Story and Photos by Jaimee Sharp
The Chemical Valley Crawlers (CVC) 4th annual Merry Swiss-mas charity ride was successful! What a great turnout there was, with over 20 rigs hitting the trail and filling Santa’s sleigh for the kids. On December 9th, 2023, the Chemical Valley Crawlers (CVC) helped support the kids from the Children’s Home Society of Summersville, WV, with a ton of Christmas presents. These off-roaders supported 35 kids for Christmas this year. More people attend every year so that we can help more families during the holiday season. You can’t get much better than that! 
We had an array of rigs and ages that attended this special event, ages from a few months old to mid-60s. We had everything from Buggies to Rock Bouncers to Jeeps (some weren’t far from stock), Toyotas, a sweet little Suzuki, a Ford Ranger, and even a full-sized square-body Chevy. I can attest that that truck can and will go everywhere that the crawlers do. Some people drove as far as four hours to be a part of this event, and it was a pleasure to see such a great group of people come together and help support the local community that offers great trails for us to play on. Swiss is a little community in West Virginia on the Gauley River that offers moderate to hard obstacles for all to enjoy. Switzerland also offers beautiful scenery with its creeks and mountains. Almost everybody stayed on their wheels, but one of us decided they wanted to take a nap in the middle of the trail. Thankfully, the safety equipment did its job, and nobody was hurt, at least not physically; some pride may have been bruised, but we all laughed about it in the end. Everybody made it off the trail on their own, which sometimes doesn’t work out that way, so all in all, it was a good day. Throughout the day, we only had one rollover, one twisted driveshaft, one broke in half 9” Ford member, and a tire lost on the way to the trailers to load up. 
A little history about the Chemical Valley Crawlers (CVC): they started in 2000 in Putnam County, West Virginia, with a small group of guys: JW Herdman, Wayne Smith, Jessie “JT” Tucker, Booty Parsons, Lorne McGaw, and Lee Dillon, just to name a few. The guys wheeled local trails until the hidden gem of Swiss was found. The Chemical Valley Crawlers (CVC) cut their teeth on Swiss while making the trail through the creek. They’ve had their ups and downs over the past 23 years; the group has grown to over 4.5k followers on Facebook. They’ve also branched out into the world of social media and added Instagram, TikTok, and best of all, YouTube; those videos are a must-see. If you want to check them out, everything is searchable by Chemical Valley Crawlers. They’re truly a “small” off-road family of about 20-30 awesome people who wheel regularly. You can’t find a better extended family than you can in the Wheeling community, especially with this group; these people pull together to help each other out no matter what. Whether you’re broke down on the trail or you have personal life woes, they’ll be there to help see you through. Some of the places we get together to wheel in West Virginia are Swiss, The Good Evening Ranch in Canvas, Ivy Branch in Julian, Mexico in Blue Creek, and Bearwallow in Bethel. All these trails offer great wheeling and will test your rig, your wheeling skills, and sometimes your nerves. 
In this wonderful off-road family, we have several who own small businesses in WV; they were a huge part of helping with this event: Atlas Auto Repair and Off-Road owned by Corey Cunningham, Fox Creek Garage owned by Zach and Abby Adams, Beck Fab owned by Eric Beck, Drive Line Services owned by Craig Givens, and K&G Excavating owned by Robbie Patton. We also had a couple of other off-road groups that had a hand in helping this great event be a success: Seth Hopkins with the Shenandoah Valley 4 Wheelers (SV4W) out of our neighboring state of Virginia, and Mountaineer Off-Road.
We learned firsthand a few weeks after this event how awesome this off-road family is. Tragedy struck one of the best families you could know within this group, and this off-road family has pulled together and helped with events to benefit as much as possible, and will continue to help until one of their own is back home with his family. With the way the world is today, it’s heartwarming to know that there are still good people out there, people who will show up and show out to make sure one of their own is taken care of, whether it’s financially or just there for a listening ear. I cannot say enough good things about this group of amazing people!!!
If you ever get a chance to come to West Virginia to hit some of our trails, reach out to the Chemical Valley Crawlers, and they can be your tour guide.
