While first in chronological order, the Pinnacle Creek project was the last one added to my list. This was a project I only had cursory knowledge of having been put in motion a few years ago. I heard it was finally happening during the West Virginia Motorsports and Adventure Travel Day event at the West Virginia State Capitol Complex in Charleston. At that event I made contact with a representative from the US Fish & Wildlife Services agency and was invited to come down and lend a hand. In addition to Tread Lightly and US Fish and Wildlife, staff from the Hatfield-McCoy Trail system were on site since this trail was part of their network.
If you mention the words “endangered species” around off-road enthusiasts it will trigger a rather visceral response. More often than nought it will be a negative one. This is due to the countless trails around the country that have been closed in order to protect one endangered species or another. A lot of times this is done as a last resort, but it also done as an easy option. In some cases trails can be rerouted, but others they are simply just closed.
Not far from this part of West Virginia was the popular Upper Tellico Off-Highway Vehicle Trail System located within Nantahala National Forest in Cherokee County, North Carolina. This 39 mile network of trails was closed in 2009 in the name of protecting the Tellico River watershed. This river is very popular with anglers from all over the country and it was claimed the increased sediment that was washing downstream from the multiple stream crossings was detrimental to local fish populations. While attempts were made by multiple organizations to keep the Upper Tellico OHV Trail System open, it was ultimately closed because no compromise could be found.
In order to prevent something similar from happening in southern West Virginia multiple agencies were contacted. Together they were able to formulate a plan that would not only protect local aquatic wildlife in West Virginia, including multiple species of crayfish, but also maintain access to popular OHV trails around the area, and in this case those used by the Hatfield-McCoy Trails company. While OHV enthusiasts wanted to keep crossing the stream without replacing the culvert — because let’s face it some people find it “fun” to splash through a creek — that was not going to be beneficial to anything living downstream of that crossing. Through collaboration and cooperation between Tread Lightly, the US Fish and Wildlife Services agency, and the managers of the Hatfield-McCoy trails a plan was developed to not only replace the culvert at that location but to up-size the culvert to handle higher peak flow rates during severe storms that are starting to become more frequent in the area.
While not as critical as the upstream side, some stylization work was needed to prevent erosion of the culvert from the backside.
Here woven mesh and seed was put down and more rocks were added for strength
Part of this project included stream bank remediation involving an organic woven mesh made from coconut husks. This mesh was laid down on the stream bank, filled with soil, coated with a dusting of natural vegetation seeds, wrapped with a top layer of the mesh, and then finally staked in place. Another layer of faster growing plant seeds was then cast on top. The coconut husk mesh was also used to stabilize the banks of the trail going over the culvert as well as the downstream sides of the stream bank.
Hear the excavator is smoothing and compacting the sloped sides of the culvert
Rocks would be place atop the culvert later to help form a barrier to prevent anyone from driving off the edge
Over the years I have done multiple such projects, but never on this scale. In the past I had helped construct such crossings on hiking and mountain bike trails. When we did one on a four-wheel-drive trail at a local off-road park it was a smaller 18″ culvert. I’m not sure the exact size of the Pinnacle Creek culvert, but I’d guess at least six feet in diameter. At least it was six feet before a little squishing action from the dirt piled on top and being driven over a couple hundred times by a D3 Caterpillar dozer. It was fun to just sit back and watch the heavy equipment operate. In addition to the D3 dozer there was a small excavator and a skid-steer that were used to move dirt, debris, and rocks.
By the time Walt and I got there on Wednesday morning the culvert had already been put in place the day prior. Our main tasks were working on the stream bank remediation and the distribution of seeds. It took me hours that night to clean all the seeds our of my pant cuffs, pockets, boots, socks, and work vest. Still, it was worth it. Or at least it will be once all those seeds take root.
I try to live by the mantra, “work hard; play hard.” I try to make sure the “play hard” comes after the “work hard” part, but every now and then the schedule dictates what the schedule dictates. In this case It means playing a little bit before while on the way down *AND* playing a little bit after on the way from this project to the next.
Joining me on this project was my buddy Walt. He was going to the project lead for the Tank Hollow Project later in the week (more on that in the next article). Since he had taken the whole week off and had no reason not to, he opted to meet me in West Virginia a few days earlier than the project he was coordinating. Our initial plan was to rendezvous in Charleston, WV. However, after studying my maps and some saved routes in my GPS navigation app, I suggested we shift our meeting point to Thurmond, WV.
Photo curtsy of the National Park Service
The small town of Thurmond is all but a ghost town. Being one of West Virginia’s prolific mining towns, it was infamous for its lack of a Main Street through downtown. Instead the railroad tracks and associated infrastructure dominated the land between the main row of commercial buildings and the bank of the New River.
To access Thurmond I came in from the east along the New River from the even smaller town of Prince, WV. This road snaked the hillside and weaved in and out of the various cuts on the mountainside. Along the way were ruins of long forgotten mines and associated towns. Surprisingly there are still some residents carving out a life in and amongst the seemingly wild terrain of the New River Gorge.
There is even an active Amtrak station in town
The highlights for me on the trip sadly weren’t what I was hoping to see. I wanted to check out some ruins I had seen on a previous trip as well as some ones I knew about but was unable to see due to problems with my knees at the time. Sadly my time was cut short by two problems I encountered on the trail. The first was a distressed motorist who had misplaced the key to their new Jeep. Since modern Jeeps require a chipped key and are push-button start there was no way to bypass the ignition or hot-wire the Jeep to get it moving again. Luckily my knowledge of Jeeps is enough that I knew they couldn’t have driven there without the key. This meant it was either misplaced inside the vehicle or dropped somewhere outside the vehicle. While half the family searched along the road the other half tore into their belongings — again — in hopes of finding the key. My money was on it being in the Jeep haven fallen out of a pocket into another bag or behind the seat. In the end I was right. When the driver had tossed their jacket into the back of the Jeep after a trailside potty break the key had fallen in between two bags and slipped into a pocket. While their focus was on the obvious spots they overlooked that particular pocket. Never hurts to go back and revisit something even if you think you didn’t miss anything.
Other than the boulder, the road was easily passible by anything four-wheel-drive.
Once they were running and able to move out of my way, I was back to snaking my way down the forest service road. At this point I was just over an hour behind schedule. This meant giving up on some of the stops I mentioned earlier. Soon after I relinquished my ambition to do some trailside photography I hit my second obstacle of the day. A landslide had parked a massive boulder on the trail. Previous travelers had routed a small skinny tight narrow goat path around the boulder. If I had been in the Jeep, even with the trailer, I wouldn’t have been scared. However, on this particular trip, I was in the girlfriend’s 2500 Quigley van. While four-wheel-drive, it’s not exactly a small vehicle. The width, length, and weight of the van were all major concerns of mine. After getting out and walking the goat path around the boulder I deemed it a chance worth taking. With my but cheeks clenched nice and tight I inched the van forward and around the rock. A small gasp escaped my mouth when the ground shifted under the weight of the van, but I was able to correct my path enough to stay stable while also avoiding the boulder which was a scant few inches from the rather sizable rear passenger window of the van.
However, previous travelers had created a bypass
It was sketchy… very sketchy, but the van made it!
Once passed the boulder it was smooth sailing to Thurmond. At one point I thought I might be going a bit too fast and was surprised to see the speedometer reading 60 mph. I’ve been accused of having a heavy foot, and the 6.0 LS V8 under the hood of the van facilities that even without trying, but there was no way I was actually going 60 mph on a forest service road. It was at that moment that I realized that when Quigley did the 4×4 conversion on the van they must have maintained the speedometer output sensor which is in the transmission of a 2wd van as opposed to in the transfer-case of a 4wd truck. Might be something I need to look into to prevent future panic attacks of, “no way am I going this fast.“
Once in Thurmond I was able to connect with Walt. We took a few minutes to walk around the town’s remaining buildings, snag a few poser shots, and then headed south into the town of Beckley for dinner. From there it was a short drive south out of Beckley to Burning Rock Off-Road Park which was going to be our campsite for the two nights we were in going to be in West Virginia. Burning Rock ORP was where we staged for last year’s WV Tread Lightly Day and they were more than willing to let us crash there while working on another local project. Didn’t hurt that they had hot showers and flushing toilets for us to use.
The nice thing about our “overland” rigs is they are low impact and quick to setup and teardown
This make projects like this a breeze when you’re not wasting daylight making/breaking camp
When Thursday morning rolled around we set our sites to the northeast and made our way toward George Washington and Jefferson National Forest.
Check out the Tank Hollow 2025 article for the continuation of this story.
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