Red Creek Campground

To begin with, we went up there towing a 18’ travel trailer, which I would not recommend doing or would be attempting again. The road is VERY narrow, steep and all gravel right next to dangerous cliffs if another truck was to come down the hill there’s only a few spots that allow enough space to pull over and let them thru. We were very fortunate to not of run into anyone on our way up there, but once we arrived the place was beautiful! Right by so many trails in the Dolly sods the change in scenery is truly incredible, I would love to go back again! Just not in anything bigger than a tear drop rv for sure.

In this video, I give you an overview and tour of the Dolly Sods Wilderness located within the Monongahela National Forest in West Virginia. Dolly Sods Wilderness has 47 miles of backcountry trails with elevations ranging from 2,500 feet to over 4,700 feet. The subalpine climate here is often compared to climates in southern Canada. In this video, I show you the Red Creek Trailhead at the southern entrance to Dolly Sods, Dolly Sods picnic area, the Northland Loop, Red Creek Campground, Lion’s Head, Bear Rocks Preserve, and other backcountry points of interest. I have hiked, backpacked, and camped the Dolly Sods Wilderness over a dozen times in the past 15 years. I hope you enjoy this overview and tour of the Dolly Sods Wilderness. It truly is a special place to visit in my home state of West Virginia. There are bear proof trash receptacles, vault toilets, and a piped spring for drinking water located at the Red Creek Campground. Small RV only recommended as Forest Road 75 is narrow in some sections. There was no useable cellular service at the Red Creek Campground on Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile but signal was available at the Bear Rocks Preserve parking area.

Great place to setup a basecamp for accessing the many trails that criss-cross through the Dolly Sods Wilderness. Water source is a stream - bring a filter. Fire pits and vault toilets are provided. Great overlook to watch the sunrise is across the road from the campsite. Easy access to the Blackbird Knob trail. Campground fills up on weekends. We arrived around 4 pm on a Friday and were lucky to grab the last of of the 2 sites available.

The campground is off of Forest Rd 75 and does require traveling several miles up narrow dirt/ gravel roads.

This is a very small campground miles up a moderately well-maintained dirt road. Unfortunately, I'd misread our map and my husband (who has back trouble) wasn't prepared for so many miles of dirt roads, but this trip just showed us that a lot of West Virginia is dirt roads.

The campground has 12 sites in a loop, very large and well separated from each other with most of them having quite a bit of visual screening between them. The site we chose had a large puddle in it from rains two full days before - this whole Dolly Sods area doesn't have very good drainage, which is why it is what it is. We pulled the picnic table over to fend us away from the puddle and that worked fairly well.

The CG had two separate vault toilets which were clean enough. THERE IS NO RUNNING WATER IN THIS CAMPGROUND. Despite what the Forest Service says, it appears to be common knowledge that the pump has been broken for years. There is a stream, so if we'd not had enough water I would have used that but treated it well. Because...

Despite feeling like you are very isolated, there are a lot of people around. On that long dirt road we passed many hunter's trucks full of dogs with radio transmitters, and we probably passed at least a half dozen individual dogs by themselves wandering on the road as well, complete with little radio antennas coming off their backs. No sign of owners. They didn't bother us, but that evening at the campsite there was quite a bit of hound-dog howling, which made for an interesting experience.

The folks at the campground were... interesting, but everyone kept to themselves. The fella next to us rather annoyingly retired to his car quite early (sleeping in cars is pretty common around here, it seems) and he turned on his radio loud enough that it was distracting to us in the site next to him - talk radio, so all we heard was the low rumbling of a radio in a car. He didn't turn it off until well after "quiet" hours. But since there was no sign of any ranger patrolling this area, there was nothing to do but take it.

All that said, this CG is near a couple of trail heads and an unofficial beautiful view looking toward Virginia (on the side of the road by the parking area for Blackbird Knob trailhead). Take the rock scramble up the hill on the right (to the south) and you get a lovely view of a typical Dolly Sods alpine meadow. We also hiked the Blackbird know trail and I think only saw one other hiker, a lone woman backpacker.

The drive here is very pretty and could be done in a sedan, just don't plan on going too fast because it is a dirt road, after all, and has pits and washerboards and just isn't fast travelling. Cell coverage nonexistent.