Triangle Rock

Triangle Rock sits above the North Fork South Branch of the Potomac, not far from Petersburg, West Virginia. The name does the work of a description. The outcrop comes to a point, close enough to a triangle that nobody saw much reason to call it anything else.

The rock rides the flank of North Fork Mountain, which belongs to the Wills Mountain Anticline, a long fold in the earth that begins in Pennsylvania, clips Maryland, runs the length of eastern West Virginia, and carries on into Virginia. North Fork Mountain rises south of the North Fork gap, a water gap near the little community of Cabins, and holds a hard, unbroken line for miles before splintering at its southern end into ridges with names worth the trip alone: the Devil’s Backbone, Brushy Mountain, and Monterey Mountain.

What keeps the mountain standing is its cap of Tuscarora quartzite. That Silurian sandstone is about as hard as anything in these hills, and it wears away far slower than the softer rock beneath it. The result is a run of west-facing cliffs and outcrops that have outlasted everything around them.

The woods below Triangle Rock are classic northern hardwoods, sugar maple mixed with beech and yellow birch, with stands of red pine standing tall through them. Out on the open sandstone it’s a different country. Plants that would never win a fight in the forest make a living in the cracks, silvery nailwort and white alumroot among them. Chestnut oak and Table Mountain pine hold the ground just back from the edge, wind-bent and short on soil, but stubborn about staying put.