Unbelievably great ride today! I met up with Rich 'Teamdicky' D., Bill 'Big Worm' F., and Ryan 'Bill Nye the Science Guy' C. at 9:30 at Yellow Gap. It had started raining yesterday and hadn't let up all night. When I arrived (after hauling serious ass up the fireroad in the refurbished Jeep, Thanks Mike R.!) it was still raining. Even though it had only taken 6 minutes to travel the 3 miles of fireroad I was a few minutes late. Everyone was wearing big smiles despite the rain and my tardiness. Our eventual route for the day: Laurel Mountain->Pilot Rock->Pilot/Slate Connector->down Slate->Up the non-loop part to Slate Rock->Pilot Cove->1206. Or as we call it, Outer/Inner.
16 miles, 4170' climbing, nearly 100% pure Pisgah singletrack.
Rich decided he had to do something even more manly than driving 2.5 hours to do a 4+ hour mountain ride in the rain... He decided it would be a good day to forgo coasting all together and turned his Singlespeed into a fixed gear rig.... and yes, he was only running a front brake to boot. Maniac.
click=make big
The rain tapered off around the meeting log and we saw our first rays of sunshine shortly thereafter. We made it to Sassafrass without me even realizing we had passed The Cairns and about that time Bill pointed out the bright blue skies to the North. We got to the top in good time (6 miles of climbing later) and continued on to Pilot in high winds, temps in the high 40's and sun sun sun.
I led out for the Pilot descent and had a super-fun run of it. Not the fastest ever but still a ton of fun. We stopped at both overlooks and checked up a couple times other than that. The best part of the descent was the Hum-Vee section, a downhill boulder field that... if you carefully pick the right line... and you're having a good day... may be ridable... for some... I did a little wheelie drop off the slab rock and was feeling good. I took a deep breath as I went into the rocks and said out loud 'Oh my God' as I dropped into a nearly foot deep creek running right through the best line. I held on tight, cranked the pedals over a few times to keep up momentum, and was spit out the back end of the fray (50 yards later?) wet, upright, and whooping with joy. Bill was only a few feet behind and cleaned it, too. I have never seen that section of trail like that before. It was rad.
A bit more fast descending later we were at the connector turn. I really felt the climbing but we made it to the next intersection quickly. Down Slate was a nice change from Pilot. Easy, twisty, turny singletrack with shallow creek crossings and small log hops.
Next was Slate back up to the rock. I walked. I walked nearly the whole thing. Rich stayed back with me and we chatted about who knows what.... then we were at the rock.
more later.
I really need to make it back down there!
Some day I will hop on the ICS Express and check out the views myself. (Comment this)