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Heartbreak Ridge (Black Mountain, NC) - Holy Cow! what a ride... This last Sunday was invited to come out and ride with Mountain Goat Epics and his friend David. From the start, Jeremy was like "this is a 23 mile ride with 15+ miles of climbing"
Jamie and i have done plenty of 20+mi rides..Sure "No Prob" man if we only knew what lay ahead of us ... Holy Cow indeed ... climbin' is not one of my strengths... I've got two speeds Slow and Slower than Slow! Big Boy on a Big Bike!
First off I'd like to apologize to Jeremey and David for holding them up. You guys far exceed our abilities. we were very impressed. so the first 2/3 of the 8 hours of Jamie and my ride was nothing but climbin', climbin', climbin', climbin', climbin' to be topped with more (you guessed it) Climbin'
Holy Sh!t we started at the Kitsuma Parking Area about 2500ft elevation and and the last time i asked David the elevation 4630 and we rode another mile up some maybe another 300ft higher.
I Had a really ugly spill coming thru this log bridge when my front wheel wedged in the gap
of the logs and sent my fatass into the road. should've taken the cheater on the left. the trail up was like an old washed-out road bed that was in some spots a good challenge especially from my tires. a sharp rock tore a nice gash into the sidewall of my tubeless
tire...so put a tube into it and continued on up.
When Jeremy and David came back to check on us they told us we are close to Obi Wan's place..."Obi Wan?" In the middle of nowhere is a little shack with a generator running and a stream for drinking water...as I'm riding past i was going for my camera to take a picture...only to glance over and there he was, so i decided to just keep riding and wave to this old guy, and surprisingly he waved back. I was hoping for some Jedi mind trick to make this climb easier! still climbin'
Yeah Jeremy kept asking can you climb another 6 miles, "Yep", pant, pant, cough, cough! though the thoughts of bailing and turning around started flooding my brain...Just keep on truckin' finally we reached the Pinnacle.
Sweet Downhill for the next seven miles!
OMG the best singletrack downhill...many sections where very similar to Kitsuma and some of the best Vistas we've come across.
This is where we had to part from our guides...they had planned a four hour ride and we were now into the sixth hour with 9 or 10 miles to go. Sorry guys! Jeremy was hesitant to leave us to find our way out. but with good directions we had a kickass ride, Body was hurting but i was still smilin' , looking at the pix i kinda looked stoned. Fatigue was setting in and after we made it to the road we made a right instead of a left and climbin this road got attacked by three bigass dogs luckly not bitten (not that they didn't try) and an eighth of mile later DeadEnd! "Oh Sh!T" turn around and pass them damn dogs! at least it was downhill! i was afraid that they would cross Jamie's path going for the bigger target "me". we got past em.
Found our gravel road out and it was three miles up back to the car!!!! that was the longest
three miles i have ever done...i was hurtin, camelbak empty maybe 2 swallows of Gaterade left no food an powergels left..and diggin' through my bag
found the motherload of all treats one of my sons KitKat bars...I needed fuel! we got back to the car and it was dark, Bigtime it was 9:00 we had started the ride at 1:00. What a Ride! hope you enjoy the Pix!
Jamie and i have done plenty of 20+mi rides..Sure "No Prob" man if we only knew what lay ahead of us ... Holy Cow indeed ... climbin' is not one of my strengths... I've got two speeds Slow and Slower than Slow! Big Boy on a Big Bike!
First off I'd like to apologize to Jeremey and David for holding them up. You guys far exceed our abilities. we were very impressed. so the first 2/3 of the 8 hours of Jamie and my ride was nothing but climbin', climbin', climbin', climbin', climbin' to be topped with more (you guessed it) Climbin'
Holy Sh!t we started at the Kitsuma Parking Area about 2500ft elevation and and the last time i asked David the elevation 4630 and we rode another mile up some maybe another 300ft higher.
I Had a really ugly spill coming thru this log bridge when my front wheel wedged in the gap
of the logs and sent my fatass into the road. should've taken the cheater on the left. the trail up was like an old washed-out road bed that was in some spots a good challenge especially from my tires. a sharp rock tore a nice gash into the sidewall of my tubeless
tire...so put a tube into it and continued on up.
When Jeremy and David came back to check on us they told us we are close to Obi Wan's place..."Obi Wan?" In the middle of nowhere is a little shack with a generator running and a stream for drinking water...as I'm riding past i was going for my camera to take a picture...only to glance over and there he was, so i decided to just keep riding and wave to this old guy, and surprisingly he waved back. I was hoping for some Jedi mind trick to make this climb easier! still climbin'
Yeah Jeremy kept asking can you climb another 6 miles, "Yep", pant, pant, cough, cough! though the thoughts of bailing and turning around started flooding my brain...Just keep on truckin' finally we reached the Pinnacle.
Sweet Downhill for the next seven miles!
OMG the best singletrack downhill...many sections where very similar to Kitsuma and some of the best Vistas we've come across.
This is where we had to part from our guides...they had planned a four hour ride and we were now into the sixth hour with 9 or 10 miles to go. Sorry guys! Jeremy was hesitant to leave us to find our way out. but with good directions we had a kickass ride, Body was hurting but i was still smilin' , looking at the pix i kinda looked stoned. Fatigue was setting in and after we made it to the road we made a right instead of a left and climbin this road got attacked by three bigass dogs luckly not bitten (not that they didn't try) and an eighth of mile later DeadEnd! "Oh Sh!T" turn around and pass them damn dogs! at least it was downhill! i was afraid that they would cross Jamie's path going for the bigger target "me". we got past em.
Found our gravel road out and it was three miles up back to the car!!!! that was the longest
three miles i have ever done...i was hurtin, camelbak empty maybe 2 swallows of Gaterade left no food an powergels left..and diggin' through my bag
found the motherload of all treats one of my sons KitKat bars...I needed fuel! we got back to the car and it was dark, Bigtime it was 9:00 we had started the ride at 1:00. What a Ride! hope you enjoy the Pix!
