Every organization we link to: local tourism offices, the state and federal agencies that manage the land, the nonprofits and clubs that keep access open, and the universities doing the research.
Arrowhead Trails
Purpose-built flow and cross-country mountain bike singletrack inside the national park near Fayetteville, built by the Boy Scouts and open to the public — a deliberate contrast to West Virginia's traditionally rugged riding, with bermed corners, rollers and progressive difficulty.
Know before you go
- Arrowhead is the friendliest introduction to riding in the gorge
- Adjacent Boy Scout Summit trails add significant mileage when open
- Check Trailforks for wet-weather closures
What you can do here
Built by the Boy Scouts inside the national park near Fayetteville, this is purpose-cut singletrack — bermed corners, rollers, a progressive difficulty ladder — rather than the rock-and-root riding the state is known for. Twelve-plus miles of flow trail make it the friendliest introduction to riding in the gorge. Adjacent Boy Scout Summit trails add significant mileage when open, and Trailforks carries wet-weather closures.
Local organizations
Mountain Biking across West Virginia →Runners get machine-built tread here instead of the ballast and root the rest of the gorge offers, so footing is predictable and the grades roll rather than lurch. Twelve-plus miles of singletrack is enough for real loops. It is shared with bikes moving fast through bermed corners, so run with your ears open and step wide at blind turns.
Local organizations
The system is walkable year-round, but it was designed and built for bikes — flow tread, bermed corners and rollers that read differently on foot. Expect to share, and expect faster traffic from behind on descents. Wet weather closes trails here, so check Trailforks before you make the drive out to Fayetteville.
Local organizations
Guides, gear and lodging near Arrowhead Trails
Place-level placement for operators within range of this trailhead, put-in or crag.
List your business hereNearby in the New River Gorge
New River Gorge Bridge
A 3,030-foot steel arch carrying US 19 some 876 feet above the New River — for decades the longest single-span arch bridge in the world, and still the image most people carry of West Virginia.
Endless Wall Trail
A 2.4-mile point-to-point trail along the gorge rim through hemlock and rhododendron, crossing Fern Creek on a footbridge and reaching Diamond Point, an exposed rock outcrop with a view up the gorge to the bridge.
Long Point Trail
About 3.2 miles round trip on mostly level old roadbed to a rock promontory below the rim, which provides the most-photographed view of the New River Gorge Bridge.
Grandview
1,400 feet above a horseshoe bend in the New, with a seven-mile view up the gorge — the widest perspective anywhere in the park.
Sandstone Falls
The largest waterfall on the New River — not tall, but 1,500 feet wide, spilling across the full breadth of the river between islands at the point where the gorge begins to open.
Kaymoor Miners Trail
A steep descent from the gorge rim to the ruins of the Kaymoor One coal mine and processing plant, including 821 wooden steps down the former haulage incline.
West Virginia has roughly 1.5 million acres of public land and a handful of places that carry almost all of the attention. The consequence is that a great deal of very good ground sits nearly empty, usually for one of three reasons: nobody has heard of it, the road in is gated or rough, or it is undeveloped and has nothing to advertise. Those are the places below — of them across regions.