Some friends and I will be backpacking this week/weekend at Spruce Knob.

I do not currently possess a concealed carry permit but that is mostly because of laziness on my part. Is there any reason that I can't open carry on this trip. I understand that West Virginia is a constitutional carry state. Does this apply to nonresidents as well?

Not so much worried about critters as I am about West Virginia Mountain Tweakers and other backwoods weirdos.

While were at it, is anyone familiar with Spruce Knob or the area around it? This will be my first time down there and my first multi day backpacking trip.

I thought you had to be a resident of wv or have your on state's ccw to carry here in wv. You might want to check wc website to make sure.

See the bottom of page 2 (Permitless Carry) here.

The relevant text:

Thank you for that info, I never knew that was the case I always thought it was for residents only. I really appreciate you posting that.

Cazio

Well, I am back. The trip went off without a hitch. No West Virginia Mountain Tweakers to be found. Just some nice, friendly forest service guys that didn't bat an eye at the Ruger LCR strapped to the waist belt on my pack and a handful of mountain bikers who were far braver than I to try to tackle those trails on two wheels. Hardly another backpacker to be found. We pretty much had the whole mountain to ourselves.

The whole spruce knob area was gorgeous. We were out there for 3 nights and 4 days total.

I will give the rundown for anyone familiar with the area. First day was a bust trying to find the Allegheny Trailhead but instead ending up on a "road" that runs parallel and dead ending on a private property line. The second day we started on the Horton Trailhead and made it all the way up, through most of the Huckleberry Trail to within approximately 2ish miles of the top of the knob before calling it quits and setting up camp. It doesn't look that far on the map, but those hills were brutal and my thigh muscles were screaming through most of the ascent. I am a reasonably fit dude, but this was my first time on a serious backpacking trip and it was probably the most physically demanding thing that I have ever done. On the third day we reached the top of the knob. Did you know that there is no running water at the top of the knob? We found that out the hard way and were nearly out of our reserves by the time that we made it back down to a viable water source. That being said, the whole top of that ridge line is absolutely beautiful. The entire forest changes to thick patches of evergreen trees broken up with bushy/rocky clearings. It was like being in another world. Getting to the top was very rewarding and made all the effort of the previous day worthwhile. After that we decided to dial back on all the effort and spread our decent out over days 3 and 4. I got to bathe at the bottom of a kick ass waterfall along the way down which was pretty sweet.

Thanks for the advice!

We only had one car so the best plan was to hike up and back down. I honestly enjoyed finding out the hard way that there was no water past Seneca Creek. It added another challenge to the trip in that we had to conserve water overnight/part of the next day.

And yeah, on the third night we camped at the first campsite just below the main waterfall. It was very damp, especially after raining that morning, but it's also probably the coolest site that we found on the whole trip so we couldn't turn it up.

Thanks for the advice. I would have gathered more info from you before leaving but I was super busy in the days leading up to the trip. I almost didn't even get this thread posted before leaving.