UNDER CONSTRUCTION PICS COMING
Hey ya'll, After years of hearing WV riders mention that you could ride from the Outpost/Wagon Wheel area to Ky. it was time try it out. If you've ridden the true WV trails, you know there'd be dozens of trail intersections and hundreds of miles of riding to wander through while crossing an area this large. Fellow WVSXS member "ZINGO" was kind enough to give us the GPS tracks from a ride he did in 2006? with Wes from the Outpost. Wes has passed, he was a local who could ride the route by memory, no gadgets. I know some of ya'll have done this ride, or similar routes, does anyone have any GPS Tracks from their ride to share?? So Amarillo60h ,Jthomph, and I decide we'll do a 3 day 2 night ride, from Camp Creek WV, (exit 20, I77N) to KY/VA and back, about a 250 mile trip. After a couple of delays and Joe swamping his RZR we were ready, but down to 2 RZRs. We left CC on Fri. 10am, perfect weather. As we neared a local "landmark", Tinys, we found our 1st trail treasure. 140 lbs.? 10 pointer, still warm, yum yum. No we didn't get the backstrap, no need to get bloody already! Looked as though he'd been capped by a the WV Mafia. I drug'im to the side, made peace and rolled on. We left Tinys' holler headed south and up onto some haul roads for a coal mine, the vehicle with the right-of -way here is apparent. This was a easy creek crossing.Look at that huge gas line. Amarillo60h, Crankin' a Dew. FAIL!!You never know what you'll see in the West Virginia woods. This was a China made dirtbike burning on the side of a gravel road. We thought we could fix it.Brink, CSI. Back to the trail.Somewhere in WV. Free range horses in an old mine reclaim.It was 85 miles from Camp Creek to Glenn Alum WV where we camped on a reclaimed mountaintop the 1st night.Perfect weather and Wild Horses at the campsite.The perfect weather turned to a mini-monsoon in 45 minutes. These are not the campsite pics i hoped to be posting but you take adventure where you find it, and it found us unprotected and on a mountaintop. As we were setting up tents the bottom fell out and the winds blew in reality. Luckily we had the tarps and bungees ready for a quick cover up. By then it was dark and drizzled all night. We ended up with the RZRs and us sleeping under tarps all night instead of tents. Anytime i camp i wish i'd stopped to setup camp earlier.A cold blowing rain makes a hot sloppy joe ....GOOOOD. The morning after.Outside the tarp hut the next morning.Lets' go!Beach fork running into the Tug Fork river, which is the WV/ KY State line.This is where the GPS tracks follow the infamous stretch of railroad tracks from Wharncliffe WV to Freeburn KY. Infamous because of robberies and a murder along the tracks recently.Following the trail down Bull Creek. One of the downed trees blocking the trail. There was a good bit of wind damage from high winds in this area.Another cleanup.We took the tracks to Freeburn Ky where we got gas and a little bit 'a chicken fried. Once we got our butts in the seats and toes on the throttle we were off for short run thru the Bluegrass. While following Wess' tracks we came to a gate with no lock and no signage, on we went. After about 5 miles of sweet top gear trail we came to gate on the other side of the mountain. This one had 2 locks and cables on 1 side, on the other side was a pile of rocks with a 5 foot drop into a creek. Lets just say we had to modify the pile to avoid hi-centering and hauled ass before we had to explain why to the locals, who were beginning to swarm. Luckily we were back into the woods in a matter of minutes and escaped into Virginia via gravel road/trail. In Virginia we found ourselves in another working mine that apparently wasn't running in 2006. The trail was devoured and toted out in a train car i quess because it took about 40 minutes of searching to find a way through. We ended up going through the main entrance with smiles and waves from the "security gaurd". With a little navigatin' we got back to the gps tracks and continued back into West Virginia.We decided by committee that a 2nd night with wet gear would be worse than a late night arrival back to Camp Creek. So we stopped in Welch for gas and convenience store burritos and headed toward the camper and heat, we made it back at 10:30pm to Camp Creek. The 2nd day was about 125 miles.Thanks again to J. Zingo for shareing his gps tracks.
