May 3rd, 2022 just a few days before my birthday: we have finally found the time and energy to venture into the state of West Virginia, and visit New River Gorge National Park and Preserve. The latest addition to the national park system now totalling 63 parks! A trip that has been in our mind for the longest time, not only due to it being so close to home on the East coast, but also because of the many good things we’d heard about it. It was finally time to go!

Having recently moved to Richmond, Virginia, we were a short 3 hours drive from the park. It was inevitable that we’d visit for at least a few nights almost as soon as we had moved. We loosely planned for a 2-3 night stay, though as usual, we were prepared in case we decided to stay longer and explore a little further. This trip was another get up and go type of adventure. After all, I knew that this wouldn’t be our last time in West Virginia. The initial idea was to first check out the NP and any areas of interests (hikes, park and historic locations), and second to go exploring/off-roading to our content, heading home on the third day. As far as lodging goes, we would figure out as we went per usual, but I pinned several camp sites all around the area in advance.

The Trip

Our first stop, Sandstone Visitor Center, is about halfway down on the east side of the park. It’s not the biggest or busiest visitor center, but it has a great exhibit and on our way into the park. Definitively a good starting point if you come directly from the East. Packed with all kinds of wildlife, New River Gorge has sights at every turn (especially birds – check this link for a list!). There are several endemic species around here (unique species that are secluded and isolated due to the steep terrain).

Moving on! The idea was to start south of the gorge and make our way north towards Summersville, West Virginia (and possibly camp in Gauley Tailwaters Campground). So, we headed towards Bluestone State Park. With only one possible road, several bridges and multiple overlooks, we stopped a few times to appreciate the scenery and drove through the small city of Hinton.

Bluestone state park has a lot to offer! Featuring lots of space for big gatherings, rental cabins, a fishing pier, grills, kids playgrounds and more, the park has something for everyone. They also have a nice little gift shop/visitor center with lots of goodies and information. Unfortunately, at the time of our visit there was a section of the park was closed off due to a landslide on the road. Keep in mind that quite a few of these roads (south side of the NP) are mostly tight windy roads, just like the ones found in Tennessee around the Pigeon Forge/Gatlinburg area, with lots of bridges. Though we didn’t take any pictures, we recommend checking this park out if looking for a place to spend the night or simply passing by!

Heading North!

It was arond 3-4 o’clock in the afternoon. We had just finished having lunch over at Bluestone Park and it was time to head towards Grandview! Also known as the “Main Overlook”, it’s located at 4700 Grandview Rd, Beaver, WV 25813. A must see for everyone!

At this location, there is a small NPS visitor center, lots of parking spots, picnic tables and public restrooms. Information plaques are all around and there are several hiking trails heads to go on. Up the road from here there is another overlook called “Turkey Spur Overlook”. We saved it for another day, but it seems worth checking out. Again, this whole park is packed with hiking trails back and forth. Most of them leading to either incredible views of the gorge, or historical landmarks such as the Nuttallburg Coal Tipple. We also saved that for another day since we didn’t go to that side of the park.

Once we were done at Grandview, we decided to move on to our next destination: a campground simply called “Army Camp” which would put us right at the beginning of a small section of dirt roads. On the way there, we drove through the city of Beckley, as well as the surrouding areas (White Stick, Stanaford, and Piney View).

Though Army Camp is a small campground (if I remember correctly, there were 8-10 camping spots), they all had leveled dirt pads with picnic tables, grills, and fireplaces. Also, it’s free! Even so, the greatest feature of this campground was the river access which turns into a large riverfront beach. Perfect for spending a day by the river, or taking off in a kayak. One small warning is that you have to get through a small village with a one lane paved-but-bumpy road, so you might have to pull over to let others pass.

We considered spending the night at the camp, but in the end decided that there was still plenty of daylight to enjoy. So, we went on the first set of dirt roads on Mckendree Rd towards our final destination for the day, Stone Cliff Campground.

It was an enjoyable drive to begin with with a mix of terrains (gravel, dirt, slighly muddy, etc.) and various sights. We quickly didn’t know what to expect after the next turn. We also found a couple of interesting spots on this road…

You can probably tell it was a pretty good drive. Not too challeging but packed with surprises back and forth. Previously, I saw comments where people said not to drive McKendree Rd northbound, but I would still recommend it this way for the overlanders/more adventurous. To me, going northbound has a better progression from dirt/gravel back to the fully maintained road, plus it makes more sense if you come from the south, especially from checking out Buckley or Grandview. Either way, it’s not that significant.

Stone Cliff Campground is amazing. Plenty of space for several campers, free (at least around the date this post was made) and right on the river. Featuring picnic tables, grills, fire pits, a huge parking lot, boat ramps… basically, everything you want. All camping spots are for tent camping. The actual parking lot is above the river level and you have to take an small set of stairs to go down to the river/camping spots (which is blocked off for vehicles, so it’s all kept separate). With that being said, for those who only have RTTs, do yourself a favor and bring your own ground tent/hammock! Since it was still early in the year and we arrived late/planned to leave early in the morning, we took the chance and camped in the parking lot in the RTT – but you probably can’t always get away with that, especially during busier season.

At this point it was later in the day, probably around 7:30 pm and it wouldn’t take much longer before nightfall. We relaxed by the river, threw a few rocks here and there, had a small dinner, and off to sleep! It was a packed day. From home, to the gorge, to every little and big sight so far, we were very excited for the next day.

A new day starts!

We had a great night and we loved this camp but it was time to go! Next destination, “Concho Rim Overlook”.

The view was amazing! Not quite as concentrated with features as Grandview (no visitor center, few information plaques and no public restrooms) but another breathtaking view none-the-less. It’s worth mentioning that it is very close to some of the main resorts around this area. Next, we moved on to the Canyon Rim Visitor Center, but first stopped to check out some of the cool shops around Fayetteville!

Though I didn’t take any pictures, I recommend stopping by Cathedral Cafe & Book Store. I am a huge sucker for alternative/hippy coffee shops and this place was no exception. They have a nice menu with several choices for breakfast and lunch. Their coffee was amazing and I just found out that it’s women-owned too! Go check ’em out! Also, if you know of any unique coffee shops like this, please let me know. As long as I can drive, you’ll see me there!

Once back on the road, we quickly reached our next destination. Canyon Rim Visitor Center, the park’s primary and year-round center.

This visitor center was bigger, crowded, and with an overall extensive NPS presence. Very accessible from any dirrection and with lots of comodities, perfect for a visiting family. Unlike the Sandstone Visitor Center, this one features a great view of the gorge as well as picnic tables, trail heads, RV parking lot, etc. Consider this as your main visitor center. It’s also closest to the bigger cities, resorts, restaurants, water sports shops, etc. We took our time here, met some nice people and enjoyed until we were ready to go off-roading: for real this time.

And so it begins…

It was now time to head into the forest, follow a path (or two), turn around if needed, try another way, repeat. Exploration at its best! We have done it before, let’s do it again!

We took off from Lookout, a small community that lead into a series of USFS roads, amish farms, as well as many privately-owned property/land.

As far as getting off the pavement, we usually like to pick a starting point, see where we would like to end up, and go from there. Just a few times we like to trace a whole route. This time around, we used the starting point (Lookout) of an existing route previosuly seen in a hiking/overlanding app, and oh lord… it was a great way to get into the woods around here, but definitively not up to date, accurate, or most importantly, not “easily accessible” (as in a very nice put together gravel roads through a national park that are labelled scenic drives). It wasn’t our first time dealing with that, so we quickly made it our own from the get go. We decided to follow alongside the Gauley river and make a big loop back to civilization so we could head North towards Summersville, WV.

For the first couple of hours, we were heading deeper and deeper into the forest, driving by farms and private land. We only turned back around twice. The first time, there was a water crossing that had way too much of a current, so we went around it, and the second time, the path led to a private property. The road conditions varied by the minute, it was very inconsistent. Sometimes, it wasn’t half as bad with gravel roads and compacted dirt, but suddenly the next minute it would look like this….

Needless to say, we deflated a bit further and kept on going. At this pace, we still had plenty of room to deflate further should the route worsen, but we were at a comfortable/safe enough psi to tackle these rocky roads.

For the most part of this trip, we would go on very peacefully until, all of the sudden, we would have to face an obstacle. These were strangely random with seemingly well maintained gravel road afterwards, making you think that it would only get better each time, only to lead you towards another obstacle. It was quite unpredictable. Probably the most unpredictable route we have gone on so far. Nothing stayed the same for too long.

After several small challenges and types of terrains, we were finally approaching the Gauley River. We could hear it from a distance. In no time, we were along the river!

Things did not get any less dangerous from here. The road alongside the river had a steep hill on one side and a direct drop off a cliff on the other. There were several times that we got too close to this edge for comfort, and one time that really tempted fate. After hours of going through rocks, dirt and mud, we hit the first of the major obstacles we faced on this trip: the one rocky squeeze that had us thinking about turning back for a long time. The kind of obstacle where you have to shim/wiggle/wedge/push enough to get through it. I certaintly didn’t want to go back as it seemed nearly impossible at this point due to the narrow roads and dips towards the ledge. In retrospect, the next twenty-four hours would have been a lot different – and less stressful – if we had turned around at this point, but I’m not confident it would have been safe to do so either.

We aren’t rock-crawling experts or anything, but having to crawl up/down or around a hill/dune/rock had thankfully never been an issue for us before. This time around though, it was all about patience while trying to figure out how to get the car to turn with very limited space. The smallest move was critical to keep moving forward, which was something we have never really faced before.

Seriously though…These pictures don’t do a justice to how tight this really was. Once you get past the boulder on the left (see first picture), the 4Runner would be really high up on one side due to the hill, then hit a wall/second boulder at the end (see second picture), ALSO, the 4Runner would be scraping the boulder to the right before even starting to turn to the right. We had no space due to the position of both boulders, and we couldn’t go straight. We basically had to get as close to the hill as possible, shimmying back and forth as much as possible to get the nose to face out at an angle then lean on the boulder and push through (while turning) to get out of there. It took us a few tries and the 4Runner certainly gained a large battle scar, but we made it.

Little did we know, there was an even bigger challenge right ahead of us… and also the biggest surprise yet.

The Tunnel – The highlight of the trip

The road finally opened up and moved away from the tiny ledge. We were very excited to see (on our maps) a main road less than 2 miles away, and at this point we were more than ready to get back to civilization and see more of what West Virginia had to offer. We had about 3 hours left of daylight. There was no possibility of turning back, but in our eagerness to get out of this perilous road, I missed that the road we were on led to a “closed-off tunnel”. Ladies and gentlemen, we had reached the Carnifex Tunnel.

What is the first thing that you do when you find an unexpected abandoned closed-off tunnel?

You walk straight throught it.

– Overland Alvarez, May 2022

There was no easy way to enter this tunnel. Piles of large rocks blocked the entrance. We believed we would be able to climb these rocks, but because we weren’t sure what lay beyond the entrance, we had to find out before potentially getting stuck inside with the 4Runner. Our map showed that that tunnel was about 0.18 miles long, not too bad to walk. The part that intimidated us was the fact that the tunnel was pitch black, cold and wet. The walls were packed with graffiti and very deteriorated in certain parts. It was without a doubt abandoned. Everything at this point just felt so surreal to us. But we geared up for the unexpected, stayed close together, and quite literally, found light at the end of the tunnel. It was horror movie levels of scary not knowing what was inside the darkness and we promised not to let go of each other’s hands.

The tunnel curved sharply, but it was plenty wide enough to drive through and clear of more rocks. At the end, we found a second large obstacle we would have to navigate to exit the tunnel (not pictured yet). After this, the road became much more maintained and had a sharp left turn to a rocky up-hill road towards the main road we identified ealier. Were you to go straight instead, you would go back to a cliff-sided narrow road along the river that we had no way of knowing how safe it was, or how long we’d have to go before we found another way out. We walked uphill for about 45 minutes until we reached the main road and found houses and phone signal. We decided this was indeed our way out, although it would be hard work. Just in case, we let some people know what was going on before we head back to rest in the RTT for the night.

Going through the tunnel would become our biggest and hardest obstacle yet. The rocky road up the hill would be a slow crawl (big chunky rocks everywhere!) most of the time, with a few nerve-breaking spots (cliff-sided off-camber, 2-steps rock obstacles while up-hill certainly makes for a good time). But then that would be it! We were so close! As long as it didn’t rain, things were looking good-ish! At the least, turning around was too dangerous, and this was the safest and most logical way out of this road. In the morning, we would traspass the blocked-off tunnel.

Gooooood morning! It’s a great day to send it… and go home!

Yesterday had been a roller coaster and we had earned plenty of OvErLAnDiNg points by now. We were exhausted. But first, we had to get through this… It’ll be good story to tell, I said.

It goes like this…

We woke up bright and early. The weather was perfect. Not too hot, not too cold, but warm with a nice breeze occasionally. Thankfully, it didn’t rain. Neither of us slept too well, worried about the signficant amount of rocks and boulders above us and anxious to get moving. The night was quiet, though we could hear the tunnel echoing (roaring?) from time to time.

I needed Gabby more than ever to make it through these next obstacles. Up to this point, she has been patient and supportive beyond my imagination, but I needed to keep it that way. She was being stronger than ever, but I made her very nervous back on the cliff side yesterday. She believed in me to make it through some large dips, very narrow passes and any big-ish obstacle we had encountered so far though, so I simply couldn’t be better accompanied. I knew that as long as she was there with me, I was going to make it through.

I consider it significant that neither of us were mentally prepared to face something like this when we had decided to take this trip. It were as if we went on a mini Black Bear Pass without knowing what we would face first. And though we have gone overlanding before, we had never been put in a situation like this where there was real danger. We had wanted to explore around the forest/service roads like we have done countless of times, not go this hardcore! It paid off that I always overpack food, water and bring all of my gear just in case.

Getting back to it now. We got to work on our first obstacle, the entrance. We had to make some ramps, move rocks and plug a few holes with dirt and smaller stones. It took us some time, about an hour and half, but ultimately we made it through without a lot of trouble. For what we do, I have never wished I had 275s, 285s, etc. (Fun fact: The only other size I have considered for the 4Runner specifically is 255/80s.) Today was the only time we’ve experienced where bigger tires would have been useful; up to this point, from actual off-road parks to Alaska, we’ve always been just fine with our trusty 265/70s.

Though we quickly reached the other end of the tunnel (and with that, the next challenge), it was quite surreal to drive through it. A memorable experience at its best.

Once on other side of the tunnel

We now faced the biggest obstacle we have seen yet. I’ll keep it short. We utilized every piece of recovery gear that we have including the spare tire, floor jack, hi lift (farmer’s jack), power tools, hand tools, shovels, the front winch, and every bit of our patience. This took us roughly 4 hours of non-stop work. Enjoy the pictures!

Pictures of how we did it:

Two things; I forgot at home the very nice full-size shovel that I ALWAYS keep in the 4Runner. Unfortunately, we were working on our garden and haven’t gotten a gardening shovel yet, so had been using it right before went on this trip and forgot it in the backyard. So to do all this work, we only had a tiny, half-length shovel. Also, the cheap recovery boards we had finally gave up on a prior trip to the beach while recovering ourselves and other people from the sugar sand (we deserved it for not airing down that time around). Although I was aware of this fact, we had only used the boards twice in several years and didn’t really think we’d need them on this trip. They would’ve been somewhat helpful had we had them, but nothing life-changing. Oh well….

After what it was probably the best example of teamwork (seriously, WE WERE IN SYNC!) – from having to lift one (or two) corners of the 4Runner at a time, pull the winch, move the wheels, give it gas, move this end, pull again, move a rock, turn a little, move the tire, lift the front, lift the back, pull again, repeat – we made it out without a(nother) scratch! It was now time to move forward and head up to the mountain, and with that, home!

After about 5 minutes of blissfully easy forest driving, we reached the road up the mountain.

There were many dips and steps, but it seemed like nothing in comparison to what we just went through. I was hyperfocused. It felt as if throttle control was a natural response. I know, I know – it felt amazing though. Gabby walked all the way up the hill while I drove because it was very narrow and off camber and I would needed her to guide me through some of the bigger step obstacles. Again, we were in-sync and this last push felt like the last test that we were very prepared for. We moved carefully, but quickly. There were two times that it did get pretty stressful due having to rock crawl on a cliffside, but we made it!

We were so greatful when we made it out. So was my family that I had notified yesterday of what we had been up against. We had to bring the 4Runner back to highway standards. Gas up. Air up. Casually support an elderly man having a literal stroke at a gas station (while still covered in mud). Soon enough, we were on the road again!

A special announcement!

There were many times where we had opportunities in the past to “leave our mark”. So one good day, I went ahead and finally did the thing that has been in my overlanding-to-do-list for the longest time: to create a logo. Presenting, the Overland Alvarez logo!

Although it’s not perfect, it is totally designed by me and I couldn’t be happier with it. I wanted to surprise Gabby and she totally loved it! As soon as I finished it, I was able to print several stickers with a QR code that will take you to our instagram page. From now on, this is our mark.

From our improvised sticker back at the end of the road in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska to our new logo and sticker debut in the abandoned Carnifex Tunnel of Hico, West Virginia. We are very excited to share it with family and friends! Just reach out to us if you would like to have one or two!

Final remarks

For those adventuring these lands, with or without zombie apocalypse survival rigs, there is very poor to no signal all around the park, so download the map to the whole area on Google Maps or the gps of choice. There is pretty good road signage though, so you won’t get lost. It is a very activity-oriented national park (similar to Cuyahoga Valley National Park) with lots of trails, opportunities for sports and water sports, birds watching and camping. If you like mountains, rivers and anything like the Smokies, add this to your visit list. The air feels absolutely amazing, and there is an overall low feeling of threat in comparison to other parks. By this I mean free from things like altitute sickness (like in Telluride, Colorado), bears in every corner (like in Katmai, Alaska) and it’s always close to civilization/emergency services. We will definitively come back again with family and friends. With multiple resorts around the area, it would make for an amazing weekend getaway. For those more adventurous, these lands seem to have an endless area to explore.

Though this was a short trip, 3 days 2 nights, it really has everything that I consider to be a full on adventure. From the moment we first thought “Let’s go to West Virginia” to the moment we saw the “Welcome to Virginia” sign on the way home, it was a memorable experience that would beat anything else. Living in the moment, visiting new places, enjoying the outdoors, and the spontaneity of exploration is what drives us to do what we do. And of course, the unexpected thrill of being stranded with no way to go but unwards has really made this trip stick in our mind as one of our most memorable.

Whether you are here for the story, pictures or national park info, thank you so much for taking the time to visit our website. It really means a lot to me that we are able to share some of our stories with you and if you have any questions or would simply like to reach out to us, please feel free to do so over at our instagram page! This is the first time that I had written a post on our blog and I can tell you that I had lot of fun doing it. I had no idea I was going to end up writing so much. I’d like to know what you think about it. Tell me, what was your favorite part? What part would you like to know more about? Anything feedback is appreciated! I hope you enjoyed and hopefully learned a thing or two. Whatever you do, please do not attempt to repeat this route. Get out there and make it your own; that’s the best part anyways. With that being said, once again a big thank you to you all and see you next time!

– Gabe

THANK YOU!