Every time someone posts an East Coast trail run in an overlanding group, there’s always a handful of comments implying it doesn’t really count. Like the terrain isn’t serious enough. Like you need red rock and canyon walls to legitimately call yourself an overlander. I’ve run trails in NJ, PA, WV, and TN. That dismissal […]
Every time someone posts an East Coast trail run in an overlanding group, there’s always a handful of comments implying it doesn’t really count. Like the terrain isn’t serious enough. Like you need red rock and canyon walls to legitimately call yourself an overlander.
I’ve run trails in NJ, PA, WV, and TN. That dismissal is wrong, and I’m going to tell you why.
The Pine Barrens in New Jersey gets written off constantly. It’s flat, people say. It’s just sand roads. Those people have never hit a sugar sand pit at the wrong angle in a rear-wheel-drive truck, or tried to navigate the unmarked two-tracks between Batsto and Oswego Lake in the dark when your maps disagree with what’s actually on the ground.
The Poconos in Pennsylvania puts you on rocky shelf roads with drops you don’t want to think about and creek crossings that change dramatically between spring runoff and late summer. The forest floor doesn’t forgive mistakes the same way desert hardpack does.
West Virginia is a different animal entirely. Hatfield-McCoy trail system alone has hundreds of miles of terrain that has broken more than a few rigs built for the West. Mud that will swallow a tire. Grades that make your transfer case earn its keep. And it rains there in ways that change conditions in an hour.
There’s a version of overlanding gatekeeping that’s specifically geographic. If you’re not doing the Rubicon Trail or the Ouray area in Colorado or the trails outside Moab, some people in the community treat your experience as less than. Like distance traveled is the metric.
That’s backwards. Overlanding is about self-reliance, exploring off-pavement terrain, and the discipline of traveling prepared. None of that requires a certain zip code.
I’ve done a four-day loop through state forest roads in Pennsylvania with my family that had everything: sketchy creek crossings, tent camping miles from the nearest cell signal, a recovery situation on day two that tested every strap and shovel I was carrying. That was as real as it gets. No Utah license plates required.
People forget that the East Coast has been running trails since before the term “overlanding” existed in the American market. The trail systems in Tennessee — Windrock, Tellico, the Cherokee — have been wheeled by serious off-road people for decades. The Outerbanks beach driving community in NC has been doing self-supported coastal travel longer than most western overlanding clubs have been around.
The NJ Pine Barrens was the proving ground for Jeep testing for years. The trails in the Allegheny National Forest in Pennsylvania are legitimately technical in ways that surprise people who’ve only wheeled in the West, where the rock is solid under your tires instead of the leaf-covered shale that’ll wash your front end sideways without warning.
Here’s my honest take: the best overlanding you can do is the overlanding you actually do. The trails that are two hours from your house. The dispersed camping spots you’ve scouted on maps for years. The terrain you know well enough to read before you drive it.
Moab is spectacular. I’m not going to say otherwise. But the guy who runs the Pine Barrens every month knows that terrain in a way that a visiting Moab regular doesn’t. Local knowledge is its own kind of capability.
I’d rather be the person who actually gets out every couple of weeks close to home than the person saving for one big western trip while their rig sits in the driveway the other fifty weeks of the year.
Your terrain is valid. Run it like you mean it.