Confluence Is the Gateway to One of the East Coast’s Largest Gravel Bike Networks
A new 60-plus route gravel and bikepacking network connecting 12 West Virginia mountain towns launches with a route that starts right in Confluence - 82.5 miles from the GAP trailhead at Outflow Campground to Parsons, WV, and into the Monongahela National Forest.
Something significant just happened on the map, and Confluence is right at the center of it.
The Mon Forest Towns Partnership has launched what it’s calling one of the largest curated gravel and bikepacking route networks on the East Coast – more than 60 mapped routes across eight counties in the Monongahela National Forest region of West Virginia. The network spans everything from short family-friendly day rides to the Mon Circuit 600, a 594-mile epic linking all 12 Mon Forest Towns with more than 55,000 feet of climbing.
One of the three connector routes from the Great Allegheny Passage into this network starts right here. Route r.2 departs from near the Outflow Campground in Confluence and runs 82.5 miles south and west into Parsons, WV – a small mountain town at the confluence of the Shavers and Black Forks of the Cheat River, and one of the 12 Mon Forest Towns at the heart of the network. The route gains more than 8,700 feet of elevation along the way. This is not a casual spin, but it is a genuinely spectacular ride – and it begins at our back door.
From Parsons, the whole Mon Forest network opens up. Riders can connect to routes heading toward Thomas, Davis, Elkins, Durbin, and deep into the Monongahela backcountry. The routes use gravel forest roads, dirt backroads, and existing trail corridors to weave together a landscape that the Partnership describes as “uniquely suited for multi-day gravel riding and bikepacking.”
For Confluence, this is another piece of a growing picture. The GAP already puts this town on the map for long-distance cyclists coming through from Pittsburgh or heading to Washington, D.C. Riversport has been putting people on the Yough for decades. The Ohiopyle mountain bike trail expansion is coming. And now a world-class gravel network has a trailhead less than a mile from the town square.
The full route network is available at monforesttowns.org/gravel, with all routes also published on Ride with GPS. If you want to see where Route r.2 goes, that’s the place to start.
This valley keeps showing up on maps. That is not an accident.