Ride this past weekend around War and to Sophia

This past weekend about a dozen of us from TTB rode the trails around War on Fri and went to Sophia on Sat.  This is a copy of my post on our forum.  Pictures are on our forum.

Friday morning after Thanksgiving Allen, Wiley, Michael B, Lennie, Larry, Scott & Hunter, and I met at the school in War. Earl never showed so we were on our own. We hit the trails around 10:30. We decided to hit the trails south of War and go to the High Rock overlook and then try and find the old Log House and the Berwind Overlook. Quickly I realized we had a problem, my Pantech GPS could not find location, it searched for ever even though it showed several satellites. I did have a static map but it did not show location or rotate. I had a general idea where we wanted to go so we took off. I was counting turns and missed one. We rode a nice trail that eventually a deadend. We tracked back and I found the turn we missed. It had several very sharp switchbacks. We found the overlook. Had no idea how to get to the Berwind overlook so we just started riding and eventually found a road and rode about 3-4 miles back to War. War has a gas station, Ride Aide, Dollar General and two restaurants. We ate at the coffee shop. We saw a lot of trails that we did not explore.
We headed north around 1:00 and took a very nice trail up to Caretta road (dirt path). We just started riding, knowing that most of the trails were to the north and east. We rode some dirt roads and some nice trails. We ended up backtracking most of the way and got back to War around 5:30 and headed to Hilltop.

My opinion of War trails is: (others can give their opinions)
1. It is mixture of dirt roads and trails.
2. You need tracks with names so you know where to go.
3. War is on the bottom end of the trails.
4. I would try and find a place south of Gary to park and then ride trails and head down to War for lunch and hit the trail south of War.
5. I definitely want to go back and try the northern and eastern trails.

Saturday we added Tyler and his daughter, Kevin K and his son, Kevin R, Steve C and his friend Jason. Tyler led us to Sophia and back. We started by taking the "Gopher Trail" near Hilltop. There was a portion of a big big tree blocking part of the trail. Scott, in his Highlifter, jacked up, 1000 "trail machine" had to go high on the bank to get around it and did a slow flop on his side. No one was hurt and it wasn't too hard to lift back up. Wiley got pictures. We then took a different than normal route to Sophia. We went through Rhodell and took the trail that goes up through the guys driveway except we did not enter the trail there. We went about another mile up the road and took Hensley Mtn Rd and came into the trail from the east. There was one steep sections with a root at the top, everybody made it up OK. I was glad I was in a RZR and not my ATV. I've changed that trail from blue to red. We hit the back of Burning Rock and took a right to the tunnels. The water pond at the end of the second tunnel was frozen over so Tyler had Scott break the ice. At the end of the tunnel someone had placed a lot of railroad ties to block it, we got around them. We had lunch at China One Buffet. When we left we took the road over the mountain and got off and road some BR trail for a while. We had to cut a tree down. We headed back and took Barkers Creek but Tyler remembered some flooding due to 3 beaver dams so we turned around and took the upper by-pass. When we got off of Hwy-10 onto Crumpler Mtn Road we noticed that Scott had a flat rear tire. It had been leaking all day. Discovered it had a tear on the inside where it had been riding on the rim down the highway. Tyler put a lot of plugs in it and it quit leaking. It was uneventful from their back. 

The weather was nice both days and we had a great time. Most of us left late Sat night and got home around midnight.

Thanks for the ride report Bob.

I didn't see the pictures over there, Bob. I am not a member, maybe that's why. Great write up, as always!

You don't need to be a member to view post.  The guys posted the pics and stuff in a different thread.  Below is the link to that thread page.

http://atvtrailblazer.proboards.com/thread/5635/giving-fri-sat?page=6

photos
http://larrymccallie.smugmug.com/photos/swfpopup.mg?AlbumID=45991648&AlbumKey=9JsCNL

go it now, thanks Bob! that's a nice cab on that rzr!