Lower Conner Mountain

It sucks to have a broken bike when it's your primary means of exercise and Adventure, but hey, that's how life is sometimes, right?

Whenever something breaks, I buy two replacements. I'm steadily amassing a pile of spare parts, but if it's something that hasn't broken before then it takes time for the part to come in, and even more time to get it working.

Shimano XT brakes are about the most bulletproof brakes out there, and yet the last two sets of them that I've owned have been nothing but trouble. Come to think of it, I've ALWAYS had a bad time with brakes. Back in the v-brake days, I had to fiddle with them non-stop. They would never return properly. One side always wanted to drag the rim. Even if I cleaned the hell out of them, lubed them, and adjusted them perfectly at home, after an hour on the trail, they'd suck again. If someone else adjusted them, it would be the same situation, despite theirs always working. I got a pair of Magura Martas way back, figuring they'd be better since Eddie had ridden them with no problem for years. Nope. Terrible. They constantly had to be bled, and if you'd bump a tree with the lever, it would blow out the piston in the lever and it would perpetually leak thereafter. Every pair of XT brakes I've owned has constantly needed to be bled, from day one. Glen, John, and I have all worked on them, and nobody could ever get them to work. Hell, John gave me a set of formerly-working XTRs from a bike that he's been cannibalizing for the past few years, and it turns out the pistons (in the calipers) are somehow super leaky. The bike has just been sitting in storage for a few years. How do ceramic pistons sealed against aluminum calipers go bad just sitting there in climate-controlled storage? The anwser is that since he gave them to me, they automatically went bad, as that is, apparently, a fundamental law of physics.

Enough ranting about brakes though. I say that my bike is my "primary means of exercise and Adventure" but it isn't my only means. I have two feet, and there's a whole world out there. So this past Sunday I went running around in the woods for a while.

I've been meaning to "finish" exploring lower Conner Mountain (below Cooper Gap Road) for a while now, so that's what I did. I parked about halfway up FS80, right by the old road, got my gear together, and got to it.

I haven't used my old GPS for quite a while. I've got an eTrex mounted on my stem, and that's what I use when I'm on the bike. I'm not sure if it's just getting old and busted, or if reception was just bad yesterday, but it just would not acquire satellites.

I eventually just stuck it in a pocket of my pack and hoped it would eventually acquire. My phone worked, and Strava can record, so I was covered on track data, I just couldn't mark any waypoints. Hopefully I wouldn't need to...

The first few spots that I wanted to check out turned out to be little logging networks. Interestingly, each of the little side trails started a ways up the backslope from the main road, but didn't continue below the road. I interpreted this as meaning that the road was cut, then the logging spurs were cut, and then the road was widened and improved later. I wonder if, at some point, it was officially FS80A.

There were a couple of interesting things out there.

It had rained a lot recently, and all over the place you could see the main path of a stream, and also new rivulets forming that just ran across open ground because some pool upstream was spilling over.

Streams wander and cut wide draws, or so you learn in Middle School Earth Science. It's neat to actually see it in action.

Of course... balloon.

There was an actual cut for the road to pass through at one point.

These are fairly unusual. I only know of two other cuts like this - one on the connector between the Puncheon Express and Hightower Express, and one near No-Tell. Well, arguably the road leading into the Cooper Creek WMA from the Cooper Creek store has a huge one, but it's modern. Usually, for a road, they just go up over the hill. Why bother cutting through? Sometimes it happens naturally as it just gets worn down over time, but all the ones I've mentioned look deliberate. It is common on old railbeds. The other two above are definitely not old railbeds. This one has a chance of being, as its grade is super flat and consistent, but if it was, then it was very temporary and wouldn't have done anything but haul timber back to FS80. Unless lower FS80 was also a railbed... That seems unlikely though.

Who knows?

I'd spotted this trail once before some previous time I was out here, but wasn't sure it was actually a trail. You can kind-of make out a bench-cut on the right hand side of the creek.

Turns out, yes, it is an old road, and it goes for quite a while before petering out up a draw.

There are lots of boulder formations uphill of the old road, most of which are almost completely obscured in the summer.

The last few years' storms have rerouted a stream and cut a new channel completely across the road.

That channel wasn't there at all the last time I was out there. This is the original channel.

The power of water!

Speaking of water, we've gotten a lot of rain lately, and all of the little streams and creeks were really tumbling.

Far enough up the Conner Mountain fork of Ward Creek there was a bit of a falls. It doesn't look like too much in the photo.

So, here it is in action.

I guess it still doesn't look like more than just a raging stream in the video. Trust me, there are several cascades. I wish there was something there for scale. It's actually one of those falls that you can see less of the closer you are to it, but from far away, there are too many trees in the way to get a good view. Ehh, it was still a nice find.

I also found this old PBR can and immediately thought of Glen.

Somebody graffitied a beech tree, but didn't put a year.

Come on, put a year!

Way out past where Old Cooper Gap Road crosses, there are a bunch of parallel trails that I always wanted to explore, but never did. They all come together at one point. You can go off in 7 different directions at that point, which I think is unique in the forest.

They were mostly just logging spurs. One of them seemed to get more Ranger Traffic than the rest.

But most were choked with deadfall or just generally overgrown.

One was a bit cleaner than the rest and may have been maintained as the continuation of the road I came in on for some time. It led out to the Cooper Gap Fork of Ward Creek, crossed it, and ended at what appeared to be a large circular area like you often see at the end of a proper forest road. A bit of a waterfall lay just upstream and downstream of the road.

Above...

Below...

An old road led up along the fork almost all the way to Cooper Gap. I mean, it blended into the draw within a few hundred feet of it.

Some garbage had even made it down from the road.

The trail was mostly clear...

...except for occasional, terrible deadfall...

...but at higher elevations there were thorns and other brush. It wouldn't be any fun in the summer.

The creek itself was picturesque.

The power of water was again on display though. Some very recent, very heavy erosion had made some interesting features. This one is deeper than it looks.

Back at the 7-point intersection, I ended up on an old road that paralleled Old Cooper Gap Road, and appeared to have been a reroute of it. Or maybe vice-versa. Rather than leading up the ridge, it sidehilled it. It was less worn-in, but steeper. At a point, the other Old Cooper Gap Road came in from the left and joined it.

Up there I found an old tire.

And a ton of big chunky rock, that I guess was blasted out to make the modern road, then just chucked downhill.

There was also a very recent landslide up there that obliterated a section of the old road.

Woo! Looked like it just happened. When I got home I sent the USFS a note about it, just in case they didn't know. It was below the new road, but I've seen them close roads to mitigate slides below them from time to time.

Again, the power of water!

Further up there were additional tires. Goodness, all the tires.

At a point, the old road just blended into the modern road, though it was a bit of work to actually scramble up to it.

I took Cooper Gap Road proper back to my truck. I'd been out for about 5 hours, it was getting to be late enough that the sun was well behind the mountain, and it was quite chilly up there.

Here's a shot of the landslide from the road itself.

And there was more of that "power of water" on the way down.

Yikes!

Two different folks offered me a ride, and one lady commented: "Aren't you freezing?!" It was a bit chilly, but I had plenty of warm clothes in my pack. I was actually enjoying the cold though, as weird as that seems. How often do you find yourself walking a down a mountain road at dusk, in shadow, cold breeze in your face, with the west faces of the adjacent ridges blazing at you through the woods? I was enjoying the whole experience, I guess, cold included.

I eventually made it back to my car, headed home, and ended up stopping a little north of Cumming at Palapas for dinner.

They have good Chili Colorado, which has been my go-to meal at unfamiliar Mexican restaurants of late. There was a huge family at one of the larger tables. Like 20 people or more. This one lady was so loud. I mean I could clearly hear everything she was saying from like 30 feet away. She wasn't yelling. She wasn't exceptionally garrulous. She wasn't talking to people at the other end of the table. Her natural speaking voice was just super loud. There was dynamic range in it. It wasn't just a constant steady loud volume that she couldn't control. I wondered if maybe it was just because she was facing me, but I watched the other people next to her, who were also facing me, and I could hear that they were talking, but I couldn't make out what they were saying. It must have been earsplitting to sit at the table with her, but nobody else at the table seemed to mind. It didn't ruin my evening or anything, but it was notable!

My knees and ankles were tired all evening and sore for most of the day today, which was a little surprising. Looking back though, the last time I did any significant hiking might have been in July of 2019 at Sloppy Floyd Park, and I remember back then thinking that it had been a while. Goodness. That's just too long. I like what hiking does for my joints. The bike is way better for cardio, but the moderate impact seems to keep my joints strong and healthy. When I was at my absolute fittest, I rode and hiked in nearly equal amounts, in hours at least. I also fished a lot.

Perhaps I should return to those old ways.