adventures in pisgah

What a night! I arrived at Cove Creek around 11:15 after eating dinner and grabbing a quick nap at home after work. Stage 1 of The Most Horrible Thing Ever proved to be tough but it could not have any better of a night. The sky was clear and the moon and stars were all twinkling brightly as we took off out of the campground. I’d talked with Jonathon about riding together through the night but he seemed to be fiddling around with his gear so I went ahead and took off figuring that he would catch me somewhere on the west side.

Cove Creek was a sweet start to the race and I decided to keep going instead of doing one last gear check as I passed by my truck. On the climb up Daniel Ridge I caught another riding but either couldn’t or didn’t want to pass him. We chatted a little bit as we rode up the bottom of Farlow but then when we hit the hike-a-bike he just took off in front of me, disappearing immediately into the darkness. I’m a pretty fast hike-a-biker but this guy was super fast and it occurred to me that there just might be a race going on ahead of me.

The hike up Farlow was as good as it gets. Everything was aligned just right. The moons, the stars and the trees. It couldn’t have been better and when I finally saw the gap in front of me I was a little sorry it was ending. But it was a race after all so I took off down 140A as fast as I could. Everything felt right so I was really letting it hang out on the rocky trail when suddenly I felt my front tire go flat. 4 am or so and there I am with a flat. No big deal so I got to changing it. Tube changes are not my specialty and I was floundering this one big time. A few riders passed by me and then Jonathon pulled up with stories of unheard of speed and stamina and a strong desire to party. I was able to get the tire changed after 20 minutes and we took off down the trail together.

Whenever we were going up we chatted and whenever we were going down we were simply bombing. Summey was easily a race highlight with the top section flowing really well into the hike-a-bike and then the very steep descent. Good stuff to be riding in the middle of the night. The return trip up to Glouchester Gap wasn’t as painful as I anticipated and before we knew it we were going down Butter Ways. I’d told Jonathon I needed to keep moving because my light was going to die and just after we went left down Butter after the Art Loeb it did die so I spent the rest of the night riding with my leds I use for climbing. They do not put out nearly enough light to go fast like I knew Jonathon wanted to so I told him to go on and I limped on back to camp myself. I was able to ride all of Butter and Cat Gap but not with the speed I would have liked to.

I got back to camp at first light, right around 7am, tried to make sense of my gear and the stage 2 passport as I waited for Jonathon to do whatever it was he had to do. We discussed possible routes - some absurd, some rational – told Eric we would be taking the length of South Mills River and took off into the cold Pisgah morning.