Pipestem Resort State Park — Attraction in Hinton

Shabby, and not shabby chic. My family has been visiting the Mountain Creek Lodge for 30 years, but we won't be back.

I arrived on Friday evening with two young children in tow. Since the elevator was broken (and has been broken for months) at the top of the tram, I hauled all our luggage down three flights of stairs by myself, with the children tagging along. No staff was available to help, and no staff offered to assist. Clearly they were understaffed and under trained. With the tram personnel standing around watching, I loaded my two young children and our baggage into the tram, and then myself. The trams were filthy, the windows cracked and scratched, and the cheap vinyl replacement on the seats was already wearing out. At the bottom of the tram line, I was in the process of unloading the luggage and the children when a sullen tram worker snapped at me to hurry up. After gathering up the luggage and my children, without any assistance offered, I then carried all our luggage down two more flights of stairs to our room on the furthest end of the lodge.

When I arrived at the room, the air conditioning had not been turned on, so it was hot and stuffy. There were no sheer curtains on the floor to ceiling windows, so either the contents of our room were clearly visible to all the park patrons, or our room was pitch black, with only the inadequate lighting. The air conditioner, as you can see from the photos, was filthy. My oldest child spent her entire visit with a nasty cough, no doubt from the black mildew. The room itself was dusty, and the lighting fixtures had clearly not been cleaned in months. The windows were dirty, as you can see from the photos, as were all the corners of the balcony.

Nevertheless, since we were there to visit family, we unloaded our luggage, turned on the air conditioning, and then decided to shower. There were not enough towels for three people, and no floor mat was laid down. The shower head was the very cheapest that money can buy, and the no-skid strips in the shower were peeling off, which is a concern when you have young children. Neither were there grab bars by the toilet, or in the shower. The GFCI outlets in the bathroom did not work, and the amenities were, shall we say, minimal. It's a good thing that I brought all our own soap, shampoo, etc.

When I ran the microwave for breakfast the next morning, the electricity for the entire room (including the air conditioner) went out. Even after our party complained to maintenance about the terrible cleaning job, these issues were not remedied. I let the cleaning staff know on our way out in the morning, but no one followed up with me to let me know that power had been restored. In addition, despite the fact that I called ahead to double-check, the WiFi was not connected to the Internet.

Clearly, the cleaning staff, like the tram staff, were overworked and undertrained, and no maintenance had been done on the rooms in many years. Likewise, the main lodge showed signs of years, if not decades, of deferred maintenance. There were years of dust along windowsills and doors, as you can see from photos below. Floor-to-ceiling windows had been covered over to prevent visitors from seeing a view that no longer existed because annual brushhogging had not been done. Peeling paint was visible in several locations.

Furthermore, the indoor pool was half-unavailable for use because the untrained teen lifeguards had difficult maintaining the chemicals by themselves on a busy weekend, the grout on the pool was cracking off, there was no swimsuit dryer, and no one was available to check people into the pool. In other places in main lodge, the finish had been worn off the woodwork for so long that the underlying wood had turned gray from oxidation. In addition, the WiFi in the main lodge was unreliable at best, and my child never did get her homework turned in. It's inexcusable that one of the premier West Virginia state parks cannot even provide decent WiFi (and an...

Very disappointed in our visit. The place reeks of mismanagement. We made reservations at the main lodge but when we arrived to check in they had us down at another location (Mountain Creek "lodge") that required us to park in a different parking lot and take a tram down to our room. The staff wasn't in the least bit apologetic for the screwup. We intentionally booked the lodge because we were on motorcycles and hauling our gear and bags in and out of a hotel is tough enough and usually requires a cart. Doing this on the tram? Long walk from the parking lot and lots of steps and the two of us just barely fit into the tram. Very inconvenient.

Oh, and there's no food available down at the "lodge" they had us at. Restaurant closed. So, we had to unload our motorcycles, wedge into the tram, get into our room then tram back up the hill, get back on our motorcycles and ride back up to the main lodge. Turns out there's only two choices for food that night -- main dining room was a fried seafood buffet for $30 -- NO other menu options there. The cafe only offers pizza or wings. NOTHING else. AND they only have a single small convection oven so they "cook" the orders ONE AT A TIME. Since the place had about three dozen guests not wanting to eat the seafood buffet... it was a complete clusterf*ck. Families waiting up to an hour for a pre-made pizza to be heated up.

The room? Decent enough size, but quite outdated. Not sure how they call this a "resort." Had the smell of those cabins we used to bunk at when we went to camp as kids -- musty and old. Most everything was outdated. Clean, but outdated. Granted, the location was beautiful... along a river... but that didn't make up for the inconveniences and the staff's lack of concern regarding our issues. Oh, and the coffee in the room shouldn't be called coffee. Stale and tasteless. No time to try and get coffee up at lodge (see next comment).

The icing on the cake? The 7am tram the next morning WAS NOT RUNNING. Staff didn't bother to show up until just after 8am. A couple of calls up the hill were met with "well, i dunno, they are supposed to be there." COMPLETELY threw off our schedule for the next day. Felt sorry for the guys waiting with us who had a tee time that they weren't going to make because of the screwup. ABSOLUTELY ZERO APOLOGY from anybody at either end of the tram ride.

To call this place a "resort" is really pushing it. From the upkeep to the management's attitude. Lots of great amenities (stables, mini golf, hiking, etc) that we were looking forward to exploring with a large group we had hoped to book there but there's no way we'd subject our friends to the experience we had.

We will...

A friend and I rented electric bikes from the park for a guided tour around Pipestem Lake. Halfway to our destination, my friend notified me and our guide his brakes weren't working correctly. Having more biking skills, I traded bikes with him. The brakes didn't work well, but I was able to get the bike to slow down when I needed. That is, until we started down the hard road to the lake. Suddenly, the brakes stopped working. I picked up so much speed going down the hill it was too dangerous to pull off to the side of the road. I remembered a gravel parking lot at the bottom where I hoped I could use my feet to stop. The parking lot was too small, and dragging my feet didn't work. I came to a section of woods at the end of the lot and hoped I could guide the bike between the trees and possibly land in the lake at the other side of the trees (approx 30 ft). I bounced off several trees and ended up hitting some small pines trees and landing on my right side on the beach. I was grateful I wasn't dead, but I was in immense pain.The breath was knocked out of me, and it took a while before I could yell for help. Finally, I was able to give out a loud whistle, and my friend and the guide were able to find me. I was in so much pain I thought I was dying. I asked for an ambulance to take me to the hospital. An accident report was filled out, and it was notated by my friend that my brakes failed. After spending the day at the hospital in Princeton I was released with two fractured ribs, a sprained ankle, pulled muscle in my shoulder a swollen knee, and several injured toes, not to mention multiple bruises up and down the right side of my body. I was told by one of the park employees that the bike brakes are inspected every morning. This statement was false. I watched the bikes being taken out of the overnight storage shed. No one got on the bikes to check them out much less; check the brakes. To top it off, it was the guides' first day! The instructions for using the electric bikes were very brief and disjointed. I have been visiting this park for over thirty years. I have always felt safe using the tram, zip lines, horseback riding, swimming, etc. Whoever was in charge that day did not do their job. I feel I could have been killed or severely injured. As with anything that requires safety measures for customers, my friend and I were let down. I love this park, but I feel safety protocols were not followed. Its the little things that count, and in my case, they were ignored and resulted in a near...