Someone has been doing some good work over past Greenwood Furnace. The Pig Pile Trail / Bigelow Trail has been nicely cleared from Barrville Rd (the next gravel rd after Rag Hollow Rd on 305) to the top of rag hollow rd, just down from where Sassafras trail comes out on Broad mtn rd. It's on the Purple Lizard so you can check it out there. If you are looking for the trailhead on Barrville rd. its right at the gap in the ridge where the road comes through. There is a new radio tower just across the road from it. Going from Barrville rd. its about a mile + climb up the trail. There are some easy rock gardens to keep things interesting and the grade is similar to the lower part of Sassafras, not easy but definitely ridable. After the mile + climb, there is a trail, marked on the Purple Lizard as an unnamed indefinite route, that goes down each side of the ridge. I have walked up the one going down to Flat road and its in good shape. I have not gone on the other side down to rag hollow, but it looks good. Continuing on Pig Pile is a real treat at that point. The trail flattens out and runs the ridge another mile or so. There are enough rocks to make it a little interesting but not difficult. Pig Pile runs into Bigelow trail. The Purple Lizard shows the trail going both ways but we were only able to find the trail heading over to the top of Rag Hollow / Broad Mtn Rd. Again we found that someone had done a fair amount of laurel clearing and this trail is very ridable in both directions.

As far as including these trails in a loop, we had ridden all the way up, across, and down Sassafras and then taken Flat road (while this "road" does not go over a ridge, it is far from flat. There are also some OK sections of it in the woods after the gate) down to Barrville, then up Barrville to Pig Pile, across Broad mtn rd and down Russ Gap. Another option would be to park at the new radio tower across from Pig Pile and start the ride there, using that as a balloon string for ride of the greenwood trails.