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Photo by Matt Gentry | The Roanoke Times

Cyclists ride down a section of the New River Trail in Wythe County near where a woman was killed by a falling rock over the weekend. An official with the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation said the area is not believed to pose further hazard.

Map

• See a map of the New River Trail and the location of the falling rock

Saturday was a pretty day for a bicycle ride on the New River Trail.

The old cinder-based rail bed was carpeted with freshly fallen orange and yellow leaves, and the sky was cloudless and as blue as a robin's egg. The towering rock overhangs in the rail trail's center section seemed to stretch up forever.

But shortly before 5 p.m., on the trail near Austinville in Wythe County, a large slab of rock dislodged and tumbled down a steep precipice before becoming airborne and hurtling toward the trail.

Sudie Jenkins Hatcher, a 48-year-old cyclist from High Point, N.C., just happened to be in the path of the rock. She was riding with a group and was wearing her helmet, according to park officials, but she could not escape the speed of the falling rock, which was 3 feet long and more than a foot wide. It struck her in the head and killed her.

The strange accident -- investigators don't believe any foul play was involved -- crashed into a serene afternoon and sent Hatcher's friends scrambling to try to help her.

It also put New River State Park officials in a situation they've never been in before.

They wouldn't release any details about the incident until 48 hours after it happened. Meanwhile, bikers, hikers and horseback riders continued using the section of the trail where the rock slide happened.

"We're still trying to absorb it all," said Mark Hufeisen, the New River Trail's park manager. "I don't know how to describe what happened, to be honest with you."

Gary Waugh, spokesman for the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation, said the department did not believe the area posed a further danger after Hatcher was struck.

"We have been operating the trail for over 20 years," he said. "We did not think there was a dangerous situation there, so the need to warn the public about it was not something that I personally considered. This was an extraordinary event. ... It was also a very personal tragedy to one family, and we were trying to weigh consideration for them."

Hufeisen, who started working at the park in 1992, said serious injuries are rare on the trail, a 57-mile linear park that runs along the New River from Pulaski to Galax.

Falling rocks, he said, are rare, too.

"You see signs of it occasionally, but it's not a real common event. This is definitely a first for us."

Waugh said the fatality is the first in a state park this year.

"We've never had anything like this," Waugh said.

It's not an unprecedented occurrence, though. In 1999, an 83-year-old Georgia tourist was killed when a piece of limestone struck her in the back of the head as she was reading a plaque underneath the 215-foot arch of Natural Bridge in Rockbridge County.

Waugh said his department will assess the situation on the New River Trail and determine whether any changes need to be made. He said a decision to post caution signs warning trail users of possible rock falls had not been made.

Although construction and excavation on private lands bordering the trail do occur, Waugh said his department had not had rock formations -- which are common along the path, particularly in the area of Foster Falls, where the park is headquartered -- evaluated by geologists or other experts.

Waugh said he knew of one rock slide on the trail that required attention.

"We had to blast back the rock and then regrade it," he said. "Remember, this is an old rail bed that's been there since the 1880s."

Designated a National Recreation Trail by the U.S. Department of the Interior, land for the New River Trail was donated to the state in 1986 by Norfolk & Western Railway, and the trail opened in 1988 on the abandoned railroad right-of-way.

Hufeisen said the trail is monitored by nine full-time rangers and several volunteers. Maintenance rangers patrol the trail every day.

"Anything that could be hazardous to the public, they look out for," he said. "You've got a lot of eyes and ears out there."

"There's inherent danger in any outdoor activity," he added. "It's as safe as we can make it."

Hufeisen said the investigation into Saturday's accident was not completed until late Sunday afternoon. He also said Saturday's rock fall was the first reported by people who actually witnessed one.

"Everything was intact," he said of the formation from where the rock was believed to have fallen. "There was no evidence of any movement, any jarring, any prying. It just came loose."

Getting to the site of the formation was difficult, Hufeisen added, because the precipice is "pretty much straight up and down, close to 150 feet, maybe better."

"When it broke loose, it tumbled for a while and then went airborne," he said. "There's no way you would even hear it, I would imagine."

Many of the trail's users, such as Hatcher, visit from North Carolina. Hufeisen said last year 60 percent of trail users came from the neighboring state.

"This is a popular destination for those within a 1¹₂- to 2-hour drive," he said. "Probably better than 50 percent of our visitors this year are from North Carolina."

Katherine and Frank McCormick of Yadkinville, N.C., drive more than an hour each week to bicycle on the New River Trail.

After hearing of Hatcher's death, McCormick said she was unable to sleep.

"Gosh, that was terrible. It has really been on my mind," she said.

Although she said she sometimes sees evidence of rock slides on the trail after a rain, McCormick said she considers the New River Trail safe. The scariest thing she has seen is the occasional copperhead snake.

She said Saturday's tragedy wouldn't stop her from biking there.

"I'm not going to let it scare me off -- even though I will be more cautious," she said. "I think it's just a freak accident. It might not ever happen again."