Ultimate ATV Riding Getaway: Hatfield-McCoy

Destinations, East — By ATV Mag on July 16, 2008 at 12:00 pm

Planning our annual ATV Trials event is no small task and choosing a location is the top priority. We need great riding, and a lot of it, to effectively evaluate a wide range of both utility and sport quads. It’s also important to choose a location that’s not too cold for a solid week of testing in late October. Once again, we searched far and wide, but unanimously decided to go to West Virginia’s sprawling Hatfield-McCoy Trail System.
There are plenty of top-shelf riding areas across the country, but Hatfield’s blend of typically good weather, challenging terrain and elevation make it hard to beat for our autumnal event, so we chose the enormous system for a second year.
Browning Fork is in the southwest corner of the state, not too far from the Kentucky border, and it has about 115 miles of diverse trails that quickly wind their way steeply up into the tree covered hills of the southern Appalachians.
The surroundings are similar to the Little Coal River system we visited last year, but with more miles of trails to choose from. We had the good fortune of arriving just before the fall color peak, with bright yellow deciduous trees dotting the hilly green landscape. Unfortunately Mother Nature had a sense of humor for our trip, ending a two-month dry spell with a nonstop monsoon.
Riding the Coal Trails
Sharing an entrance road with an active coal mine, the busy Browning Fork Rockhouse trailhead in Man offers ample parking, a staffed information center and two large restrooms/changing rooms for getting geared up to ride. The facilities are clean and, from our experience, the staff is helpful and friendly. Because there is still active mining in the area, it’s important to keep an eye out for the occasional pickup truck doing its rounds on some of the shared use corridors and on the entrance road.
One fringe benefit of the coal operations is the sporadic sound of blasting echoing through the hills, sometimes loud enough to have you searching the horizon for a thunderhead or a mushroom cloud.
Trail 10, which heads out of the Rockhouse Trailhead for about 7 miles, was a fun jaunt for starting and ending rides. There is terrain for every type of rider. Ramp-like jumps allow fast sport riders to sail as they climb the mountain and casual riders can meander along not missing the fabulous scenery. The hillside trails offer great views of the canopy and valleys (they’re called hollows in these parts), and this particular route makes a great first impression.
As far as difficulty, 49 percent of the trails in the system are rated green, for easiest. Most of the green trails are connecting routes that get visitors to other, more challenging segments. Twenty-three percent are blue (more difficult), 21 percent are black (most difficult) and the remaining 7 percent are exclusively for dirt bikes.
Machine Testing
When the going gets tough, the black-rated trails offer a serious challenge and were an ideal location for us to test 4×4 machines. Trail 31, with sharp decreasing-radius switchbacks and steep rocky hills, was a great place to reach some handling conclusions.
Partly due to the extremely rainy weather, we chose to avoid one steep hill climb that, depending on where you’re coming from, should be a team effort. With assistants keeping the front end down, this demanding segment could be the highlight of your ride. Everything else that we encountered should pose no challenge for anyone with a reasonable amount of experience and four-wheel drive.
How to Plan It
Part of Browning Fork’s beauty is that it’s a connected system. Man and Gilbert, both ATV-friendly towns, are about 22 miles apart, and there are infinite ways to get between the two, with varying levels of challenge. Wise travelers should book their lodging in either of the towns, park the trailer for the week and go quads-only for the entire stay.
We stayed about a half-hour away in Logan at the classy Chief Logan Lodge. While there are plans to eventually connect the sprawling hotel and convention center to a trail system, it’s accessible only by road for the time being. Nonetheless, should you want a luxurious room at the end of the ride, Chief Logan may be your best and closest bet. When we return, though, we’ll trade the luxury for proximity and ride from a nearby hotel.
The city of Man, nearest to the Browning Fork trailhead, has retail, service stations, fast food, lodging and just about everything you would need before, during, or after a day’s ride. About 25 minutes north on highway 80, Logan has an even wider complement of stores, restaurants and evening entertainment.
During our week of testing, we didn’t see all the Browning Fork trails. We have no immediate plans to finish our exploration, but that doesn’t mean we won’t find a convenient reason to return and enjoy the trails once again. This is truly a great place to ride and so far the best we’ve seen of the world class Hatfield-McCoy trails. If you’re not a wimp, rain only adds to the fun.