A New View of Pisgah

The main reason that it took me a week and a half to finish my race report from Slaty Fork is that rather than returning home after the race, the next day we continued south to North Carolina for a week in Pisgah. My only previous experience in Pisgah was in 2009, and it wasn't great. Apparently, at the time I claimed it would be my last death march. Silly 2009 me, Death March wasn't even invented yet, and it was ironically, the thing that renewed my interested in endurance events after I walked away from them for a couple of years. Since I moved to my own set of mountains 3.5 years ago and now have a partner who's willing to join me on mountain bike adventures, I'd been wanting to go back to Pisgah and see it with fresher, more gnar-friendly eyes.

We finally decided to sneak in a trip between Frank's summer and fall class sessions, which is the main reason we combined Slaty Fork and Pisgah into one trip. Ideally we wouldn't have done a pretty long enduro race leading up to the trip, but we also didn't want to miss the race and managed to make both work.

Monday was our travel/rest day, so we first hit the trails on Tuesday. We hit up the DuPont State Forest trails for our first ride, thinking they might be a kinder transition that full Pisgah gnar on the first ride. I think that was a good choice. I'd always been fascinated by people's pictures from riding the slick rock there, and it lived up to my expectations. We also did some flowy machine cut jawns, because those can fun too sometimes.

Here I am as one of Brevard's famous white squirrels.

Obligatory #scenicvistaselfie

Wednesday we did middle and lower Black Mountain as well as Bennett Gap. This was the day that I really started to understand why people love Pisgah so much. Black Mountain was amazing, because it managed to be really damn gnarly and technical, but also somehow flowy at the same time. It was also really satisfying to take stock of how many sections I was able to ride that I probably couldn't have a year ago, and 2009 me probably couldn't have even conceived. Of course, it was warmer and dryer than the last time I was there. 

Perhaps it was a little too warm, as we decided to never again travel south in August by the time the trip was over. We had a good time, but just getting through the 10-15 miles a day that we were riding was a struggle. We mostly kept it in the fun zone while planning our routes and didn't even attempt anything akin to the Pisgah Mountain Bike Stage race. I'm smarter now and understand Pisgah miles, which are even longer than Rothrock miles, I think. I do occasionally have thoughts of giving the stage race another shot again someday, but for this trip, we just wanted to check out some new terrain without killing ourselves.

Okay, maybe we tried to kill ourselves a little. After watching the "Trail Boss" episode of Farlow Gap, we just *had* to see it for ourselves. We weren't silly enough to think we could all or even most of it, but we did make a sort of silly decision that I should rent the small Bronson CC in front of The Hub to satisfy some of my Roubion curiosity. My Hail is great for going really fast downhill, but it it tends to suck at getting to the the start of downhills by means other than gentle gravel roads or chair lifts, so I've been searching for something with big bike capabilities that pedals a bit better.

It's actually not the best idea to ride the hardest trail that you've ever been on using a bike that you've never ridden and that is only semi set up for you, so I can't say that my trip through Farlow Gap was super fun. We were also a bit stressed about getting the bike back before the shop closed, which didn't help. The good news is that our curiosity has been satisfied, and I think we're okay with not attempting Farlow Gap again for a long time.

Overall, this trip to Pisgah was a lot more fun than the last. Good company, good skills, and lack of snow are all highly recommended.