Life Outside Spring 2019 - 38

the Department of Inland Game and Fisheries
is even beginning the process of developing a
management plan that will eventually include
hunting. Today, over 120 elk roam Buchanan,
Wise and Dickenson counties, and while no elk
live within Breaks Interstate Park's borders, the
park runs seasonal tours in partnership with the
Southwest Virginia Coalfields Chapter of the
Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation.
Boarding the park's old white tour bus, I
found it impossible to imagine elk roaming the
nearby mountains. Though Bradley, the park's
Superintendent, claims that, "in five years of doing

salad sandwich was nothing to write home about,
the unexpected hospitality was a surprising touch
given that the tour costs a mere $35 for adults or
$20 for children.
While eating, we spotted a few small groups of
female elk, too far in the distance to truly spy on
without binoculars, but still stunningly large and, to
be honest, unexpected, even though I was prepared
to see elk out here on the mountain.
After dinner, we boarded the bus and drove a
network of dirt roads, scouting open areas for elk
and hoping to find males, bugling for attention.
Finally, just before sunset, we found them, three
males knocking antlers, ready to rut, standing just
100 feet from our bus. While we never heard the
high-pitched bugles, they seemed like creatures
from another planet, or, at least, as folks say when
they hear me speak without a hint of accent, clearly
not from around here.
The tours are offered only seasonally in the spring
and fall, and the park has made a concerted effort
to minimize its impact on the elk population.
"The vast majority of the people we take on these
tours are overnight guests, with folks from the local
area being more likely to try to see the elk on their own
without paying for a guided tour," Bradley explains.
"As the herd grows and expands to new areas, we may
begin offering more tours each year." More tours,
of course, mean more visitors to the park and more
opportunities to bolster the local economy.

SOMEWHERE DIFFERENT

THE CLIFFS
Climbers can look down on
the Russell Fork.

approximately 20 guided tours per year, we have a
100 percent success rate on viewing elk," October's
cold snap and threat of rain seemed like a dire
forecast for wildlife viewing. Twisting down Route
80 to a privately owned reclaimed strip-mining
site turned hunting club, we bumped our way
over rutted roads and listened to the bus driver,
a Buchanan native, discuss county changes with a
visitor who grew up here in the late 1950s. From
school consolidations to mine closures, quite a few
things have changed over the last half-century.
This tour is a study in contrasts: a park system
newly focused on ecotourism set against the backdrop of a county, largely stripped of its coal economy, struggling to find new ways to drive economic
development on land riddled with its industrial
past. The reclaimed mining site is beautiful, an
exposed mountain bald rich in native grasses for
the elk to graze. We made a small loop and, seeing
no elk, paused in an open area facing the undulating mountain range, and were served boxed
dinner prepared by the park. While the chicken

Spring 2019 \\ LifeOutside Magazine

I have to admit: when I decided to visit Breaks
Interstate Park, I assumed I would camp, hike
a little, maybe mountain bike, and, mostly, just
enjoy the beautiful scenery. Zip lining 2,000 feet
above the canyon floor or going on an elk safari
wasn't on my horizon. I knew that the weather
was going to be cold and wet, that the park was
about the farthest I could go west and still be in
Virginia. But I didn't know that the warmth and
friendliness of all the employees, from the zip line
instructors to the bus drivers to the servers, would
be a highlight of the weekend. I didn't know that
the unique history of logging and coal would fit in
well with the park's newer goals of environmentally
focused tourism, that a hunting initiative would
bring the world to this corner of Virginia that big
city lawmakers often forget.
Out on the zip line early one morning, I was
joined by a family from Ohio and a couple from
the D.C. area. As we soared above the Russell Fork
and compared notes on the best way to jump off the
platform, we swapped stories on why we decided to
spend an October weekend in the Breaks.
"It just seemed like a place we needed to see," the
mother from Ohio explained, "somewhere different
than any park we've visited before."

Life Outside Spring 2019

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Life Outside Spring 2019