Flagpole Off-Road & Camping Weekend
Amazing Weekend Off-Roading & Camping in Flagpole VA
On a beautiful, cool fall weekend, I joined Andrew from HobbyTrap and the CORE 4x4 Club on a weekend camping and off-roading trip up to Flagpole Knob in Virginia, near the West Virginia border.
We were planning on taking the whole family on the trip, myself, wife, 3yr old and 7 month old, but as we got closer to the weekend, the forecasted temps were steadily dropping. By the week of the trip, temps were down to high 20’s overnight. We’ve taken the kids camping in cool weather before, but that was a bit too cold, especially since the baby can’t cover with a blanket yet to stay warm. So we decided that I’ll go solo this trip. Turns out, it was exactly what I needed, a bit of a break, plus some of the events that transpired over the weekend would have been pretty tough on the kids.
General plan for the weekend was to meet up a couple of guys Saturday morning at the primitive campsite alongside the trail, do some exploring and wheeling on Saturday, then the rest of the club was going to meet us on Sunday morning for a trail ride, club meeting, and then finish the trail and head home.
I met Andrew and Niels near the primitive campsite Saturday morning, right as they were getting ready to do a bit of exploring. We hit up Second Mountain, and did some trail exploring there. It was a blast! There were really fun, beautiful trails through the woods. There were some fun rutted out sections where we got to flex the vehicles a bit. Also a lot of picturesque views that we spent a fair bit of time stopping to check out.
After a fun day of exploring, we got back to camp fairly late, and met up with another club member and his SO at camp. We got camp set up, got into dinner, and hung out by the fire for a bit. After some awesome conversation about 4x4s and the state of the industry, we packed it in to prep for another fun day of off-roading.
As for gear, I had a standard igloo cooler for my food, folding chair, coleman camp stove, a small aluminum folding table, and my 1-person backpacking tent, the Koppen Lokal. I took that one, because with the cold temps, I usually like a smaller tent, that doesn’t let my heat rise too far away from me. It worked great, only downside was by keeping the fly low to the ground, it reduced airflow, which led to some condensation inside the tent by morning. Not enough to be an issue, but enough to make the sides of my sleeping bag a little damp. On the Jeep, I also had a roof rack mounted awning that I took out for the first time. Unfortunately, I was not able to set my tent up alongside the Jeep, due to the uneven rocky ground, so I didn’t end up using the awning. I’ll have to try it out next time!
For dinner, I packed a ribeye steak, plus a ziploc bag with cut up potatoes, onions, garlic, and cajun seasoning with some olive oil. Prep was super easy, just cook the steak in a skillet, then when it was done, removed the steak and dumped in the veggies and cooked them up. Super tasty!
The next morning we got up and had a relaxed morning around the fire, waiting for the rest of the club to join. Once they did, we hit the trail. The plan was to go to Flagpole via Dunkle Hollow Road, then go down to Union Springs from there. The drive up to Flagpole was beautiful and easy drive up the mountain, with few obstacles on the way, all with bypasses. Once we got up to the top, we gathered around for the club meeting to discuss various things and have lunch.
After wrapping that up, we made our way down, and were greeted by our first challenge, a very rutted out path down from Flagpole Knob. I was third in a convoy of about 8 vehicles. After the 3 of us went down, we radioed the top to wait for a group that was making their way upwards. As they came up, one of the vehicles, a 1st gen Toyota Tundra, got stuck on one of the larger ruts, unable to make it up due to having open diffs and not enough flex to keep the wheels on the ground. Once one of his rear tires got off the ground, he lost all drive and rolled back down. After multiple tries, we finally had the vehicle behind me, a Lexus GX, hook him up to the winch and pull him through that section. After that, we finally all made it down that stretch.
Right after that, however, we got word that an old Jeep CJ7 had broken it’s clutch, and was stuck right ahead. Alex from the club went ahead and pulled him up to a flat spot where we were waiting. After talking to the group, Andrew, Shannon (in the Lexus) and I decided to stay behind while the club pressed on down the trail, and try to help get the CJ to the top of the mountain, as there was an access road that a truck and trailer could get there on. Where they were stuck, it would have taken a very long time for them to get up on their own.
I hooked up a snatch strap to the CJ and started making the climb. I got to a very loose rocky section where I started to lose traction while pulling the CJ behind me, acting like a boat anchor. I probably could have turned on my front and rear lockers and made it up, but I was worried about breakage, especially while towing a load. So we connected my font shackle to Shannon’s rear, and we daisy-chain pulled ourselves up to the top with some great spotting from Andrew.
After that, Shannon headed out, and Andrew and I made our way to catch up with the club. Andrew’s Xterra and my Jeep are pretty capable rigs, so we made good time on the trail and actually caught up with the rest of the club. There were a lot of fun obstacles and challenges along the way, that really tested the vehicles and made studying your lines a must.
Nightfall caught us near the end of the trail, but fortunately I’ve got some great lighting on my Jeep, between the headlights, fog lights, bumper mounted off-road lights, an a set mounted on the roof rack. So we made our way through the dark, and wrapped up the trip.
All in all, it was a blast, and it was so much fun camping and tackling the harder sections of trail. Can’t wait to do it again!
