Squirrel Gap at Pisgah

Joined Jay for a trip up to NC for a weekend of riding. We drove up yesterday night and decided to hit Pisgah today as this was to be our most difficult ride. We started with a breakfast at Grammy's and I got the Big Cedar Mtn Breakfast. It had a bit of everyhting and was just what I needed to get me through the ride. We started at the parking area by the creek and rode up the road, down 476 and into the trails. We were following the book, but due to the poor markings on the trails, we ended up taking a wrong trail. It was very overgrown but ended up having a nice little descent down to the creek that was a lot of fun. Somehow we managed to get back to where we should have been, but didn't realize it and ended up backtracking the trail (South mills river) we should have come down. about 50-100 yards from where we origionally took the wrong turn we realized our mistake and turned around. This actually worked out well as the part we went the wrong direction was all uphill so we got to take the nicely flowing trail back down to the swinging bridge. This section had a few nicely bermed turns and had great flow. It was a lot of fun, but Jay had derailleur problems and we stopped briefly to get it fixed before heading on.

After crossing the bridge, we finally came to the whole reason for the ride... Squirrel Gap. This section was rated one of the more difficult rides so that certainly got Jays attention. This trail was really nice. It had a few water crossings (one of which I stopped to refill my water bladder (Thanks to Ted for allowing me to bring his water pump so I did not have to carry 2 bladders of water). I generally only last about 2.5-3 hours max on my 70oz bladder so I knew it was going to be a problem since this was to be a 5-6 hour ride. The pump weighed much less than an extra bladder so it worked out well. Squirrel gap also had a few sections that were rocky and rooty right on the edge of the mountain. It definately had me concentrating on my line.

Our next trail was Pounding Hill. It was not nearly as punishing as the name implied. However this started our series of encounters with the local wildlife. We came to a huge tree across the trail and had to hand the bikes over as it was about shoulder high. It took a bit to crawl over it and not slid down off the side of the hill. Everyone had climbed across except for Joel, and as he was crawling across he got stung by yellowjackets. Ted was holding his bike and got stung also. We all started running and I had mine and Ted's bike and Ted was running with Joel's untill he got frustrated with me for struggling with the 2 bike and dropped Joels and grabbed his so we could run. Somehow only Ted and Joel got stung and Joel had to make a detour up through the woods to get around them. We headed on our way.

We decided to take a shortcut from the suggested trail in the book and take Bradley creek instead of the fireroads. It looked a bit shorter and more importantly was singletrack which I prefer. We started to realize why this was not suggested in the book as there were probably close to 10 creek crossings that could only be done by wading through. Most of them were not any deeper than the knee, but riding with wet shoes was a bit awkward. Also, on one of the crossings as I was heading down the bank toward the water I got stung. As I was realizing what was happening I got hit again. I started running through the creek and gotr stung one more time. I was yelling at Joel so he would not get into them and waited as he had to go around that area of trail and meet back up. As we finally got back to the road by the car, everyone (well at least me) was pretty exhausted. We got back and had riden just over 25 miles in right at 6 hours. I was filthy and were going to stop on the way back, so I headed a little ways upstream and stripped down and sat in the creek to wash off. It was cool, but not cold and felt great. We had a beer and headed to a Bar in town so Joe could watch the Alabama game. We hung out for a bit and headed back to camp. I was so tired I went to bed before the game was even over.

Pictures:
http://picasaweb.google.com/grundcm/PisgahSquirrelGap2008_8_30#