Adventuring

Our goal for today was the Trace Ridge trail in Pisgah.

The first hiccup of the day occurred when we went to turn onto forest road 5000, only to find that it was gated and closed due to weather damage. The second hiccup was when we realized a few minutes into the climb that we were sans guide book. Getting it would have required repeating the initial climb and the route had looked simple. This was where our learning experience began. Our climb went without a hitch (except riding right past the trailhead without realizing it). We arrived at the top and found that our path intersected a section of the Blue Ridge Parkway that had been closed due to a landslide. We explored and found three cool tunnels (how often do you get to ride through tunnels?). We also realized that we had no idea where the trailhead was.

Then, the park rangers found us and accosted us for breaking the law and riding on the parkway (or they were sympathetic with our failure to find the trail and gave us directions)

(Subtle) Photo by Max McClorey

The rangers gave us some wonderfully vague advice that lead to a nice little adventure. We then had the opportunity to hike alongside the parkway with bikes for a while looking for an intersection with the Trace Ridge trail. There were more trees and branches down across the trail than on any other trail I had ever ridden or hiked. It felt like we were hiking through someone's slash pile.

Photo by Max McClorey

We finally got back onto the parkway and our wishes for the guidebook doubled once we realized that the advice we had received could only lead to more adventure, but not the trail. We debated and, with much reluctance, decided to backtrack down the parkway.

Photo by Max McClorey

Aero-tucks were necessary to make up for lost time.

Photo by Max McClorey

We were able to descend the dirt road we had climbed until we found the start of the trail (saving us the trouble of having to descend some nasty, unpleasant singletrack...who would want to do that?). We did not actually get any pictures due to exhaustion, but we returned a few days later.

The descent was great. Good enough to cause us to forget our adventures. However, it dropped us on the wrong bank of a creek at the bottom. Max knew what to do.

We were greatly relieved to make it back to the van and swore to never leave the guidebook behind again.