Cochran Mill

I've been doing a lot of my local rides at Blankets Creek, lately. This past Wednesday, I figured I'd change it up a bit and ride Cochran Mill. It had been a while since I'd been there and I love that place, so it seemed like a great idea, at the time.

What I neglected to consider, though, is that Cochran Mill is cursed. I'd crashed, pretty hard, 2 out of the last 3 times that I'd ridden there. All super random, too. The first time, I have no idea at all, what I hit, I was just suddenly OTB and ended up busting a rib. The next time, I was following my brother and caught a rock with my pedal that I didn't see because I was too close to him. OTB again and ripped my elbow up really bad.

But, then I had one good ride there, and I figured the curse was lifted.

Oh, far from it!

On the green loop, as you're headed back toward the road, there are various little bumps that I think were constructed. I always try to keep in mind that there is a set of 3 that looks like a set of 2 until you're in the middle of them, but I rememebered them being further down the trail than they were. I also didn't remember coming out of a curve into them.

At any rate, I rode into them, thinking it was just 2, and manualed them, as one does. Then I realized that there were three, got way back as the front came down, and nose-bumped the third one. Since it's kind of in a curve, and I was in the air for a bit, when I landed, I was just off-trail. I was also coming down pretty front-heavy, and way behind the seat. During the split second I was off trail, I hit something. No idea what, but it basically stopped the bike under me and my pelvis slammed into the seat from behind.

So, the seat is normally like this:

When I hit it, it broke the rear bolt, tipping it up like this.

And then as my body continued forward, it broke the seat completely off and this jagged, broken bolt...

Ripped right through my shorts, and right through my scrotum.

It was all super fast though. During all of that I was also jumping over the bars and throwing the bike out from under me. While in the air, I had to use my right forearm to glance off of a tree too. The whole maneuver was pretty complex, and since I actually landed on my feet at the end of it, for a second or two, I felt pretty good about how seemingly successfully I had bailed. Then I felt the breeze down below, and realized that my shorts were ripped open. Then it started to hurt, and I figured I'd given my nuts an atomic racking. A minute or so later, I could tell that it was worse than that, and after taking a quick look, it appeared that I would need stitches for sure.

My shorts were ripped open, but I keep a shirt in my top tube bag just to fill space, so I made a skirt out of that. I then picked up all of the broken parts that I could find and walked back to the truck.

I immediately thought of Mark B. who had a similar incident when a lady pulled out in front of him on the road and he went flying over the roof of her car. Couple of stitches, and he was fine. That seemed likely in this case too. It hurt like the dickens to walk around, but if I sat or stood still, it wasn't all that bad. Way less than I'd expect, at least.

I was thirsty and hungry, but really I just wanted something sweet to comfort myself with, so I put on my boxers and stopped at Charlie's on the way out, not realizing that I was bleeding all down the back of them. I can only imagine what the guy behind me in line must have thought.

The closest ER was actually the Cobb WellStar, which is also the nearest ER to my house. So, I went there, and checked in. They were super busy though, I wasn't dying, and I wasn't bleeding too terribly at the time, so it took some time.

After a while though...

Drip.

Drip drip.

All the walking around, changing positions, and skin contracting made it bleed more and more. Also, as a result of said walking around, changing positions, and skin contracting, one of my dudes had become completely exposed, which I discovered, to my horror, later, in the bathroom. It was definitely going to require more than a couple of stitches.

An AP checked it out: "Yeah, I can't do anything for this" and referred me for surgery. The poor urologist on call had to rush over from Kennestone. They only had one room available for me to wait in, in the psych ward. "You might hear some screaming." There was a lot of screaming.

A little while later, I was off to the OR. The consult with the anesthesiologist went like: "Any number of terrible things could happen, I'll enumerate them for you... [long list of horrible things] ...so, just sign here if you're cool with all of that." And you do, because you want all of your parts back together. Then nothing terrible happens and you feel bad that they're legally obligated to go through all of that with every patient. I'll bet some patients get really scared and the doctors have to handle that somehow.

When I woke up, I remember having the urge to talk to the nurse in Portuguese and having to make an effort not to. I have no idea why, and we joked about it a little later. People have weird urges and they say weird things as they're waking up.

It turns out that, as gruesome as the injury sounds, it's pretty easy to fix, and is surprisingly not painful after. Basically, if I wasn't actively fumbling with the wound site, then it didn't hurt at all.

It sure does bleed though. My goodness. I met with an AP the next day who said that they like for wounds like this to bleed a bit, so they don't stitch them up with too many sutures. The bleeding helps flush out infection and prevents swelling, which prevents pain. We both got a good chuckle out of talking about it too. It's funny when someone takes a shot to the nuts, as long as they're ok. At that point I was ok, so at that point, it was funny.

I went home Thursday afternoon in mesh granny panties with a bunch of what turned out to be very inadequate dressings stuffed into them. I ran by the Walgreens to pick up the antibiotics that they prescribed me and had the most awkward consult of my life with the pharmacist. Actually, it wasn't that awkward for her. Like all the other health care professionals that I'd interacted with over the past few days, she was super, supr pro. It was really awkward for the guy standing nearby waiting for his prescription though, or at least I gathered that it was from his animated body language as it occurred to him what we were talking about.

Me: "...something, something, gruesome injury... ...like a pad for the heaviest flow imaginable. Something like that."

Her (as if she gets this kind of question all the time): "Ah yes, on aisle such-and-such we have [rattles off various brands and specs] but I think you should try the Depends undergarments on the endcap of this other aisle [rattles off additional specs and rationales]..."

She was right, and I ended up doubling up on two different Depends products:

And man, I'm glad I did. I'd bleed through the stuff they sent me home with from the hospital in under an hour, but the doubled-up Depends would last about 3 or 4, and longer if I was sleeping.

Still, it seemed like a lot of blood.

When I'd stand in the tub, about to take a shower, it would drip once every two seconds or so. An AP called me back Friday and after talking to her about it, she was like: "Yeah, that's way too much blood."

From there it was a bit of a goose chase, as they had never taken my ID or insurance info at the hospital, only had some old info for me from like 2016 when I'd come in once for a broken rib, thought I was still on Humana, and sent me to a urologist that was out of network for my actual insurance. The appointment also got set up incorrectly in the various systems. One had me for that day, another for the following Monday. I had to go back and forth from the 4th to the 2nd floor a couple of times to figure out what office to be at too. The bathroom was also all the way at the very other end of the hall from the office... So much walking. It was the absolute last thing in the world that I wanted to do. Everything got straightened out eventually though, they took a good look, and sent me back at the ER for a few additional sutures.

According to one of the PAs in the ER, word had gotten around about my injury. This seemed like the case, as I kept getting some variant of "So you're that guy?" whenever someone new would see me. They took a photo of the injury when I'd first come in, to send to urology. I bet that made the rounds too.

Modern emergency healthcare is a hell of a system. It's definitely a little clumsy; you wait a lot, you're pretty uncomfortable most of the time, and you pay for it. But when you rip your groin open. I'll be damned... An army of people coalesce, put you back together, and prevent you from bleeding to death over the next few days.

That's a win!

Everything seems pretty good now. I'm barely bleeding at all any more. I hope this positive trend continues. If it does, I should be hiking in a few weeks and back on the bike in 6 or so. We'll see though, I've got a long way to go and a broken seat to think pretty hard about.

Cooper Gap Area

I made a resolution, last year, to hike more. The bike is great and all, but the medium impact of hiking seems to be good for my joints. I feel more like an old man getting up off the couch when I haven't been hiking a lot, and I've really started to notice it over the past few years.

As resolutions typically go though, it was difficult to stick to. Illness and travel didn't help. But this past Sunday, I did make it up to the Cooper Gap Area to check out some trails that I'd been meaning to explore for a while.

I'd explored the same area on my last 2 hikes, but while crunching the GPS data, I noticed a road that I'd missed in the lidar data. Can't let that go unexplored...

I parked at Cooper Gap, said hi to an AT thru-hiker that was setting up camp, headed east a bit, then dropped down over the edge into the cove below. I found the road I was looking for almost immediately.

It's right there, can't you see it?

Jokes aside, it was super, super overgrown, and semi-difficult to follow. I did follow it though, and uphill it ended after maybe 100 yards. It looked like it legitimately ended there too. Like it always had, and not like it ever made it all the way up to present-day FS42.

Logging road?

Probably. I'd sure love to meet someone with definitive knowledge though

I followed it down, and discovered two interesting things along the way.

Some tornado-flung roofing was lying a bit west of the trail.

There were several piles of "organized rocks" a ways down too.

The trail eventually just became another trail that I'd already explored. When I'd last been out there, I hadn't noticed that it continued because of how flat it was at that spot, and because of a tangle of downed trees.

I kept going down and down and down, and eventually picked up another old roadbed that I hadn't explored yet. It was much like Old Cooper Gap Road - worn in very deeply below grade in a lot of places. Like Old Cooper Gap Road, it struck me less as having been built for logging, and more as having just been the way people went up the mountain, which had clearly been rerouted many, many times over the years.

Eventually that old roadbed bent around and teed in to Old Cooper Gap Road, which just made that theory more credible. But really, if you follow it up the mountain, it doesn't go anywhere. I just ends, abruptly, short of the gap, in very steep terrain. So, IDK. Maybe there was an original route, followed by some reroutes, followed eventually by the modern road, and then the original routes were used for logging, spurs were cut off of them and eventually abandoned, but continued to get recreational use for some time, causing them to get worn in below grade, until they eventually became inaccessible or impassible and finally overgrown. I don't love explanations like that though, as they require a lot of assumptions, but that does fit with the evidence.

Again, maybe someday I'll run into someone who knows for sure.

Down near the bottom end, the road sat on a ridge that dropped down pretty steeply to some feeder of Ward Creek.

It was actually pretty spectacular in real life, but was difficult to get a representative photo of.

I managed to find a bearing tree...

...and an NF boundary marker down at the bottom end too.

Pure luck that I saw them too, as they were both pretty well obscured behind some deadfall.

Speaking of which, "obscured behind some deadfall" would be a good description of everything down there. This was pretty typical:

I climbed over, under, and around that kind of thing, most of the day.

I actually recognized where I was when the trail teed into Old Cooper Gap Road, and since I didn't have the motivation to backtrack and explore every little spur that I'd marked on the way down, I just took it back up to the gap.

About halfway up I got a call from Sophie's friend Madi, but the call quality was so bad that neither of us could understand each other. It worried me a bit though. Why was Madi calling me? The last time that happened, Sophie was super sick. Then I got a call from Sophie. Again, we couldn't understand each other. I climbed and climbed, hoping to get better reception. Eventually I did, got a call from Madi again, and this time we could understand each other. Sophie was at the Renaissance Fair with Madi and others, but had no 5G service, and she wanted to know if I could check her bank account to see if she had enough money to but some stuff. Madi's phone just worked better than hers.

Ha!

By then I had decent service. Yes, she had plenty of money.

Man, this connected world we live in. I can be deep in the woods and check my kid's bank account.

On the way up to the gap, I found this lonely Wild Azalea.

I'd seen a few on the way down, but they were all pretty far away. It was great to see one up close.

At the gap, there was a different AT thru-hiker in the campsite. The first guy looked like he was stopping for a while, but I guess it had been a while, and he had gotten moving again. This guy also looked like he was stopping for a while, but I couldn't be sure.

From there, I followed a trail north. This was another trail that I'd seen on lidar data, and had marked on my map, years ago, but never actually checked out. Just finally getting around to it. I suspected that it had been the original route of FS15, as it appeared to just bomb down from the gap and tee into FS15. What would I find though?

Well, the upper half of it was very well worn. Various fire rings indicated that AT hikers camp down there at times. Past the last fire ring, it got overgrown though, and there was deadfall here and there. It was a proper old roadbed though, probably 20 feet wide at points. It was a good bench cut too, and didn't show any immediate signs of unstainable wear. If it was a former route, why had it been abandoned?

I eventually found the answer. Further down it intersected a creek, and hung a left. The creek appeared to have once flowed to the north of the road, but over time had moved such that it flowed directly down the road for several hundred yards. Below that, the road was very wide, and very below grade. So, yeah, it had become a mess, right there, and rerouting it was the best option. I have a map from 1889 (I think) though, that shows it in its current configuration. So, it made me wonder just how long ago it had been since anyone really used that section that I was on.

Climbing back up FS15, I immediately noticed a new house, right there on the road. The owners were hanging out, and I talked to them as I went by. It had apparently been a while since I'd been to that exact spot, because they'd built it about 2.5 years ago! Nice place though.

The switchback at the top of FS80 felt steep, even on foot. Many years ago, my Dad and I had rode the Canada Creek loop, and he stopped like 200 yards from the gap, then kicked himself later for not riding the final 200 yards. I did the same on a ride with Eddie and Shey a few years back. If it feels steep hiking though, it's officially steep, so I called my Dad later to tell him that.

Back at the truck, I got changed and headed back down the mountain. There was a really nice repair on FS80 near Sky Orchard.

It looked really sketchy the last time I was up there. It was good to see it repaired.

I forget exactly what I did for dinner, so I guess it wasn't too important.

Good day overall though. I didn't hit it too hard and blow myself up, but it was still pretty satisfying. It did take a minute to get used to something always touching me, but that's just how it is off-trail, this time of year.

Now, I crave more of it.

Bearhoti

When I was in Texas, I'd gotten to feeling pretty good. I could stay on the gas for two hours at a time. I was enjoying being out in the elements. No urge to go back inside, even in the wind and heat. That changed a bit when I got back home though. Isabel was coaching her teams at a gym meet up in Cumming, hosted by the Gymsations, her home team! I couldn't miss that. But, I think now that everybody is getting out again, we're spreading around germs that had been isolated to our own communities. Maybe. Who knows for sure, but the point is, I caught a cold and was back on the couch for a week.

But, then as quickly as it came, it went again, and during the week that followed, I felt as good on the bike as I had in Texas. But, these were local rides, and since no amount of not climbing in the mountains can keep me in shape for climbing in the mountains, I headed up to Mulberry Gap last weekend to put in some work.

I figured I'd ease into it with the Bearhoti and maybe add in P3 at the end if I was still feeling good. So, I checked in, and while I was at it, grabbed a pair of gloves. At Mulberry Gap, you can get Handups with "Ride the Pinhoti" on the palms and some MGap-themed artwork. My existing pair were getting worn. Not worn out, but definitely worn, and I needed some fallbacks.

A quick-change later and I was rolling out, and feeling good.

I headed north, passed the firetruck...

...and hung a right up CCC Camp.

Almost immediately I ran into Mark Baldwin. He had some kind of communication breakdown with the folks he was supposed to be riding with, ended up on his own, and was headed over to climb Tibbs. While that sounded "fun", Mark is strong, and I was in uncertain shape at best, so we chatted a bit, but both got going our separate ways before our respective heart rates dropped too much.

There's an old chimney on CCC Camp.

I may have gotten a picture of it before, but that day there were a million bright purple flowers in front of it. Sadly, they barely show up in the photo. In real life, they were so striking that I'd stopped to look at them.

I ran into a group of I think 5 riders at Holly Creek Gap. Nobody I knew though. We said hellos, but they didn't follow me immediately.

When you're climbing FS68, you have to stop at Barnes Creek Falls, I mean come on.

As I was pulling back out onto the road, I heard some mechanical noises behind me. One of the guys I'd seen at Holly Creek Gap was trucking it up the road behind me. He caught me pretty quickly and we chatted all the way up to the overlook.

Pretty nice guy! He and his crew were over from Greenville. They ride Pisgah quite a bit, but had yet to hit up the Mulberry Gap area. I was going to tag along with their group, but after 4 or 5 minutes of nobody els showing up, I figured I ought to get going before I got too cooled off and headed up to the upper lot.

The trail conditions on Bear Creek and P1 were as perfect as I've ever seen them. Tacky but not damp. Perfect grip. Slightly overgrown just to let you know that you're really in the Forest. Ideal, to me at least.

I noticed what looked like new trail work on lower Bear Creek too. Some regrading, and some "divert the trail, not the water" tactics. I'm sure there are plenty of people who feel like Bear Creek is ruined forever now, but the work looked really good to me. I guess I should mention that I inspected while descending at full speed though, so take that with whatever salt seems appropriate. I'll be interested to see how it performs over the next few years.

Below the Poplar, but above P1, I ran into a pair of hikers coming up, with a happy-looking dog.

On P1 I ran into a day hiker prtty quickly after getting on the trail, and another couple of day hikers right at the top of the toughest climb on that section. We chatted for a minute. It's nice to talk to folks, but I'll admit that I was also happy to have a good excuse to rest for a bit. Just past the Boy Scout Bridge, I ran into another hiker. This time, a through-hiker though. He'd hiked the entire Pinhoti from the terminus in Alabama, was going to pick up the BMT at the end, take it over to Springer, and take the AT approach down to Amicalola. He'd been on the trail about 15 days already... I think or maybe some part of his hike was planned to be 15 days. I don't remember exactly. It was really cool talking to him though. It was also just great to see the Georgia Pinhoti getting a good amount foot traffic. It gets plenty of bikes, but it's a gorgeous trail. I really should hike it myself, someday.

Near the food plots at the end of P1 there were a million of those same purple flowers that I'd seen earlier.

Somehow, again, they really didn't show up that well in the photo.

One thing that does show up well in photos though... Everything is REALLY leafing out up there right now.

That gorgeous spring green is everywhere. Spring green and moving shadows on the trail. It's that time of year again.

I ran into another rider at the P2 lot, but I'm not sure if he was following me or going the other way. I passed another guy right at the start of the P2 singletrack too. As with Bear Creek and P1, the trail conditions on P2 were perfect and riding it was a blast. I felt fast, but looking at Strava later, I didn't set any PRs, so apparently I've been faster.

I didn't have the motivation to head up P3, but I did notice that the FS had built a new parking lot just up the hill toward the gap. I guess thats better than people parking up and down the road all the time.

Back at Mulberry Gap, I learned that they'd hired a new chef, who was originally from, of all places, Louisiana! I didn't meet her that day, but hopefully I'll get a chance to soon.

I'd heard some hammering earlier, and figured it was Andrew working on something. I eventually ran into him, and it turned out that he and Kate had finally been able to move into their new place down the road, and that he was renovating the cabin that they'd been staying in before. At the point that I ran into him, he was painting. Nothing worse than painting. Throughout the years of maintaining a rental property, I've volunteered to do all manner of more difficult stuff to avoid painting. Poor guy.

I talked to Chad for a bit too. He managed to sell his house but it took two unplanned trips to Louisiana to get it done.

Kate was in Arkansas riding gravel, so I didn't see her. I did get to talk to Tori and Jackie a bit, but they were working, so it was mostly guest/host-related stuff.

Overall though, it was super, super satisfying. While it's not the most strenuous loop, I was able to stay on the gas for most of it, and I felt really comfortable climbing everything. It also just felt great to be up in the Forest and even better to be warm the whole time.

More to come?