Citico- River LoopClockwise route

Bald River Falls

Clockwise route- Tellico River Rd, Bald River Rd, Wildcat Creek Rd 

A few weeks ago, I decided to try out what I call the "River Loop". The combination of Tellico River Rd, Bald River Road and Wildcat Creek Rd  It looks to make a perfect loop to add some miles to other routes on the north side of the Skyway - about 31 miles. In previous rides, I've ridden Tellico Rive Rd, east bound past Bald River Falls.  Usually the falls are a mad house with crazy amounts of people hanging out and seeing the falls (they're  definitely worth it), but today, weather due to football, or just being a little later into the season, the falls were almost void of people.  I took advantage of the quite and stopped to have a bit to eat, just me and the falls....very nice. Contouring on, the road gently climbs along the river and then pops out in the rental cabin community of Green Cove. I didn't expect to run into a development like this this far out into the woods, but it's kinda nice since they have a convince store to get fueled up if you need food or drinks.

A little way up from Green Cove, you leave the paved road and civilization behind when you make a right onto Bald River Rd. Bald River Rd really gives you the feeling of being out there.  The gravel road meanders through the forest, hanging on the edge of the mountains, surrounded by big trees. It's pretty rad, with the mountain sharply dropping off on your right, it gives you the view through the forest from mid tree height, nice. After climbing a bit, you get rewarded with a long descent down to Holly Flats Campground. It's starts with a super fast section, winding along the side of the mountains, and then is followed by a gently/pedaling downhill section for the last few mile.  Perfect gravel and fast and fun.  Holly Flats makes for a nice place to stop and eat.  No real facilities to note, but a nice wall to sit on.  

swoopy meanders

Purrr-fect gravel

From there you hit another solid climb up Gravelstand Mtn.  Some section made me keep trying to shift down into a gear that I didn't have.  Once you reach the four way intersection on top you have the choice to turn left and continue climbing up to the tower (save that for another day) turn left onto a mystery road or continues straight and down to Wildcat ( which I did). It's another long fast, and at times loose downhill -fun, but would be a bit more fun on fatter tires. It opens up at times to give you an awesome view, in my case, a view of the rain clouds approaching. Time to put the hammer down, I've been caught too many times up in these mountain during "not mess around" thunder storms, shivering in the middle of summer.  Descending quickly, made a right on wildcat, descended some more, zig zagging down to the river.  Made the final right back onto (the paved) Tellico Rive Rd, and completed the loop, getting caught in a short downpour 1 mile from shelter.

Alone with the forest

Storm clouds a brewing on descent from Gravelstand Top

The River loop is great, totally recommend it, a great wilderness ride.  You might need a little lower gearing and tires with some knobs if you try to tackle it CCW, as the climb up Gravelstand is steep and loose. Be prepared, I saw no one once I turned off of Tellico River Rd,  if something happens out there, it may be a while before some one drives by. 

Happy America Day at Citico

AKA Welcome to Citico Creek

Took advantage of the Forth of July holiday to go and explore some more roads down in Citico Creek. I've been wanting to try out Buck Highway since the last time I rode down here since I was told that Buck Highway was another good option to ride. I did some research on the Strava Heat Map to get an idea for connections to Indian Boundary, created a .gpx file and my route was ready in a few minutes (technology is pretty neat).

 Buck Highway starts off with a BANG.  It's really nicely paved and smooth, but it greets you with a pretty stout grade right off the bat (like 20% or something), kinda make you question why you left the nice river grade warm up far below.  Once you get up the ridge, and past the numerous religious retreats that really want to make their message known, you get rewarded with a meandering road that winds up and down through numerous hollers.

One of many old barns 

Rad old truck

A few miles down the road, you drop into Chestnut Valley. The hills spread out and you become  immersed into forgotten rural farm country. Plenty of sights to see, large open fields, old barns and farm houses, an awesome old truck, a bunch of hunting dogs (all chained up, lucky me) The roads vary from asphalt, to bad asphalt, to almost not asphalt to gravel...a fun mix for multi-terrain bikes. Some steep hills, a switch back or two to keep it fun.

America!

Turkey Creek Road

Long creek-side descent on Citico Creek Rd

Shimano hooks up gravel riders (without knowing it)

Frame bags, like the Revelate Tangle,are rad. They allow you to carry all your stuff for long days in the saddle...totally accesable while riding, centered on your frame... great bags,but, there's one problem, they get in the way of your water bottles.

58 cm Tamland and medium Tangle

Carrying stuff is pretty necessary when doing day-long gravel rides, water is pretty needed too. So, what to do?  Camelback? Sure, it works, but all the weight on your back gets kinda old (and hot). Big ol' seat bag? Okay, but not as accessible. Hmmmm,there must be a better way.

Shimano Bottle Cage Adapter, SM-BA01

Enter Shimano's DI-2.
Shimano had a problem, they made this fancy electronic shifting system but they had to find some where to attach a battery to the frame. Somewhere low and centered.  The perfect area would be just above the bottom bracket, but on smaller frames, the water bottle cages were in the way. What did they do? They produced a bottle cage adapter that allows you to shift your bottle cages up and out of the way of the battery.

Here's where it gets really handy: if you flip the cage mount upside down it allows you to lower your bottle cages...just the thing needed to make a little more room to run a frame bag and still have room to get to your bottles. Installation is simple, just screw the mount into your frame, then screw your cage onto the mount. The bolt holes are slotted, so you have some adjustment on how low you want your cage to go (anywhere from 32mm-50mm).  Also, it comes with some spacers to allow the mount to clear the front derailer. It's a simple and effective design.  A little expensive ($20), but we'll worth it, in my opinion.

Plenty of room!

Thanks Shimano, ya really solved a problem.

Citico Creek - E TN goodness!

I've heard of people riding down in Citico Creek for a long time. For some reason, it never really sparked my interest...I kinda had this image of large, chunky, deep gravel, and endless, steep climbs...a long day in the saddle moving slow...but WOW, was I wrong.   A couple weeks post-Kanza, I was itching to get on my gravel bike again and threw out the idea of riding Citico to some of the local long ride guys in town. I wanted somewhere different, somewhere shady and hopefully a bit cooler than Knoxville, somewhere to avoid the same ol' same ol'. They were all about it. Let the adventure begin.

Jimmy Deane leading the way

The ride started on Citico Creek Road - a river-grade road that gently climbed for the first 10 miles or so. You really couldn't ask for a better warm up, the road was fast rolling and meandered along the creek, allowed us to move along in a pack, keeping cool from the air coming off the water.  Every once in a while there'd be a random sections of pot holes that would sneak up on you. No big deal, unless you were riding behind others and not really looking at the road...I learned the hard way that hitting these holes would (and did) eject some of my food from my (not closed) Revelate Mountain Feedbag...hope I don't need those 500 calories.

Farr Gap.  I've heard of this climb, kinda expected hard and steep.  In reality, fun, fast and easy.  It too was hardpacked dirt, fast rolling, and maybe 4-5%, nothing big deal.  It climbed for 6 miles or so, but really didn't seem like it, stayed a pretty consistent grade.  Once on top, the road pretty quickly turned down, terminating close to where it started.  The downhill was a bit more varying, kinda more of a rolling downhill. It too would be a fun climb if you reversed the route and rode in a clockwise direction...next time.

The view up on top

One great thing about riding over here was access to the campground store in Indian Boundary Campground, its pretty close to  most of the dirt roads on the north side of the parkway. They had the typical campground treats,  soft drinks, candy bars, ice cream....all over priced, but well worth it as a mid ride fuel stop.  We consumed many calories, filled our bottles and were shortly off to part two of the ride.

This is where the adventure portion of the ride started...meaning lets go find some roads that were new to all of us, lets go seek and ride the unknown. A few things you should know about riding in National Forests are 1. You need to have a map, 2. Not all roads/ trails are on the map, and 3. Some roads/trails that are on the map may not really exist anymore.  We were armed with this knowledge, and set off to ride some new roads...what we found was some incredible riding. We rode twisting downhills that winded around and below gigantic rock formations (Turkey Creek), climbed steep broken asphalt roads(Shaw Mtn), and descended blazing fast slopes that ducked in and out of the trees as it dropped into the ravine (Shaw Mtn too)- and then, we we back at the store?  Hmmmm, ok, lets grad some water, then go try to find this one road that would be a short cut back to the cars. Lucky for us, we ran into a local who told us the road we desired was just up the road, across from the "for sale" sign, easy to find.  And one more thing, it was "pretty much all downhill."  Great!   We rode on, found the road (36-1?) just as he described, then proceeded to climb and descend a decent amount over the next five or so miles.  Granted the road did drop off the mountain the last couple of miles (fast, and rutted to keep you on you toes), but the six or seven miles prior were at best as described as "a whole lot of rollers." Thing to know #4. people in cars don't really have a good grasp of whats pretty much all down hill.

Checking the map before the unknown

The ride ended with an easy cruise back to the car along for a total of 70ish miles.  Great stuff, and we barely scratched the surface.

Our route

The beta: Citico Creek is closer than you think, you don't have to drive down to Tellico to access the roads.  We parked at the church here, it seemed pretty secure.  Outside of camping season, you can park at any of the campsites on Citico Road, but it's pretty busy in the warm months. Food and water are available at Indian Creek Campground, I believe its closed in the cold months, so be prepared.  Fat CX tires are good, but bring tubes with ya, we had a few flats.

It starts with Kanza

Kanza, what can you say? It's weird to start off an Appalachian blog with a post about Kansas, but that's where it starts...so here goes...Kanza.

They said Kanza would be an experience that you wouldn't forget, something that would change you, something unlike like what you've done before...Did it live up to its hype? Yes.

Waiting for the sun to rise.

Kanza was an experience  that I was very happy to be part of. It's an interesting event, partially due to its length, partially due to it wide open expanse, partially to the heat, wind, & dust and partially due to its endless rollers that disappear into the horizon.

10 miles from the start, before the true Flint Hills

The scenery in the Flint Hills was amazing. Endless, I mean endless rolling, green, grassy hills. The most azure blue sky you will ever see...clouds that just pop out at you. The dirt roads. oh the dirt roads.  Whether they rolled over the hills like a ribbon until they disappeared into the horizon, or whether they wound up and around the panorama in front of you, you had no surprises in where you were headed...you were out there, really out there. This was Kansas, but not the Kansas anyone knows.

Early morning

It's weird how this race plays out. The first 50 or so miles everyone is riding fast, trying to get a good position, deciding of if they are going to be a contender for a top spot, or if they are just racing for a good finish time (and Racing the Sun), or just trying to finish. Its a fun time, riding with big packs, bombing down sketchy roads trying not to hit anything too hard, trying to hide from the wind -and not to burn too much energy. This is very different from how the last 50 or so miles is described. It kinda eerie. Riders riding in small groups of two or three, riding in silence. Each rider dealing with the pain and fatigue in their own way.  There's nothing really to say, everyone is feeling the same thing...sore back and neck, tired legs, tired of sitting on the most comfy seat you own and tired of holding on that vibrating handle bar. You understand each other without any words needing to be said.  You become two or three riders riding as one.  It doesn't matter who of your groups finishes first, or if you catch that guy you see a mile up the road.  In silence, everyone is in agreement, you ride as one to finish the race. A bond definitely forms.  If one of my group fades, we slow to wait, I someone needs to stop for a second, we all stop. Some would call this section the Death March. I'm not so sure... yes, we were in survival mode, but it wasn't a ride to death, I was a ride to completion.

The experiences. Being on the bike for 12 hours, you just have them. Having a cow stampede cross our path, with a break in the cows just big enough and timed exactly for our group to pass through is something I'll never forget...not sure how that happened, but wow it was rad. The crop duster that made a hard 90 degree turn a 100 feet above the road, then flew right along the road giving me the thumbs-up...talk about a boost to the moral.  Rolling into the small towns, with the local kids giving you five...yes!  And then there's the finish, quite an amazing finish. the long shoot, with hundreds of people on either side out you shouting, ring bells and giving you five. It's a fine way to finish the day.  My mind is kinda foggy during those last few blocks of the race, but I remember the cheering, I remember the announcer saying my name and mentioning Tennessee, and I remember shaking Jim Cummins hand (the race director) right after crossing the line...I looked him in the eye and said "That was hard." I just got a little smile and a chuckle back.

 It was hard, and it was great

The finish