The New River Gorge National Park in West Virginia (map) is the newest national park in the US. It has been a protected area since 1978 when it was designated as a national river and it became a national park in 2020. Gabi and I drove down from Connecticut to visit this beautiful national park. It protects some gorgeous parts of the Appalachian Mountains. With this trip we have visited most major parts of the Appalachians from Tennessee to Maine. Some noteworthy parks in this mountain range that I’ve photographed: Great Smoky Mountains NP, Shenandoah NP, Green Mountains NF, White Mountains NF, Baxter SP. West Virginia has one of the most spectacular regions of this huge range and the New River Gorge is exceptionally pretty. This deep gorge was created by the shaping forces of the flowing water of the New River. Despite its name, the New River is one of the oldest rivers in the world. The national park has many iconic views, but we didn’t have enough time to wait for the perfect light in every place. I still wanted to show some of them, like the New River Gorge Bridge. The best view of the bridge is from the Long Point. We hiked this 3 mile long in-and-out trail in the morning so we could enjoy it (almost) alone. The steel arch bridge is 3030 feet long (924m), while the roadway is 876 feet (267m) above the river. It’s the largest arch bridge in the western hemisphere. I took this photo with my Canon PowerShot G11 camera which I regularly use as my lightweight tourist camera.

One of the other iconic views of the park is simply called the Grandview. We hiked a few trails here too. For this image I used my Canon EOS 5Ds R camera and my 17-40mm lens, because I needed this ultra-wide-angle lens to be able to capture it in a single image.

As a nature photographer, I knew that the most photogenic part of the park was going to be the Sandstone Falls region, so we went there before sunset to take some long exposure images of the falls. We hiked around and I found some compositions that I felt captured the essence of this part of the park.

The gear I used for these images: Canon EOS 5Ds R camera, Canon 17-40mm F/4 and 70-200mm F/4 lenses, Tiffen 3 stops neutral density filter, Manfrotto tripod.