Bear wallow Hatfield and McCoy

[jbain8]

At the Grand Opening I was talking with Jeff Lusk the Executive Director of HMT and he told me that there was over 5k Acres of the existing Lease on BW that has never been explored. We have only scouted a small portion of the park so we are optimistic that this will someday be one of the best 2/3 day riding parks on the east coast. I've stressed to HMT that they need to get at least 2 days of riding open before the bigger stuff will make the trip. Hopefully we can squeeze 3 maybe 4 days out of this park before we're done. Below is a map with the circled area's indicating area's that still need explored. The big open area between the trail head the the right circle is the 5k that is on the current lease and available for future expansion.

 

[clemsonjeep]

Really liking what I'm seeing here. This place is only 30 mins further than going to Harlan so it's definitely on my list of places to go.

 

[onepieceatatime]

Re:

My weekend riding is limited but I'll have a bunch of days off during the week coming up soon if anybody wanted to go check it out and beat the trails down.

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[jbain8]

High Country Crawlers (HCC) is also working with HMT on the Kanawha Park. It's near Charleston WV and will be the largest HMT Park to date. I was speaking with HMT's Lawyer and he told me the money has already been set aside and they have signed 2 of the 4 landowners. Once complete we can go in and start scouting and opening trails. This will be the flagship of the MHT stable and I can't wait to get in there in my GPS. There is a lot of great stuff going on up here in WV and if anyone's interested stop by and check out my FB Group called "WV Country Roads Coalition" We discuss expansion of the state trails systems, legislation and upcoming rides and events.

 

[onepieceatatime]

Re:

Is that the park I kept hearing about a few years back that was gonna be 40k+ acres?

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[jbain8]

Yep, it got held up with funding issues for awhile but now that's been secured and they are moving forward. Like IVY and BW this area has the same sandstone rock that makes the Lions Den, Crawford's Cry and Lower Damnation so much fun.

 

[Zjman]

Hell yeah jerry u da man, cant wait to get down there with ya guys, good work man


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[canepari]

Jerry has been doing some crazy stuff for WV wheelin. I honestly don't know he fits it all in and It pains me to give props to a Jeep guy but I do...
I think there's going be to something for everyone in Bear Wallow.

 

[sledneck]

Thanks for all the hard work. This is good news being from northern PA it will be nice to have a few more good places to ride that aren't 10 hours away.

 

[crawler nut]

This is awesome to hear. Thank you for doing your best to get this done and exspanding our off roading possibilities.

 

[jbain8]

WV is in a very tough place with the coal industry dwindling and residence leaving the state looking for work. Teachers are being layed off due to shrinking classroom sizes and lawmakers are looking for innovative ways to bring in revenue. A tax dollar spent on targeting a vacationing family will bring a family into WV once every few years. They will eat a couple meals, buy a tank of fuel and spend the night in a hotel. However you spend that same dollar on an off-road enthusiast and he'll come back multiple times per year and spend gobs more money.

I was lucky enough to be part of a Senate Sub Committee in Feb working on WV Senate Bill 485, this bill will create a generic trail authority based on HMT's current wording. Long story short it will allow any county in the state to set up an offroad park and adopt SB485 which will govern the oversite, payment, leasing, 3rd party vendors ect ect. It took HMT years to get all their code through WV lawmakers, this bill will satisfy that requirement.

There is a lot of other cool legislation going on in WV right now and with our brothers out west loosing land daily it's nice to see our side of the country opening land instead of closing it.

 

[mcutler]

Awesome work. Good to hear the leaders of WV are open minded and can see the big picture...I wish those in NC could get their heads out of their assess...seems they're more worried about what sex gets to use what bathroom...

Or a fish species that wasn't natural to the region any way.

Matt

 

[Beefcake]

Any updates been dying to find a new park less than 4 hours away. Love to see any videos pictures etc. since this was private land and is now part of the system how are the rules enforced like permits, camp protocols, camp fires, hemlemts etc. on the HMT website they seem pretty regulated not negatively just in general.

 

[onepieceatatime]

Re:

Another thing I always told people about Ivy and it sounds like Bear Wallow will be the same. Never cancel a trip because of the rain! Pack some rain clothes and be ready for traction! Sounds crazy and I don't know why but myself and few others swear the traction is better when it's raining. The traction in Ivy is better than anyplace I've been on the east coast and it gets even better in the rain!

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[karatejosh]

Re: Re:

Another thing I always told people about Ivy and it sounds like Bear Wallow will be the same. Never cancel a trip because of the rain! Pack some rain clothes and be ready for traction! Sounds crazy and I don't know why but myself and few others swear the traction is better when it's raining. The traction in Ivy is better than anyplace I've been on the east coast and it gets even better in the rain!

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I have been to ivy after a big rain and it was great when back in the fall when the nights where getting cold and everything was way harder

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[onepieceatatime]

Re:

I don't have any videos of Bear Wallow but there's quite a bit of Ivy videos.
https://youtu.be/DSkwee9hUUI
https://youtu.be/xVgip_YeWVY

One Ton Swamper Productions has quite a bit of Ivy videos.

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[Beefcake]

Heck yeah looks gnarly so how many trails do they have now just 3? Or just 3 hard ones? What other parts of The trails system allow for rigs besides ivy and bear wallow?

 

[tubehead]

Is anyone heading to BW this weekend? Should be good weather.

 

[Beefcake]

Have they not updated their rules?

 

[canepari]

Heck yeah looks gnarly so how many trails do they have now just 3? Or just 3 hard ones? What other parts of The trails system allow for rigs besides ivy and bear wallow?

IVY is closed and they just opened Bear Wallow to full size rigs recently. As of now its the only one open to full size rigs. All the new trails are very hard.

Is anyone heading to BW this weekend? Should be good weather.

There's going to be a couple groups in there running the new trails. Some of them have never had a tire put on them so its going to interesting.

Have they not updated their rules?

Those look to be UTV rules so I'm going to say no.