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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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