www.trailsheaven.com
The Hatfield McCoy trails are located in the Appalachian Mountains of Southern West Virginia and consist of 6 individual trail systems with a 7th expected to open this fall. This accounts for over 500 miles of marked trails of all levels that are open to dirt bikes, ATV’s and UTV’s. Additionally, trail connectors are being created to connect the trails together with the first of these connecting Indian Ridge and Pinnacle Creek trail systems and another between Buffalo Mountain and Rockhouse in the works. Many trail systems have community connectors which is a way to exit the trail system into a city. These connector cities have amended traffic laws to allow off-road vehicles to travel the streets to visit shops for food, gas and entertainment. This allows the riders of the trail system to start their journey in one city, then ride to another for lunch and gas, and then return riding directly to their overnight accommodations.
Day 1 – 72 miles - Up at 4am to get the kids off to church camp at 5:15am. Bikes in tow, we’re heading to the trail system by 5:30am. We arrive in Pineville, WV around 10:45am, check into our hotel and are leaving the trailhead about 12:15pm. Our plan is to ride through Pinnacle Creek via the connector to Indian Ridge which is the only trail system we have not yet ridden. Although the map tells us that the connector is about 12 miles long, when riding through Pinnacle creek it becomes about 20 miles, and then once you get to the Indian Ridge trail system it adds another 5 miles or so before you can branch out to other trails. So it ended up taking us a little over 2 hours to get to the trails we wanted to ride with a few wrong turns along the way, and since the trails at Indian Ridge are separated by such a long green trail, we only rode the closest set on the first day since it was a short day. I was also concerned about gas consumption on my 250x as I’d never really checked the fuel mileage on it. Although I had put on a larger tank, I didn’t know my range. So we headed back and arrived at the trailhead about 7:15pm. To our surprise we had ridden 71.8 miles in 7 hours with about an hour’s worth of stops and breaks. Later, when we hit the gas station, it only took 1.47 gallons to fill up my 3 gallon tank, so I figured I was well set for the week and never had any concerns about the wife’s 150f gas consumption. Unfortunately, in our haste to hit the trails, we had forgotten to grab the camera, so no pictures from Day 1.
Day 2 – 40 miles - Having ridden half of Indian Ridge the first day, but missing the second we decided to drive down to the Indian Ridge trailhead and do the trails we had missed. We thought we could drive to the trailhead more quickly than we could ride to it, and we were correct. We left the trailhead on our bikes about 10am and returned about 6pm with 40 miles on the odometer. This part of WV didn’t have much cell phone coverage for our carrier, but as we drove through one of the cities we got sporadic coverage. We made a few phone calls to let our people know that we were fine and had arrived even though it was the end of day 2 already. Really odd not being able to make a cell phone call, and it really hampered our plans to move to the next city.
Nice bathrooms at the Trailhead are always appreciated!
I got your single track!
The infamous Company Store of old was closed on Mondays. Drats…
Day 3 – 68 miles -Today we started by driving from Pineville, WV to Gilbert, WV. We didn’t have reservations anywhere, but had a few ideas of where we might stay. We drove through town and back and picked a place and luckily they had availability and a nice rate. We couldn’t check in until we returned from riding but that was fine with us. We parked the car and got the bikes off the trailer and headed into the mountains about 9:30am. If you’re not familiar with the Hatfield McCoy trails, you can leave one city and ride to another city on the trail system. It’s also perfectly legal to ride your dirt bike or ATV on the streets of the city to get lunch or gas or just look around. So on this day we left Gilbert and were riding the trails into Man, WV.
Once we hit the trailhead in Man, we were talking to some folks and ran into Jordan. Last year, we were riding with our 12 y/o at Bearwallow and met Jordan who creates trails for the Hatfield McCoy trail system. He was taking a ride on his day off and invited us to follow him through a great single track. Now Jordan is an excellent rider and nearly killed us getting through this set of trails. It was fun but really over our heads, but we made it through with only a few injuries. Unfortunately, today was a work day for Jordan and he headed off to map some new trails and we rode through town to have lunch at the Hillbilly Fire Pit.
Being the third consecutive day of riding when we hit about 50 miles I was feeling a bit fatigued and asked that we not do the last couple of blues we had planned and head back to Gilbert. Now, we were pretty far out and it took us 18 miles and 2 hours to get back.
In the last 200 yards of the trail, I developed a flat front tire on my bike. Thank goodness it didn’t happen 18 miles prior! Sharleen went to get the car around 5pm and when she returned we tried a shot of Green Slime to plug the leak. No dice, we needed a new tube. We put the bike on the trailer and headed into town to see if anyone would fix it for me. I was already worn out and didn’t really feel like fixing a flat. The first place we stopped was Gilbert Automotive and they had the right size tube, but no tire irons as I had forgotten to bring mine. He also said the chance of finding anyone to fix the flat for us was really low. He did offer his shop and any tools we might need the next morning as he was closing for the day. We drove through town and stopped at a few places and found some spoons to change the tube. Although not really feeling it, I started to take the front tire off and found that I didn’t have the right size socket or wrench with me for the front axel nut. I had bigger and smaller, but not the right size. I tried an adjustable wrench, but it just rounded off the shoulder of the bolt. At this point we figured we’d be talking to Ricky at Gilbert Automotive in the morning.
Day 4 – 0 miles – After a good night’s sleep I was ready to tackle the flat tire and the day started at Gilbert Automotive and a big shout out to Ricky! He was very helpful, and we had a new tube in the front in about 35 minutes and were ready to drive to Delbarton to ride Buffalo Mountain. Unfortunately, on the way it started raining. Well not just raining, but pouring along with some lightning and thunder. We checked out Delbarton while waiting to see if the rain would stop, and when it hadn’t we went into Williamson and drove around. We left Williamson and headed into Matewan to get some lunch. We watched a great lightning show up in the mountains and were glad we weren’t 20 miles into the trails with that going on. It looked as if it was shaping up to be a rest day, so we drove around with the bikes in tow in case the weather got better, but it didn’t. We found out on Day 6 that had we driven 1 hour north, we might have been able to ride. Oh well, we had fun on our unplanned rest day.
We stopped at R. D. Bailey Lake where we learned how to tame a wild flood prone river and some safety tips as well.
We also got to meet a presumably ‘wild dog’ we named Skittles as she was so afraid of humans. She was also terribly emaciated, so we fed her some granola bars in the afternoon, and went back after dinner with some table scraps from a steak dinner. Hopefully Skittles will make it long term, but we saw a lot of stray dogs in our week long journey.
We saw a lot on our rainy rest day, and although we’d have rather been chalking up some miles, it was a good break and use of our time.
Day 5 – 74.6 miles – This morning we moved from Gilbert to Williamson to ride Buffalo Mountain, about a 45 minute drive. We had the hotel set up for early check-in and dropped our bags in the room and headed out on the trails. The community connector trail out of town rises several hundred feet in about 1.5 miles, as most of the community connectors do, so it’s in your face right from the start. We’ve always found Buffalo Mountain to be the hardest of the trail systems in years past. This year we got to add the wet and mud from the prior days’ rain. Sharleen had a little tip-over in one of the big puddles early on so she got wet early. We thought about going back so she could change clothes, but she decided to tough it out.
We rode to the Delbarton trailhead and dried out our boots and socks a little.
We didn’t realize the similarity of the protective gear of each of these until we looked at the picture when we got home. The turtle, however, can’t ride dirt bikes...
A nice view of trails still to be ridden…
You don’t find a building made of coal just anywhere.
Day 6 – 34 miles – We left Williamson on Friday morning and decided to drive to the Little Coal River (LCR) trail system. Part of the reason is this is the closest trail system to home and also because we wanted to visit with someone we had met last year that runs a few cabins near the trail. We had to be home by 11pm to pick up the kids from the church camp, so we decided to ride until about 4pm which would give us plenty of time to get home prior to picking up the kids. A lot of people consider this system to be the easiest of the 6, but we had a great time on it this day. Maybe because after all the miles we had ridden, we were tired and ready for some easier riding. But we found some very scenic areas here and for this trip, LCR was my favorite trail system to ride. We also tried some very challenging black trails that we had passed by in prior trips, so it didn’t seem any easier than the other systems. We loved these 34 miles on this trip.
We found this pretty spot to take a break.
Y ride dirt bikes? Y, because we love it of course!
Clean up at the trailhead and time to head home.
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, looks like alot of fun 