLaughlin, feed the hatchery’s 32 pools, 10 raceways and 14 ponds, where hatchery produces between 130,000 and 150,000 trout each year.
Brook and brown trout are raised from eggs, according to Williams, while rainbow and golden rainbow trout are brought in from other facilities and held in the pools at Edray until stocking season begins.
“We stock some from January to May,” said Williams, “but starting March through the end of May is the heaviest part of the stocking. Then we’ll do 10 weeks in the fall, as well.
This time of year, the hatchery’s three large trucks and a smaller pickup, outfitted with a slide-in tank, are making stocking runs five days a week, Williams added. Tanks on the larger trucks are insulated to maintain suitable temperatures, while circulating pumps and aerators keep oxygen at appropriate levels for the fish.
To the Cranberry, which receives the most trout of any stream the Edray Hatchery stocks, a single truck may haul up to 1,600 pounds of fish, which Williams estimated totaled between 2,500 and 3,000 individual trout.
Each of the hatchery's outdoor pools may contain up to 1500 trout.
Photos by Drew Tanner
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“It takes about 14-18 months from the time they’re hatched to the time they’re stocked,” said Williams.
During those months, the fish require daily attention.
“Once they hatch, we keep them clean and feed them daily,” Williams said. “Smaller fish get three or four feeds a day, and as they get bigger they go to two. We clean the rearing units every day.”
The trout also require room to grow and a watchful eye, Williams added.
“You don’t want to overcrowd them; you’ve got to give them as much room as you do food to grow,” he said. “You’ve also got to watch for predation by birds. There are a lot of herons, some osprey. Every now and then, about twice a year, a bald eagle comes through. You also have a few otters or mink or something of that nature, but not a whole lot. I’d say the herons are probably our biggest problem, in terms of predation.”
Indoor raceways at hte Edray Hatchery contain thousands of rainbow and brown trout fry, which are raised from eggs at the facility. It takes between 14 and 18 months for the fish to reach stocking size.
Photos by Drew Tanner
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To a heron or river otter in search of a meal, an open pond containing 20,000 trout might look like an all-you-can-eat buffet.
As fishermen learned 100 years ago when the trees that shaded West Virginia’s mountain streams were cut down, trout also rely on cold water. While they can withstand temperatures in the mid-70s for short periods, the optimum temperature is between 50-60°, according to the West Virginia Department of Natural Resources, thus the spring-fed facilities at Edray.
Outdoormen both local and exotic can be found stalking the results of Edray Hatchery's hard work along picturesque, pristine streams like Hills Creek
Photos by The usual suspects
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Brown normally spawn around the first or second week of October, said Williams, while brook trout spawn about three weeks later. Brown trout then hatch just before Thanksgiving, with the brook trout following three weeks later.
As the trout grow, they are given progressively larger-sized pellet feed. After reaching three or four inches in length, the trout are transferred from their indoor raceways to the hatchery’s outdoor pools, ponds and raceways, where they remain until they reach stocking size.
In an outdoor pool, rainbow trout mingle with golden trout-West Virginia's centennial fish, first stocked in 1963. the golden trout is a rainbow variant that first appeared at the statee's Petersburg Trout Hatchery in 1955.
Photos by Drew Tanner
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During this growing period, the trout are fed about one percent of their body weight each day. It requires about 1.4 pounds of feed to produce one pound of trout, according to the DNR.
Brook and brown trout are stocked later in the year, since they tend to grow slower than rainbow trout, said Williams. By mid-April or May, the brook and brown trout reach suitable size for stocking, Williams said.
While the winter’s heavy snow has made getting to some of the county’s streams difficult for the hatchery, Williams said anglers should be pleased with their catch this season.
“Really, this year our fish are bigger than they have been in the past couple of years,” said Williams. “They’re pretty nice fish this year.”
shgiven@pocahontastimes.com