Suzanne Stewart
Staff Writer
When Pocahontas County earned its Bronze International Mountain Bicycling Association [IMBA] Ride Center designation in 2019, a shark was born. Well, SHARC, that is.
Snowshoe Highland Area Ride Center was founded, and it wasn’t long before a second SHARC came along – the Snowshoe Highland Area Recreation Collaborative.
The collaborative was formed in 2023 – after the county received its Silver IMBA designation – in order to maintain, regulate and create all the trails in Pocahontas County.
SHARC was a collaborative formed by organizations such as Snowshoe Mountain Resort, Pocahontas County Convention and Visitors Bureau, Pocahontas Trails and the U.S. Forest Service with the help of funding through state and federal programs.
Heading the SHARC team is Charles Evans, who, along with two full-time fellow staff members and several seasonal staffers, is focused on the health of the county’s trails.
Evans said the collaborative received $365,000 of funding for the first 18 months of work and has recently received $567,000 that will last through 2028.
“We feel we’re in a good position,” he said. “We have three full-time staff. We do a lot. We look up to the forest service as the model. That’s who we use to look at the trails and figure out what needs done.
So, what needs done?
“Essentially, we’ve addressed the deferred maintenance in the forest,” Evans said. “Our first project was the Gauley Mountain Trail up in the Tea Creek area. We went through it and did an assessment to see what needs to be done. Then we planned that work, we got the crews in and actually did the work. Everything from dry stone masonry, digging trenches, just getting water off the trail to rebuilding the trail or rerouting the trail.”
Maintenance is just one aspect. There are also new trails being built and events happening on the trail system in the county.
“That’s our main focus –trail work,” Evans said. “Actual boots on the ground, getting the job done. Behind the scenes, which is a lot of what I do, is focusing on building out that recreation economy, so what does it look like for us to enhance our volunteer trail maintenance program; what does it look like for us to have an education aspect to our organization.”
One big educational aspect is chainsaw operation. Evans said a lot of volunteers want to learn how to properly use a chainsaw, which is very important on the trails around here. Plus, it’s a skill those volunteers can use in other aspects of life.
As for building new trails, the Monday Lick Trail System, which opened in May, was built from the ground up with 30 miles of trail winding through rough terrain near Stillwell Park in Marlinton.
“With the new Monday Lick trails, we’re seeing a lot of buy in with that,” Evans said. “Before they were even open, I was seeing people from Ohio, from Charleston, Morgantown. The word was getting out.”
Last weekend was the first event at Monday Lick, with the Enduro race. At last year’s Slaty Fork Enduro, racers from across the country and several other countries came to compete.
“One of the division winners was from Israel and we had someone else racing from another country,” Evans said. “People are hearing about this. It really is international.”
On top of the trail maintenance, new trail systems and racing events, there is also the safety aspect of the recreation cooperative. An aspect Evans takes very seriously.
“We have an MOU [Memorandum of Understanding] with the county to do emergency response,” he said. “We [the county] have all our volunteer fire departments and EMS and paid staff that do residential structural. Our focus would be on the back country, kind of like Snowshoe’s bike patrol. If anything was to happen in the back country, we would be called out to respond to that in tandem with search and rescue.”
Evans was a whitewater guide in college and was part of the swift rescue team at the outfitter he worked for, so he has background with emergency situations in a recreational setting.
That’s just some of his history with emergency services.
“I’m very passionate about it,” he said. “I’m a former police officer as well as I was a wild land firefighter for many years until I got into this position. Incident command, emergency response is in my wheelhouse and I’m passionate about it because I’m passionate about people.”
Evans said he has worked with local fire and rescue departments and will continue to work with them to offer educational support, as well as search and rescue support when needed.
Although there is now a staff that specifically focuses on the trails, Evans said he still relies on the help of volunteers who have a passion for trails and recreation in the area. There’s a lot of mileage to cover and the volunteers always come out when needed.
“We’ve been watching the trail club grow pretty significantly,” he said. “It makes the trails better. We get a lot of trail work done through that.”
There are plenty of trails to experience, but there’s always room for more. In fact, there was a groundbreaking two weeks ago on a new mile and a half trail at the Green Bank Observatory and plans for 30 more miles of trail to be added in the future.
More trails have also been built to connect existing trails.
“We’ve been building up in Mower Tract,” Evans said. “They call it Mine-tana for a reason. It’s an old mine but the views are expansive as if you’re out west, so hence, Mine-tana. It’s really neat.
“Also, we’re doing work here,” he continued. “Pocahontas Trails connected Snowshoe to Mower Tract. They’re now building a trail off Rocky Run which connects those two, to come out to 235 which is just a hop and a skip to Hosterman, where you can get into Green Bank Observatory.”
A lot of these trail projects were suggestions from IMBA in its gap analysis of what the county needed to do to receive a gold designation for the Ride Center.
“We’re working with IMBA very closely and they kind of told us not to expect anything until late summer, early fall,” Evans said. “As soon as that application is open, we’re ready to put it in.”
If – but really when – the Ride Center receives the gold designation, it will be the seventh Gold-Level Ride Center in the world.
Evans is joined by full-time employees Zen Clem-ents and C.J. Peterson, as well as seasonal staff members Catherine Tamlyn, Justin Dibble, Evan Smith and Kyle Wayne.
For more information, visit ridesnowshoehighlands.com
