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Me and Creamsicle (I named my bike Creamsicle because it’s the same shade of orange…yeah, I know) drove up to Waleska to check out the newest trails in Cherokee County. I wasn’t expecting much but was still disappointed. I guess I should have taken it as a bad omen when I pulled up to the trailhead, and there were NO cars at all. On a Sunday where there is not a cloud in the sky and 75 degrees, you’d think every trail would be covered with humans. I drove by Blankets Creek before coming up here and there was no parking at all. That’s why I decided to check out these trails. I figured that I’d be bouncing off of people all around BC, so why not go ahead and take the opportunity to try the new trail.

When I first got there, I thought, cool, I’ll be the only one out there, that’ll be neat. Ha. Boy, did I read the signs wrong.

First of all you start off on a steep as hell gravel road that takes you to some really crappy jeep road. This is the trail. Ninety percent jeep road. There’s a few trails running off the jeep road that wind around and connect back up with it. These are labeled as advanced trails. I would have to say that whoever designed and laid out these trails were not mountain bikers. None of the trails have any flow whatsoever and some of the zig-zags are so tight, you can’t maneuver a bike through them without hooking a tree. One section had a 3 ft deep dip right after a blind curve, that followed two consective ultra-tight turns, so by the time you hit the dip, your speed was killed so much that you could not roll it.

One other section had a steep uphill, rolling into a 90 degree switchback with a log laid across the apex of the turn. I tried this twice and both times got hung on the log because the steep climb up to it and then the sharp turn wouldn’t allow me to have any speed to pop over the log. It was totally out of place.

I feel bad about trashing the trails around here, because I know the people who worked them tried, but man did they miss out. It’s a pretty big expanse of forest that they had to work with, and instead of winding the trail through the woods and making the most of the space, a’la Big Creek, Chicopee, and Blankets, they made all the little connector trails a “shortest line between point A and point B” type of design. Instead of making 6 nice switchbacks going down that hill, they made one steep, narrow, brake-burning, slide down the hill.

They could have jammed 6 or 7 miles of trails in there, instead, it’s only about 3 miles of tedious up and down. For a mountain bike trail, it makes a great running trail.

Instead of going to the Ellijay Fat Tire Fest, I drove the 65 miles east to Fort Yargo State Park, in lovely Winder, Georgia. I’ve been wanting to ride this trail for a while and so when my riding buddy backed out on Ellijay, I took the opportunity to hit this trail.

The drive out was not too bad, but it WAS Saturday morning, and so I got there in about an hour. Since this is a state park, it had all the usual state park type facilities, along with numerous recreational things, like tennis courts, fishing docks, putt-putt, a huge lake, and a lot of other stuff. I parked in section A at the designated start point of the trail, which is the first parking area after entering the park.

I unloaded the bike, geared up, and headed off toward the singletrack. The first section was a switchbacked area through what looked like a bombed out forest. I don’t know if pine beetles got these trees, or if they were just cutting them down, but the trail wound it’s way through all these fallen trees and then cut back into the forst where it was pretty easy singletrack for several miles. There’s a minimal amount of serious climbing, which is fine with me, and very little truly technical sections that test your guts and skill. This trail is mostly fast, flowing singletrack winding it’s way through the woods around the lake. Around the 6 mile mark, you make a few power-line climbs and descents, loop back around and hit the old part of the trail, which is about a mile of doubletrack that is packed with hikers. You then cross a bridge over the lake and hit the most technical part of this trail.

Hanging a left takes you around the very edge of the lake on what looks like newly cut trail. It has a lot of dips and roots and very short, steep climbs. It twists it’s way around and back upon itself almost, and is very tight and slow. This part almost strikes me as someone wanting to squeeze as many miles as they can out of a small area. It does widen out a bit after a while and eventually bends back toward the direction of the main trailhead. It twists and turn through some more forests, and takes you by the lake again, and you eventually come out in a camping area and from there you road-bike about 1/4 mile back to the trailhead.

I don’t really know if I went the optimal way, or the path that is laid out by the trail builders. I got a little confused at a 5-way intersection and ended up riding the hiker-crowded section 3 times before I crossed the bridge. I saw a bunch of people out there on high-dollar full suspension rigs, and couldn’t help but think that was overkill for this trail. I think this is the most hardtail-friendly trail in the state.

All told, I managed about 16 miles on the day and felt pretty good. It was a fun fast trail until you cross the lake bridge, and then it gets real slow because it is very tight and twisty with no straightaways where you can get any kind of speed. It wasn’t very technical, and seemed tame when compared to Bear Creek or Blankets Creek. The speed you can make the first 10 miles though makes it a fun ride. If there’s a way to cut off the post-bridge tight stuff, then it would have been the perfect ride, and would have been fun to do two laps. I’ll go back, because it’s a good 16 miles of riding with several very fun parts, a gorgeous lake, and a lot of other things to do.

More pictures of Fort Yargo

On Sunday, Casey and I rode the South Loop at Blanket’s Creek. Let me start off by saying, I hate the South Loop. There are no fun parts on the South Loop. It’s all rocky, rooty, technical climbing or descending through very narrow and short sections. You can’t get speed to climb through the techy stuff, and coming down is so rough that you can’t get speed up to clean a section at the bottom before a tight turn. Every climb has either loose rocks or a zillion roots so you are kicked all over the place and can’t get any momentum.

I know there are people that love this type of trail, but I am not one of them. The South Loop is difficult just for the sake of being difficult. There’s a descent that comes down some very rocky stuff, with two rock drops so close together that you can’t really land one before the other comes into play. And after the second rock, the turn to the right is so sharp that it’s nearly impossible. There’s another section that has a rock step up that has about 20 yards of trail leading up to it, but the builders, instead of making a straight run-up so you can get enough speed to clean it, took the trail to the right, around a little sapling tree and over some roots, so you HAVE to slow down, and that just makes the step dangerous. There are a lot of sections that just make no sense and have no flow. None of the climbs have decent lines, and all the descents have masive rocks or roots, sometimes both together with a drop and no recovery time before the next rock-root nightmare.

SORBA Woodstock is working on the North Loop now, and I hope and pray that they are not just making another South Loop. The one thing that I have noticed about trails in Georgia is that they are all the same. Big Creek is like Blankets, Blankets is like Chicopee, Chicopee is like Dauset, Dauset is like Yargo….. If all they are going to do with the North Loop is make another South Loop, then they shouldn’t waste their time. There are enough trails that have tight, twisty, slow, rooty singletrack. How about some trails with decent downhill sections that DON’T have a 90 degree switchback at the bottom? How about more S turns, and fewer Z turns? How about some smooth track? Mountain biking trails can be great without having to take a trail right up next to that tree just so you can get roots in the way.

We took a roadtrip 1 hour north to Bear Creek in beautiful Ellijay, GA, Sunday. The air was a crisp 60 degrees when we started our assault on the mountain, and it really didn’t get much warmer as the day got older. There weren’t a lot of people there, which was strange because there wasn’t a cloud in the sky and the conditions were wonderful.

North Georgia had withstood a powerful storm system that passed through in the early morning hours on Saturday, but knowing Bear Creek and the elevation profile of that place, we knew the trail would drain great. Since it all slopes down to the creek, water clears off the trail very well. There were very few wet spots, and the trail was nice and tacky.

We parked at Gates Chapel Rd near the access road for the Bear Creek trailhead. This is about a 2 mile climb up an FS road to the trail, and it’s a good warmup, but I really hate it because it is a steady climb, and it’s just seems so long because you are anxious to get to the singletrack.

We finally get to the beginning of the trail, and so we hit it hard. Our goal is the Overlook and we know that it is pretty much a 5.5 mile climb, mostly steep, with very few breaks or places where you can do a rolling rest-stop (smooth downhills that you can recover on). We take a few pictures going up, and stop a few times to look around, but for the most part, it is grind-time. Grind out those climbs!

We make pretty good time to the first gate, which is about 4 miles in, so we pause for a quick water break and to get our lungs and heartrates back under control. We’re there about 5 minutes, and then we hit the FS road that will take us to the gravel road and on to the Overlook. In no time we’re at the deep creek crossing and on the gravel road. This is the worst part.

The gravel road is covered with large chunks of gravel, and it is steep. Steep. Steep. It takes me at least 15 minutes to cover the last half mile, because I’m in granny gear, and grinding at about 2.5 mph. Reaching the top, I was completely winded, and my legs were toast.

I leaned my bike against the Cohutta Stones and relaxed while Casey took some pictures. It was so nice up there. No clouds, everything turning green finally, a nice breeze blowing. The work it takes to get up this mountain is worth it just for the view, but there is an even better payoff waiting.

The trip back.

It took us about 1:30 to reach to Overlook. We had a terrible avg time, because it is a pretty difficult climb up for a fat boy like me, and we took our time so that we didn’t spend all our energy and end up missing the Overlook because we had no energy on the FS road. Going back is just a fast and furious downhill descent for 6 miles that really makes all the pain worth it.

We started down the gravel road, hitting a top speed of about 21 mph, then we shoot off onto the FS road, splash through Bear Creek, take a short climb and then it’s nothing but speed and sweepy turns for about a mile. We reach the first gate and hit the singletrack, and I’m having so much fun that I am whooping and making all sorts of racket. We’re hitting jumps, wheelie-ing through mudholes, ripping through the switchbacks….

That’s the reason we go to Bear Creek. It’s such a great trail, with the tall hardwoods, the rhododendrons, the wildlife, the creek, the view. We splash hard through the creek crossings and by the time we reach the trailhead, we’re both soaked and laughing.

The total time to make it back down from the overlook is something like 22 minutes. Total mileage is 12.81, and we were in the saddle for 1:59. Overall it’s a pretty good time, considering there’s a 2000ft elevation gain to get to the Overlook. We averaged 6.4 mph for the entire ride, which is good for me.

The last time I rode Bear Creek, I didn’t make the Overlook. I had a hard time and was really discouraged. It was a combination of cold, no sleep the night before, and pushing it too much early to keep up with the group. This time I went at my own pace and made much better time, and got to the Overlook with a lot of energy to spare. The moral is, do your own thing, don’t be influenced by the crowd.

See pictures here.

Sunday, we went to Conyers and rode the former Olympic course near the Georgia International Horse Park. This trail was developed for the Olympic mountain biking events and you can tell by the level of difficulty that it was not meant to normal human beings.

The trail is really 2 parts. At least that’s the way I think about it. Part one is a winding stretch of singletrack that rolls through forests and meadows along the southern side of the park. This side is supposedly the “easy” side, but it will still totally kick your ass from here to the moon. The people who designed this track didn’t believe in switchbacks. Every hill is climbed by traveling almost straight up the side of the hill, usually at the steepest angle available. Toss in a generous helping of roots, rocks, and bumps, and each climb is turned into a test of your will and endurance. The few downhill sections on this side are fun, but short and bouncy because the trail is so heavily used and rutted with erosion.

On part two of this trail, you ride on pieces of Stone Mountain that extend under a majority of the state of Georgia. I once read that the granite that makes up Stone Mountain lies under most of the Southeast, and if you dig deep enough anywhere in the region, you will eventually hit it.

This is the closest thing the East coast has to slickrock, but it is nothing like what you see in Utah. Oh, it’s slick, but it is also bumpy as hell. Riding this stuff is like riding a bike across a cobblestone street during an earthquake. Climbing on this stuff is a challenge because you are constantly fighting the handlebars just trying to maintain control. The trail is marked fairly well, but it is again a straight up and straight down affair. Eventually you reach some singletrack, where you have more climbing and very little descending. It seems like you spend the whole day climbing. You’ll start climbing right from the trailhead, and you are climbing the entire ride, even back to the trailhead!

To me, the descents aren’t very enjoyable at this place because they are usually real short and rutted as hell so you are constantly fighting for control, or trying to prepare for the next death-march climb.

I wanted to ride this trail again to kind of ‘gauge’ where I was with my riding. We rode this trail the first weekend I was back in Georgia. I didn’t really do that well and quickly added Conyers to the top of my list of Hardest Places I Have Ever Ridden. Going back after 4 months was a real let down. I thought I should have done better.

This time we rode Part 2 (granite side) first because we noticed the first time we rode that it was a bit more interesting, but we were so wasted from Part 1 that we really couldn’t enjoy it. It worked out pretty good and we had some real fun on the granite. The singletrack, with it’s straight up climbs sucked though. Personally, I don’t mind climbing, if there’s at least an equal amount of downhill to make it worth my while. This place is nothing but climbing. I found myself so whipped after each climb that I couldn’t enjoy the little bit of downhill.

We finally finished this side and took a good break for water back at the van and talked about how people do the 24 hour race here. I can’t imagine riding that granite crap at night. Scary.

We took off on Part 1 and it was all well and good until the first really steep climb. This is about 50 yards of at least than 12% grade. Casey made it but was hammered at the top. I walked it because I knew more was coming and didn’t want to spend my load on the first climb. It didn’t help.

We played around on the next section and took our time and took some pictures and then continued on with the climbing. The rest of the ride was pretty much a blur because I bonked big time. I didn’t just hit the wall, I knocked it over and it fell on me.

We finally made it back to the car and left. We decided that people that ride this are crazy, and people that ride it on a single speed need to be kept apart from regular society. This trail has been dubbed “Climber’s Paradise” by Casey and I. I don’t think we will be riding it again for a while. It is too far to drive and too punishing for the weekend warrior.