back in the blacks

I've frequently heard that you should not attempt to ride the Old Toll Rd. to Heartbreak Ridge without a guide. The turn at the top is unmarked and there are a dozen other unmarked trails and roads along the way and if you take the wrong one you will plunge thousands of feet off the mountain and will find yourself helplessly lost with no chance of rescue and only a slim chance of survival. With that in mind Yuri and I set out Saturday morning for a little adventure in Pisgah.

The ride started with my first time going up Rattlesnake trail through Ridgecrest. I don't know if it was the extreme heat, the steepness of the climb, the moonshine and two beers I'd had the night before, or the horrible malto/tang drink I'd mixed up or a combination of all of that but by the time we got to the top of Rattlesnake Knob I felt worse than I have ever felt on a bike and was really struggling. Rattlesnake was aptly named and gave us a nice vantage point of where we were heading.



From there the steep climbing continued as we headed into Montreat and my suffering continued. We took a quick detour to the top of Lookout Mountain and at the top I felt so bad I didn't even bother to take a picture of the summit. We were only three miles into the ride and the top of the Old Toll Rd. seemed like an impossible distance to cover given my condition. The temptation to bail was very real but I hadn't driven there so I pushed those thoughts out of my mind and pushed on up the mountain. I'm good at suffering and chose to enjoy the views over my shoulder and continued to move slowly but steadily up the mountain.

We blew through Pot Cove Gap and had to turn around so we could go back and find the pot. The story goes that whenever someone died in a train wreck back in the logging days it was customary to hang the deceased's lunch pail in a tree to memorialize them. There had been such an accident there and the pot was hung and then gap named appropriately. I spotted the remnants of the pot immediately but Yuri did not. As he looked in every tree except the one in the middle of the gap I seized the opportunity to collapse in the shade and steal a little rest. Eventually I showed him the pot and we continued on up the Old Toll Rd.



I was seriously dragging and craving something ice cold to drink so when we hit where the Left Prong of Mill Creek begins I stopped, dumped out my horrible drink and filled my bottle and started drinking without any purification. Normally I would never take such a reckless chance but I had to have something cold to drink and was willing to take the gamble. That is how bad I felt.

We continued on slowly up and I slowly started to feel a little better. We stopped at the overlook for a little while as Yuri needed to fiddle with the saddle on his fancy new bike. I got tired of waiting for him and started back up the road and told him to catch up. When I got to the spring he hadn't caught up so I seized the opportunity to rest again and laid in the cool shade and drank straight from the spring. I heard voices down at the little house and knew it would be Yuri talking to the owner. I didn't have the energy or motivation to walk the fifty feet down the road to join in the conversation so I relied on Yuri to relay the information. The older gentleman lives all the way up there year round. No electricity, the spring for water, a gas powered refrigerator, outhouse and not much more. Imagine what it must be like up there in a summer thunderstorm or during a rough winter. Bad ass. He told Yuri he wouldn't advise taking a bicycle where we were headed and chose the word gnar to describe our road of choice. That sounded perfect and perked me right up.

Before we could hit the gnar we had to take a slight detour to traverse the top of Pinnacle mountain. We stashed our bikes in the gap between Rocky Knob and Pinnacle and headed off on  the stout little hike over the top.  It took about 45 minutes to do the tough hike/bushwhack to the top but when we made it to the top it was well worth it. 360 degree views abounded and we caught a very rare glimpse of Mt. Mitchell before the clouds engulfed her.






There is some graffiti from the Civil War era up there on the rocks. Very cool.





We imagined a young man up there watching over his cattle with nothing better to do than carve his initials in the rocks. I wonder if a spike like this was used to do the damage?



Without realizing it, whatever had been ailing me finally passed and all was good in the world. With storm clouds building we continued on down the North side of the peak and made our way to the start of the Toll Rd. at the Parkway. Walking down the Toll Rd. in our bike shoes was much easier than the trail we had taken up and were back at the bikes and on to the gnar before we knew it.

The old timer was right - the road we picked really was quite gnarly. Yuri had been worried it would just be a grassy double track and I was worried it was going to be an overgrown mess that would be nearly impossible to carry a bike through but we were both wrong. It was the steepest, rockiest, and loosest road I ever ridden. Dropping thousands of feet in just a mile or so there was no time to stop to take pictures on the first pitch down. It was just point your bike downhill, hold on and pray. Sort of like the rock garden on Farlow but nastier. The road switchback several times and in the middle of one of those switchbacks there was a 75 foot waterfall. Coming around the corner and seeing this in front of us was a 'wow' moment.



After the waterfall the road just ended. Faced with several miles to go downstream before we got anywhere we doubled back the way we came and found the hidden turn we had missed. The road was very trail like and blast to ride.



This road eventually died out as well and it was clear why nobody ever goes down there. Pushing back up to the Toll Rd. would not have been fun so on we went on our second bushwhack of the day, this time with our bikes.



Every now and again it would become a trail again and Yuri tried his best to ride it and as a reward for his efforts fell several times and managed to get his first scratches on his brand new and very nice bike.



There was more history along the way where years ago these woods were fields and they stacked the rocks on rocks to clear the land.



Stream crossings abounded including this very big one that was difficult to negotiate. It was an excellent spot to slip, fall and get hurt but we both made it across.



On the other side of that crossing there was a trail again and it was actually quite rideable.



This eventually led us out to some fields and then to a road which led to another road and then another road which took us back to Ridgecrest. My front tire had been losing air all day so for the final portion of the adventure  I stopped every mile or two to add air instead of taking the two minutes to change the tube.


Best trip in awhile!