OSCAR1 Wilderness Trails and Black Mountain OHV Park. RECAP

2012 OffroadSC Annual Ride

Well, it was a long time coming and plenty of hours went into planning and preparation but the first O.S.C.A.R. turned out to be a fun time for all. The trip started on Wednesday April 11th for a few of us as we loaded up and headed to the trails.
Cole met up with me early wed morning and we finished some of the last minute packing in the wrangler and grabbed some breakfast at Bojangles. We were planning to meet up with Greg just inside the NC state Line. Cole and I stopped at a truck stop on the way to get a new Mic for my CB as I had been having issues on the last trip. Driving up I26 we started smelling the State Fair, and soon we found out what was creating this Awesome aroma…

We met Greg at the Rest area and while we were there we all decided to grab a couple of Geocaches that were there at the rest area. After hanging out for a bit and chatting about the trip ahead we decided to roll out. Well… The new Mic was a dud, I was finally able to test it since I could try to talk to Greg, Long story short we spent an hour at a nearby truckstop installing a whole new CB and antenna. It was getting close to lunch time so decided to risk it and have lunch at the truck stop restaurant, which surprisingly turned out to be pretty good.

We decided at lunch that we would head to a few overlook stops on the way up, our first being Buzzards Roost near I40, so we took the exit and made our way to our first gravel road of the trip!


We made put a few miles of gravel behind us and finally reached our the roost. This view never gets old for me, and its hard to explain to people who haven’t seen it how it will literally take your breath away when you walk up to the edge.


On the way back down the forest road we stopped and walked through a cow pasture right past a couple of mean looking cows to a graveyard to see Popcorn Sutton’s Gravesite and grab a geocache.

After these two stops we made were on course to hit Wilderness Trails Offroad Park by mid Afternoon, just as we planned. We took a new route up through TN and went through the Cumberland tunnel.

In my limited knowledge of Wilderness Trails Offroad park I had heard and read that the entrance to the park was via a huge 4 lane bridge over the river that seemed like it went nowhere… just into the woods. So when we were getting close and I saw this, I knew we were in the right spot. The park has its own 4 lane bridge to woods.

Once inside the park we took a peak at the map, I had seen a video on their website about some new lake side camping that had built, and we were eager to try it out. We examined the map to see if we could figure out where it was…

We had a general idea of where it was so we set off down the trail past cows, mining equipment, prairie land, swamps, valleys, and mountains…this place was cool as hell! We past the lake side camping about a mile into the park and there were people there, so we decided to just wing it and start looking for a cool spot to camp. On the way we found a few cleared areas that would be perfect for a large group to camp.

Then we wandered down a side trail that aimed toward a creek and found our campsite for the night. The great thing about this park is you can camp anywhere, so we found a nice nook and set up.

Day one ended with a bit of RC Crawling up the nearby creek while our chili cooked in the Dutch Oven. We hung out by the fire and chatted till we decided to hit the sack.

Thursday Morning we woke up and made a quick breakfast and hot chocolate and hit another creek bed with the crawlers.

After a while we decided to hit the real trail and headed back out to the main trail to take a few more pictures of the area.

On the way out we stopped for a picture on the 4 lane bridge to nowhere.

We were back on the road, and headed for Black Mountain OHV Park now. We pulled in a little after lunch time and setup camp, unpacked, grabbed lunch with Larry and some others and discussed which trails we would run first. Being that we were on the Evarts side of the park the obvious first run was up Rail bed and lower rock garden.

Friday and Saturday all blended together for me, they were filled with Good food, Good wheeling, and a few shenanigans thrown in for good measure. Here are some of the trails we ran.
Lower Damnation, which proved to be a real challenge for many of us.



I managed to get up the ledge, then bottomed out and pointing off the trail…time for a strap

White Tail, really fun trail, can be very difficult when wet, when we got to the main obstacle Jeb had just cracked his transmission pan and was out of commission. That didn’t scare the rest of us away as we made our way up the trail one by one. We had one flop on this trail, the Orange Sammy managed to lay it over due to its short wheelbase and huge rocks. We really thought something was going to explode when old Nickakneese piloted the green jeep up the rock and because of a broken shock was doing some pretty crazy acrobatics.

Mason Jar, Probably my favorite trail at Harlan now, this was my first driving on it, I rode with Casey in the ZJ up it a few years back. It was a blast to get to wheel it this trip!

Grape Vine, super fun trail, Exponentially harder when wet…took us a while but most of us made it to the end.

Larry trying out the new motor



Fish Fossil, Really fun trail with a creek the whole way, Jared broke his tie rod on one of the first waterfall climbs, seems it was bent before that, but it gave out then. We hung out there while he went and welded it up and we all got it back together to keep riding.




Upper Rock Garden, Great trail, Sometimes its flooded…today was one of those days..

Little friend we saw hiding in the rocks…



Gillis gettin’ it through the Can Opener

At this point we tried to get everyone together for a big OSCAR group shot, but a few rigs were having some problems, so we fixed them and motored on.
Gillis found the tipping point of the JK.

After a that a small group of us headed back to setup for the BBQ dinner. The rest of the group continued to run trails.
The BBQ went great and we had a few giveaways to top it off. I want to thank everyone who came out to the first OSCAR and hope to see all of you there next year!