If you want to check the pulse of American off-road racing today, just take a walk through the staging area of any GNCC round. That’s what we did at Snowshoe Ski Resort in the mountains of West Virginia

WORDS: DAVEY COOMBS
PHOTOS: DAVEY COOMBS & KEN HILL

They line up on the pavement in rows of five, class by class, more than 118 rows deep—nearly 700 riders in all. It’s Sunday morning in late June at Snowshoe Ski Resort, a beautiful mountaintop village high up in the Appalachian Mountains. These are the amateur motorcycle riders, the rank and file of American off-road racing. They will race for two hours on a course that measures 13 miles on the dot, weaving in and out of the forest and across the ski slopes that make up Snowshoe. At times the course is open, fast, and fun; other times it’s a brutal slog across rocks and through mud. Just like the state’s motto—Wild, Wonderful West Virginia—suggests, they are in for quite a morning.