In the Greenbrier Valley, however, escaping to higher, cooler country is hardly a new idea. Some trails climb and skirt Kate’s Mountain, which rises immediately east of the Greenbrier Valley. A slower kind of Appalachian adventureThe Greenbrier River provides another spine for summer recreation, flowing south through Pocahontas, Greenbrier, and Summers counties while the Greenbrier River Trail follows much of its former railroad corridor. The original Greenbrier Valley ‘coolcation’If escaping summer heat for the Greenbrier Valley sounds like a new marketing idea, history suggests otherwise. The Greenbrier Valley still occupies an elevated landscape between the Alleghenies and the mountains surrounding the Greenbrier River, with forests and higher country readily accessible from its towns.