Podcasts
Community First: Jed Smith on Motorsports, Mapped Routes, and the Roads West Virginia Keeps Undervaluing
Date: April 25, 2026 Category:
Jed Smith grew up in Monroe County, West Virginia — no traffic lights, a motocross track in the front yard, parents who were happiest in the woods regardless of what they were driving or paddling. He came back to the state after years in the military, the shooting sports world, and a stretch in Reno, […]
Funding the Dream: Louis Argento on What It Actually Takes to Get a Small Business Off the Ground in West Virginia
Date: April 25, 2026 Category:
Most conversations about the outdoor economy in West Virginia focus on the trails, the rivers, the terrain. Fewer focus on the part that makes any of it sustainable as a business — the capital. That’s where Louis Argento comes in. Louis is a loan-readiness specialist with Partner Community Capital, a CDFI — Community Development Financial […]
Just Getting Started: Danny Twilley and the WV Outdoor Economy’s Next Chapter
Date: April 10, 2026 Category: Mountain biking
The first WV Outdoor Economy Summit sold out once. They added fifty spots and it sold out again. People were at the door wanting in. Danny Twilley, who has been one of the architects of WVU’s Brad and Alys Smith Outdoor Economic Development Collaborative, watched all of that happen and said what he has been […]
Better Together: The Mon Forest Towns Partnership and the Million-Acre Opportunity
Date: April 10, 2026 Category: Access Rights / Legal Defense Funds
Twelve towns across the Monongahela National Forest region have been meeting together for years. It started around 2016, in the aftermath of catastrophic flooding, with communities looking for ways to rebuild around their shared resource: over a million acres of national forest. It took until 2020 to develop a strategic plan. It took until 2023 […]
You Have an Idea. Now What? How FASTER WV Is Turning Outdoor Entrepreneurs Into Businesses
Date: April 10, 2026 Category: Conservation & Land Stewardship
Brian leads three business coaches serving nine counties in the metro Charleston and Huntington area through Advantage Valley’s FASTER West Virginia program. They don’t hand out $20,000 to start a business — what they do is work one-on-one with aspiring entrepreneurs, connecting them to the resources that actually move the needle. Technical assistance dollars that […]
Access From the Airport: Appalachian Outlaw Trails and the Biggest Off-Road Build in West Virginia
Date: April 10, 2026 Category: Rail-Trail System Build & Stewardship
It started with a simple problem: the trails Eric and Chris had ridden for twenty years were getting shut down. Landowners pulling access, piece by piece. So in 2021 they decided to stop waiting for someone else to solve it. They went out and leased 100,000 acres in the eastern end of Canal County. The […]
Fayette County Has Been Here a While: What the Rest of West Virginia Can Learn
Date: April 10, 2026 Category: Adventure & Safety
Mara has been in Fayette County for 35 years. When she moved there, Fayetteville was boarded up. She watched it become a world-class outdoor destination — the New River Gorge, the whitewater, the rock climbing, the trails — and she watched the community navigate what that kind of success actually costs. Housing pressure. Crowding. Visitor […]
More Than a River: How ACE Adventure Resort Built an Outdoor Economy Hub in the Gorge
Date: April 10, 2026 Category: Adventure & Safety
ACE Adventure Resort has been putting people on whitewater since the late seventies. Over time, a 1,500-acre property in Oak Hill grew up around those rivers — more than sixty cabins, a water park, a bar and restaurant called the Lost Paddle, and now a music festival lineup that’s starting to draw crowds who’ve never […]
Throw the Ball, Win the Hole: Jonathan Bellingham Brings Flingolf to West Virginia’s Youth
Date: April 10, 2026 Category: Health through Activity
Jonathan Bellingham was supposed to be winding down. Third generation running Cacapon Springs and Farm Resort in Hampshire County — a place where the mineral waters have flowed through American history since the 1700s — he figured maybe he’d play some golf in retirement. He doesn’t like traditional golf, so he went and created the […]
The Missing Link: How Jeb Corey Is Solving West Virginia’s Outdoor Transportation Gap
Date: April 8, 2026 Category: Mountain biking
Here’s the problem Jeb Corey kept running into: West Virginia has world-class outdoor recreation, but if you’re coming from out of state, getting to all of it is complicated. You need to know which river access point connects to which shuttle, which trailhead parking lots hit capacity by 9 a.m. on a Saturday, which waterfalls […]
311 Miles of West Virginia: The Allegheny Trail’s Volunteer-Powered Story
Date: April 8, 2026 Category: Mountain biking
Nicole Flood-Sawczyszyn didn’t get into trail advocacy looking for an easy project. The Allegheny Trail is 311 miles of West Virginia, running from the Mason-Dixon line through five Mon Forest Towns, six counties, six state parks, and two state forests before reaching the Appalachian Trail junction at Peters Mountain.
We’re in a Golden Age of Off-Road: Doug Bigelow on West Virginia’s Motorized Moment
Date: April 8, 2026 Category: Mountain biking
Doug Bigelow has more miles on his Polaris Crew XP1000 than on his Escalade — which tells you most of what you need to know about where he’s coming from. As executive director of the US OHVA Alliance, he’s spent more than forty years in off-road recreation, from racing to land use advocacy, watching the […]
One Voice for Trails: Sam England and the Push for a Statewide Trail Plan in West Virginia
Date: April 8, 2026 Category: Mountain biking
Sam England put 2,000 miles on his vehicle just listening. Ten in-person conferences, electronic surveys, focus groups, stakeholder interviews — the whole process of renewing West Virginia’s statewide trail plan framework came down to a simple question: what do people actually want? The answer, across more than 1,000 data points, was remarkably consistent. More trails. […]
The Long Game: What Bill Woodrum Sees After a Decade of Investing in West Virginia
Date: April 8, 2026 Category: Mountain biking
The things Bill Woodrum is most excited about right now — a new restaurant in Marlington, a renovated downtown theater, trails that are drawing people into communities that used to feel overlooked — have been fifteen years in the making. That’s the timeline he keeps coming back to: the groundwork laid after devastating floods, the […]
Chunky and Spicy: How Susan Riddle Is Putting North Central West Virginia on the Gravel Map
Date: April 8, 2026 Category: Mountain biking
Susan Riddle will be the first to tell you that nobody gets up in the morning and says they’re going to North Central West Virginia on vacation. But they’re starting to. Over the past decade, the executive director of Visit Mountaineer Country CVB has been building a gravel riding ecosystem across seven counties — more […]
Vision Is Not a Hallucination: Matt Ford and the Meadow River Rail Trail
Date: April 8, 2026 Category: Mountain biking
Matt Ford has a line he likes: plans and visions are often confused with hallucinations — until the $3.2 million comes through. At the inaugural WV Outdoor Economy Summit, he shared that news publicly for the first time. Congressionally directed spending is now moving toward the Meadow River Rail Trail, a project that would connect […]
Bike City, USA: How Charleston, West Virginia Is Riding Into a New Identity
Date: April 8, 2026 Category: Mountain biking
Nobody walks into a convention and visitors bureau meeting expecting to talk about Amtrak bike cars. But that’s where Tim Brady’s head is these days — figuring out how to get DC riders onto a train to Charleston with their bikes stowed and an adventure waiting. It’s that kind of thinking that has been driving […]
The Bike Shop That Stuck: How Hammer Cycles Built More Than a Business in Lewisburg
Date: April 8, 2026 Category: Mountain biking
For a town of Lewisburg’s size, the list of bike shops that have come and gone is a long one. Eleven or twelve by some counts, each one closing before the next could get started. Max Hammer knew the history going in. He also knew that Greenbrier Valley riders were driving two and a half […]
More Kids on Bikes: Sarah Elkins on NICA, Trail Access, and Building the Next Generation of West Virginia Riders
Date: April 3, 2026 Category: Mountain biking
When Sarah Elkins talks about getting kids on bikes, she means the whole family. As the newly appointed Director of the West Virginia NIKA League — the state’s chapter of the National Interscholastic Cycling Association — Sarah oversees 23 teams and nearly 500 young riders across the state. But what sets NIKA apart, she’ll tell […]