As Alden Roth stood atop the summit of Spruce Knob, his mind began to creep toward the dark edge of the forest, wondering what creatures might be lurking there. He brewed himself a cup of coffee in the chilly alpine air while he waited for his partner, Olivia, to come pick him up.
Roth had just completed an epic 2026 tour de West Virginia by bicycle, riding from the state’s low point of Harpers Ferry at just 240 feet above sea level to his current perch atop Spruce Knob at 4,863 feet. The five-day journey covered roughly 350 miles and an astounding 41,000 feet of climbing across the undulating nooks and crannies of the Allegheny Mountains.
Roth grew up in Charles Town, West Virginia, where his parents got him and his sister into biking at an early age. “I tagged along on a tandem bike until I was big enough to reach the pedals,” he says.
He left home to earn a film degree in Pittsburgh, where he lived for the following decade. A series of major life events brought him back to Charles Town, but he continued pursuing his shared passions of film and cycling. Nowadays, Roth proudly serves as a city councilman and creates cycling films while screening others around the country as part of Filmed by Bike, a traveling film festival he co-owns. “I get paid to ride my bike, which is pretty great,” he says.
Photographed by Alden Roth
When Roth first moved back to Charles Town, he was deep into ultrarunning but became curious about the burgeoning niche sport of bikepacking. He signed up for the 220-mile option of the Gravel Race Up Spruce Knob as his first bikepacking race. While riding his loaded bike to the summit of Spruce Knob that first time, Roth thought about home. “I started thinking about the possibility of riding my bike to the race next year,” he says. Charles Town is just seven miles from Harpers Ferry, which he knew is home to West Virginia’s lowest point. Then came the aha moment: Why not ride from the state’s lowest to highest point? He plugged the points into his GPS, and the various routes took him into Virginia or Maryland before reentering West Virginia. “It was very curious to me that you had to leave the state to go from the lowest to the highest point.”
Photographed by Alden Roth
When he finally drew up the full route, it was only 200 miles but relied on heavily trafficked main roads—arteries that are ideal to avoid when cycling. Roth ventured deeper into maps, searching for obscure routes that would likely require stretches of pushing his loaded bike along hiking trails. “I really like gravel, I like mountain biking, I love stuff that’s off the beaten path,” he says. “Why don’t I make this as much of an off-road adventure as I can instead of the shortest distance, to make it more of the ride I want?”
His final route ended up being roughly 350 miles and traversed all sorts of surfaces, from paved roads to chunky gravel and rugged hiking trails. In early 2026, Roth told Reid Carroll, his friend and bike mechanic, about his ambitious journey. Carroll enthusiastically responded, “Oh yeah, let’s do it!”
The duo planned to embark in the last week of March and hope for the best. “You never know what weather you’re going to get,” Roth says. “It could be snowy or 85 degrees, which is what it ended up being the day we left.”
They planned for a five-day journey covering 70 to 80 miles per day. “We knew the climbing was going to be hellacious, so we didn’t want to try and knock it out quickly in 100-mile days. We wanted to take it slightly easy and have a good time.”
The duo rolled out from Harpers Ferry on March 30 at 5 a.m. “We took our bikes down to the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers. I dipped my rear wheel in the water like the riders do for the transcontinental bike races,” Roth says, remembering that Carroll slipped on the riverbank and nearly fell in. “I thought, oh man, this isn’t off to a good start.”
They rode out of Harpers Ferry and through Charles Town, past Roth’s childhood home and other familiar locales. The first day took longer than expected, mostly because of the intense heat. They didn’t have a planned campsite that night, so they stayed in the lodge at Cacapon State Park.
That next morning, Carroll ended up crashing on a mountain bike trail and hurting his wrist. He pushed on, but as they approached the day’s major climb up a ridge that would involve pushing their heavy bikes, he decided it was best to bow out to avoid further injury or holding Roth back.
Roth pushed on. He found another bed for the night so he could rest up and prepare to finish the journey solo. The next day saw more trials and tribulations with audible turn-by-turn directions, backtracking, and pushing his bike. “There was a ridiculous two-and-a-half-mile section where I couldn’t ride my bike at all, but that’s the kind of stuff I love,” he says. After a night in the woods, Roth rode more tough singletrack through Lost River State Park and found a campsite just outside of Petersburg.
Photographed by Alden Roth
On the fifth and final day, he headed up the shoulder of North Fork Mountain. The 24-mile trail is frequented by hikers and mountain bikers, but Roth was surprised to find some of the trail “pretty rideable” on his laden rigid bike. Atop North Fork’s epic spine, Roth had to contend with a seemingly endless stretch of windfallen trees. “It took me three hours to go eight miles,” he says.
Because Olivia was planning to pick up Roth on top of Spruce Knob at roughly 8 p.m. that day, he knew he had some serious ground to cover. He made it to a spot with one bar of cell service and called a friend who informed him of a trail that would lead to the smooth pavement of Smoke Hole Road. He followed it to Shreve’s Country Store, deep in the Smoke Hole Canyon, where he gobbled down a chili dog. “I didn’t do everything according to plan, but all these alternate routes that I ended up taking were these gems I wasn’t even aware of,” he says. “Shreve’s Store was my favorite surprise of the trip.”
Refreshed with comfort food, Roth tackled the climb up and over Pike Knob and took an old farm road down to the bottom of Spruce Mountain. “It’s a forgotten but open public road that involves some cattle gates and a wicked descent into Circleville,” he says.
The final climb up Spruce Mountain was familiar territory, which Roth effortlessly cruised to reach the summit. He got there an hour before Olivia was due to meet him and set up his camera to get a photo atop the observation tower.
Here he sat in the dark, drinking his steaming cup of coffee in the cold, satisfied with the completion of his epic journey. “It was pretty surreal. I had been thinking about it for so long,” he says. “Mostly I was proud of myself because I wasn’t sure if I was ever going to do it.”
For Roth, the ride represents not only a journey from the state’s lowest to highest point but serves as an exploration of the diverse culture and ways of living tucked into these mountains. “I’m always going to champion my home state because there are so many misconceptions about us, but this emboldened my pride for West Virginia and all we have to offer.”
