To finish up 2023 we took a short weekend wheeling/camping trip out to West Virginia, which was one day of great weather (50s even up in the mountains) and one day of torrential rain (but still warm). This one had some great trails and scenery, good primitive camping (if not a bit muddy), and a few mildly challenging trails as well. Some of the guys camped near Wardensville Friday night, but I didn't make it up until Saturday AM.
Once we did some highway driving, we started off up at Dolly Sodds wilderness, which is the eastern continental divide and popular with hikers and campers. This late in the season we only encountered a handful of people up there - though plenty of hunters with their beagles, mostly standing on their cages atop the pickups - and none of these guys were very polite on the trails, I might add. Basically they never backed off to allow passing, and we ended up pulling into some deep ditches to let them by - one even touched tires with our buddy's Tundra. In any case, the driving is mostly just gravel roads that any reasonable car or crossover can handle, but there were some great views up there:
Getting toward the end of Dolly Sodds and into the surrounding forest we started scoping out campsites to come back to later. It had snowed 5-6" the day earlier, which had mostly melted so everything was pretty wet...
As opposed to our last trip, which was in an area where all the trees had dropped all their leaves, the Canaan Valley area is full of conifers and rhotedendrons, which makes it oddly green for the middle of December in the mid-Atlantic.....with trails still closed in by greenery, and a lot of water holes, stream crossings, etc.
At this point we dropped off the main trails to look for more challenging stuff, and a better campsite.
Even my little rig got a lot of pinstriping - and we had some guys with us in much larger vehicles.
Looped around and stopped off at Lindy Point, which has some of the most iconic views in the area
Then back on the hunt for camping, through some fun terrain....
The stock Frontier Pro-4X was pretty impressive in its capabilities throughout the weekend, by the way
And couple well-setup Toyotas who do a lot of overlanding all over the eastern US, like this one...
I'll mention here I'm not in many action pics since I do most of the photography on trips, but maybe some others will send me some once they get home....
We raced as quickly as possible through several miles of rough stuff trying to get up to the Olson observation tower before sunset, and made it up there just in time...
We went up the tower for pics (admittedly, I bailed halfway up since my ankle was a bit sore...but others went the full way)
Then headed to town, stopping on the way for some vistas
After grabbing a beer at a local brewery, we headed back down the wet trail to the promising campsite we found earlier. Slower going in the dark with rain starting.
Everyone got there (8 vehicles, IIRC) and got set up and then we got to cooking (taco night, among other things) and chilling
With heavy rain and wind expected after midnight, I decided to sleep in the rig rather than getting the tent or room out. So after removing the passenger seat (and covering it with a tarp under my rear awning) I was all set
Crashed out just before midnight and already could hear the rain coming down. Then around 3am a big BANG hit the truck. It being dark out and me being tired, I looked to make sure the windshield was not broken and went back to sleep. In the AM I found the parts of a 8-10 foot dead branch that had crashed down on me from way up, brearking some smaller branches on the way down. Luckily it just hit the roof rack and didn't do any damage to anything.
Also, I slept with my head toward the tailgate. In the middle of the night I rolled over and noticed my pillow was wet at the half of it my head wasn't totally on. Then I felt dripping from the roof. Crap - are my new lights leaking? Nope, Apparently one of the straps for my awning had dropped into the weatherstripping and was slowly routing water, drip-by-drip, into the vehicle right onto my pillow lol.
I grogglily opened the door and pushed it out and re-closed it. In the morning, I found that while that one was out, I had at that point let the OTHER strap do the same thing on the other side, which had dripped for 4 hours on my (thankfully waterproof) mountaineering boots. D'oh. So theere are a couple small improvements I plan to make to get rid of that issue as well as a few other annoying areas where water drips if the door is open (with awning deployed).
In the morning we packed up in the rain and headed out to explore some more. WIth all the rain overnight, the small rivers we crossed to get there were a good bit deeper, but not too bad....
As we exited to the maintained roads, this guy was chiling there watching.
We hit up Blackwater Falls, which were roaring pretty good
And after checking out some other places headed home through WV, above the clouds in many areas, with lots of rain.
Anyhow, a good trip, and the Raider as usual had no problems with any of the terrain, and the new suspension is a resounding success so I'm pretty pleased with that.
Once we did some highway driving, we started off up at Dolly Sodds wilderness, which is the eastern continental divide and popular with hikers and campers. This late in the season we only encountered a handful of people up there - though plenty of hunters with their beagles, mostly standing on their cages atop the pickups - and none of these guys were very polite on the trails, I might add. Basically they never backed off to allow passing, and we ended up pulling into some deep ditches to let them by - one even touched tires with our buddy's Tundra. In any case, the driving is mostly just gravel roads that any reasonable car or crossover can handle, but there were some great views up there:
Getting toward the end of Dolly Sodds and into the surrounding forest we started scoping out campsites to come back to later. It had snowed 5-6" the day earlier, which had mostly melted so everything was pretty wet...
As opposed to our last trip, which was in an area where all the trees had dropped all their leaves, the Canaan Valley area is full of conifers and rhotedendrons, which makes it oddly green for the middle of December in the mid-Atlantic.....with trails still closed in by greenery, and a lot of water holes, stream crossings, etc.
At this point we dropped off the main trails to look for more challenging stuff, and a better campsite.
Even my little rig got a lot of pinstriping - and we had some guys with us in much larger vehicles.
Looped around and stopped off at Lindy Point, which has some of the most iconic views in the area
Then back on the hunt for camping, through some fun terrain....
The stock Frontier Pro-4X was pretty impressive in its capabilities throughout the weekend, by the way
And couple well-setup Toyotas who do a lot of overlanding all over the eastern US, like this one...
I'll mention here I'm not in many action pics since I do most of the photography on trips, but maybe some others will send me some once they get home....
We raced as quickly as possible through several miles of rough stuff trying to get up to the Olson observation tower before sunset, and made it up there just in time...
We went up the tower for pics (admittedly, I bailed halfway up since my ankle was a bit sore...but others went the full way)
Then headed to town, stopping on the way for some vistas
After grabbing a beer at a local brewery, we headed back down the wet trail to the promising campsite we found earlier. Slower going in the dark with rain starting.
Everyone got there (8 vehicles, IIRC) and got set up and then we got to cooking (taco night, among other things) and chilling
With heavy rain and wind expected after midnight, I decided to sleep in the rig rather than getting the tent or room out. So after removing the passenger seat (and covering it with a tarp under my rear awning) I was all set
Crashed out just before midnight and already could hear the rain coming down. Then around 3am a big BANG hit the truck. It being dark out and me being tired, I looked to make sure the windshield was not broken and went back to sleep. In the AM I found the parts of a 8-10 foot dead branch that had crashed down on me from way up, brearking some smaller branches on the way down. Luckily it just hit the roof rack and didn't do any damage to anything.
Also, I slept with my head toward the tailgate. In the middle of the night I rolled over and noticed my pillow was wet at the half of it my head wasn't totally on. Then I felt dripping from the roof. Crap - are my new lights leaking? Nope, Apparently one of the straps for my awning had dropped into the weatherstripping and was slowly routing water, drip-by-drip, into the vehicle right onto my pillow lol.
I grogglily opened the door and pushed it out and re-closed it. In the morning, I found that while that one was out, I had at that point let the OTHER strap do the same thing on the other side, which had dripped for 4 hours on my (thankfully waterproof) mountaineering boots. D'oh. So theere are a couple small improvements I plan to make to get rid of that issue as well as a few other annoying areas where water drips if the door is open (with awning deployed).
In the morning we packed up in the rain and headed out to explore some more. WIth all the rain overnight, the small rivers we crossed to get there were a good bit deeper, but not too bad....
As we exited to the maintained roads, this guy was chiling there watching.
We hit up Blackwater Falls, which were roaring pretty good
And after checking out some other places headed home through WV, above the clouds in many areas, with lots of rain.
Anyhow, a good trip, and the Raider as usual had no problems with any of the terrain, and the new suspension is a resounding success so I'm pretty pleased with that.
