The upper half of the Virginia Creeper Trail — destroyed by Hurricane Helene two years ago and currently being rebuilt — is scheduled to reopen March 31. But another type of restoration work is starting soon and will go on long after people are able to walk and bike the path again.
Flooding, fallen trees and construction create an opening for invasive species growth, said Ed Wright, an area ranger for the Mount Rogers National Recreation Area. While physical repairs to bridges and other structures are on the way to completion, fixing disturbances to the environment brought on by the storm could take up to a decade of work, Wright said in an interview at Damascus Town Park.
The trail follows a former railbed, starting in Abingdon and running 34 miles, ending near the North Carolina state line at Whitetop Station. The town of Damascus is at its halfway point.
When Hurricane Helene hit in September 2024, it flooded and washed away parts of the popular trail and decimated the Washington County town of Damascus and its surrounding communities.
The first section of the trail from Abingdon to Damascus reopened within a few days. But along the rest of the trail, the majority of its trestles — the frames supporting its many bridges — required a rebuild or a full replacement.
A 10-year battle
That kind of ecological upheaval leaves several openings for invasive species like kudzu and Japanese knotweed to overtake the environment, Wright said. The primary area of concern is Whitetop Laurel Creek, he said, which the Creeper Trail follows closely.
Kudzu, a fast-growing leafy vine, took hold in Appalachia in the 1930s when the federal Soil Conservation Service supplied landowners with seedlings because it was supposed to fight soil erosion in the region. Decades later, it was reclassified as an invasive species because it can choke out native shrubbery and kill trees, growing up to a foot a day and taking over thousands of acres a year.
Similarly, knotweed, which forms dense thickets, grows several inches a day and smothers native plants by blocking sunlight. Native Southwest Virginia insects and other animals can’t eat it, and its root system often leaves riverbanks vulnerable to erosion.
“It’s going to be a battle,” Wright said. “Knotweed is so difficult to knock back. It’s going to be a five- to 10-year battle to keep it from overtaking parts of the river.”
Creeks and other bodies of water are great conveyer belts for invasive species’ seeds, Wright said.
When Hurricane Helene flooded the network of creeks alongside the trail, those seeds were spread deep into the woods all over more remote places they hadn’t been common in before, he said — and with so many trees knocked down, there’s plenty of sunlight to nourish their growth on the forest floor.
Construction equipment can also accidentally carry invasive seeds into newly sunny breeding grounds on the stream banks, he said.
Already, he’s seen knotweed beginning to sprout in places it never has before along the trail, Wright said.
The Forest Service has an agreement with the Virginia Department of Transportation to work on stream restoration and invasive species management in the region together through 2027, if not longer, Wright said. Efforts could involve spraying along roadsides, but he’s not sure what the whole process will look like yet or what it will cost, he said.
The Forest Service has also entered into a partnership with the local offices of The Nature Conservancy, an environmental and conservation nonprofit, to help out with Creeper Trail invasive species prevention.
Right now, the nonprofit is assessing how best to go about removing the plants, said Blair Smyth, a program director with The Nature Conservancy based in Lexington.
That involves mapping where the species are growing, how many plants the nonprofit could be dealing with and what kinds are in the area. He’s also looking for other partners to bolster the efforts, Smyth said, on top of another stream restoration project for Dickey Creek in Smyth County.
He agrees that the work will take close to a decade.
“Most non-native species projects, it’s not a one-and-done,” he said. “You come through, map it, go back, you do your treatment. Then you find it maybe spread a little more than you originally thought, so you go back in and do another treatment. It’s a recurring effort.”
Remaining work
The Creeper Trail is sometimes referred to as the “lifeblood” of Damascus and its surrounding communities, because hundreds of jobs are tied to the trail and its tourism, according to a 2025 Virginia Tech study. The trail contributes about $61 million annually to Washington, Grayson, Smyth and Russell counties, according to the study.
Nebraska-based Kiewit Corp. was awarded a $240 million contract by the U.S. Forest Service to restore the trail. Construction began in December, and the company is working under a one-year deadline to complete the project. With the trail set to reopen March 31, the extra months at the beginning of 2027 will give the reconstructed trail time to settle over the winter, according to a July Forest Service news release.
All of the steel replacement bridges have been constructed, Wright said, with the majority of them already in place along the trail. Gravel is being laid down in the far upper sections.
There’s some ditching work to be done — meaning cleaning out channels parallel to the trail — and culvert installations that need to be finished up, he said. At the beginning of October, a crew was sandblasting the rust off a major trestle in Damascus too.
“That’s almost completed, the final little push,” he said.
The last phase will be installing new signs along the trail, he said.
The goal is to make the Creeper Trail more resilient for the next hurricane or other disaster that passes through the region, he said. The trestles are stronger and higher.
“If we get a flood of this nature again, maybe it does not wash the whole trail away,” Wright said.
