Cacapon State Park grows into East Coast mountain biking destination

By Vanta Coda III, RealWV

BERKELEY SPRING, W.Va — The seventh Enduro Race at Cacapon State Park in Morgan County, W.Va., took place from Sept. 19-20, 2026, featuring exhilarating competition between mountain bikers of all skill levels riding through some of West Virginia.’s premier trails found in the Mountain State. This is the second-to-last WV Enduro Series race in a schedule of eight across the state, starting from April 19 in Kanawha State Forest and ending at New River Gorge National Park and Preserve on Oct. 4. 

Since 2018, Cacapon State Park has become a hub for the Mid-Atlantic East Coast mountain bike scene, drawing from metropolitan hubs in Baltimore and Washington D.C., and the surrounding states of Virginia and Pennsylvania. Mark Hoyle, lead organizer of this past weekend’s Enduro Race Series at Cacapon State Park, started the mountain bike trail development and volunteer trail-building efforts at Cacapon Resort State Park, beginning trail building in 2018 when he and a 20-person Facebook group of other mountain bike riders built the first trail from a former horseback riding trail offered to the group by the state park. 

“They said if you want to reopen it, you can have that for a bike trail,” Hoyle said. “With that, we gave it a shot.” 

After the trail was complete and coincidentally named “Giddee Up” in honor of the trail’s origins, the group expanded their work to more projects with grant funds and community support from the Recreational Trails Program, or RTP, and the International Mountain Bicycling Association, or IMBA, Trail Accelerator Grants, alongside Morgan County hotel-motel tax support and the West Virginia Economic Development Authority paying for professionally built trails. 

Today, there are approximately 40 miles of mountain bike trails in Cacapon State Park, according to West Virginia State Parks, with another expansion of the trail system to be completed by 2027. 

“At this point, it’s growing to be one of the top mountain biking destinations on the East Coast,” Hoyle said.