West Virginia Bikers publishes routes as a guide, not a guarantee. Roads change, conditions change, and GPX data can be wrong — check the weather, judge the surface for yourself, and ride your own ride. Road conditions, closures, traffic and wildlife are yours to assess on the day. Riding a motorcycle carries inherent risk. We do not verify or warrant the accuracy of any route, map or GPX file, and you ride at your own risk.
Ninety-three miles of coal country switchbacks folded into one tight loop through McDowell County. Local riders started calling this one the Head of the Dragon for a reason. The roads climb, drop, and double back on themselves the same way the ridgelines do, and by the time you're through Iaeger and Bradshaw, you'll understand why.
The loop starts and ends in Kimball, but the heart of the ride runs through towns that were coal camps first and towns second: Welch, War, Elkhorn. Company towns, some of them, built down to the brick. The roads through here were laid out for rail cars and mule teams long before anyone rode a motorcycle through this county, and it shows in how the pavement follows the creek beds instead of fighting them.
Plan on a full day. Between the memorial in Kimball, lunch in Welch, the sign in War, and the coal camp history waiting on the back half of the loop, you'll want the extra time anyway.
