Organization works to keep area trails clear of debris and full of people

The Pocahontas Trails organization works to maintain hiking and biking trails in parts of Pocahontas County, and they work to try to promote trail use. Pocahontas Trails shares a unique partnership with the West Virginia Mountain Bike Association to achieve their organizational goals.

Greg Moore, is both Vice President of Pocahontas Trails and Trail Coordinator for the West Virginia Mountain Bike Association.

“Pocahontas Trails is our local 501 ((C) 3) non-profit,” says Moore. “We’re a chapter of the International Mountain Bike Association. We’ve just been together for over a year now and we mostly focus on trail work, trail advocacy, community stuff, just getting people out on trails and showing them trails and getting them out working and riding and hiking. We have a monthly meeting. We organize trail work, we have group rides and hikes. We’re just out there, hangin’ out in the woods.”

Moore said Pocahontas Trails also works with different civic and community organizations, and they’ve even used their non-profit status to help further other projects in the county.

“We work with the Linwood Library on teaching a kid’s strider class with the pre-schoolers there every Monday morning,” says Moore. “We’ve helped them with some other events. We helped with their running races put on and we helped them get some grant money for their pavilion too under our 501 ((C) 3) status.”

Moore said they’re mainly based out of the Snowshoe area, but they do get around to other parts of the county when they can.

“So a lot of us are from the Slaty Fork/Snowshoe area. We mostly concentrate on this area but we also do work over on Cheat Mountain, closer to Huttonsville,” says Moore. “And over at the Green Bank observatory on some of their trails over there. We plan on doing some more work this year with them.”

According to Moore, Pocahontas Trails was founded when some friends got together and took charge.

“The forest service is pretty much overburdened with other stuff, and lack of trail crew members. A couple of us got together and well let’s just start a club. We kind of took it upon ourselves. We had a meeting, decided to go the International Mountain Bike Association route, and become a charter member of them, which also helped with getting our non-profit status.”

Moore said Thursday, Friday and Saturday, Pocahontas Trails has been hosting a trail symposium at the Elk River Touring Center in Slaty Fork. Things kicked off with a meet and greet at the Fiddlehead Thursday night, workshops are being held throughout the day Friday, and on Saturday, volunteers will get together for some in-class training in the morning, and then get started on some actual trail work later in the afternoon.

Moore invites anyone interested in attending the remainder of the symposium to contact Pocahontas Trails.

“They can go to our website, www.pocahontastrails.com or they can go to our Facebook site, which is poca.trails,” he says. “If anyone wants to come for the Saturday trail workshop, we require them to come to the class in the morning, if they want to do the trail work in the afternoon. Open to everyone. Just come and check it out if you’re interested.”