Sandals Mountian Biking Adventures: First Visit to Raccoon Mountain

We headed up to Tennessee to check out Raccoon Mountain as it was supposed to be a pretty nice trail. We decided to start from the visitor center as we heard they had maps of the trail. We were not really worried about getting lost as we knew it was just a loop around the lake. The leaves were all changing and it was beautiful. It was slightly chilly so I wore a long sleeve shirt under my jersey. We took off and headed counter-clockwise. The trail started out with nice flowing singletrack. It was a nice warm-up for us. We ventured on and the trail continued to be pretty fast and fun. We stumbled on a fallen tree across the trail. It happened to be on a slight downhill so we stopped and piled up some dead trees and branches as transition on the uphill side as they wanted me to jump the log. This was only about 12” so I cautiously approached it the first time and nose dove while jumping it. We worked on the transition a bit more and I got where I could jump it decently. Tommy and Moran jumped it also before we headed on. A nice picture of Moran showing us how the kewl kids land it can be seen here.

We pretty much always turned left at every intersection as we knew that would keep us on the longest trail around the lake. Next we came upon an overlook and the view was incedible. There was a steep down and up that Moran and I rode down. Tommy managed to snap a picture as we rode down.

The next part of the trail we later learned was expert level, but it was very technical with some sections of the tail on the edge of a decent ledge. It was extremely fun. At the beginning of this section we found a rock that was a good 2.5-3’ drop. It had a good transition close to the rock, so we all practiced our jumping. Tommy was the hucking king. The video of him is below.

The next section had a couple of great views but at this point my camera battery was dead. This section was decently rocky and Moran was ahead of us and went over the handle bars. I just heard him crash and looked up and he was piled up with his bike. I tried to take his picture, but the battery was gone. Tommy had to help untangle him from his bike before he could get up. The final section had a few climbs and we finished up with a climb back out to the parking lot.

We got cleaned up and ate dinner at Big River Bar and Brewery. We had to wait an hour for a table, so we went to the bar (the whole restaurant was NON SMOKING!!, I decided I really like Chatanooga) I had their Pumpkin beer while we watched the Auburn/GA game. We all split an appetizer, I had a steak and ate a piece of cheesecake. It was an excellent meal to finish shuch a good day.