Frozen Knob

This past Sunday, you'd think I'd have done some epic mountain biking but for some reason these days, I feel more like hiking. I go through phases like that, I think. When I haven't done something for a while, I suddenly get a hankering for it, then it's all I want to do for a while, then I suddenly get a hankering for something else, and so on. These days I get that with the road bike, the mountain bike and hiking, but when I was a teenager I alternated between freestyle and skateboarding. Back then I called it the Vander Syndrome after Dave Vanderspeck who was a pro freestyle rider and skater back in the 80's and he talked about alternating between them like that in an article I read once. Google Vanderspeck when you get a chance. He came up with some rad tricks and died an odd death. Bark hard curb dog.

But I digress.

All that Oliver Creek adventuring last week made me want to explore Frozen Knob, which is right next door. I've seen maps alleging that there are "trails" up there and for the longest time I've had little dotted lines on my maps of the area. No longer! I won't stand for it.

I parked at Old 69G and a quick survey of the surrounding area yielded faint signs of human traffic uphill from there. Those led to an old roadbed which eventually led to an actual road. Not like an old abandoned road, but a somebody-drove-a-truck-on-it yesterday road. What? How did this escape previous detection? I really wanted to find out but I suddenly realized that I had neither map nor phone in my possession.

My heart sunk as it has only sunken once before, when I thought I'd lost my GPS. With the GPS though, it was like losing a companion and I felt a much deeper sense of loss. With the phone I was mainly worried that it would cost me a lot of money to replace it and I wouldn't be able to take any photos. The map was a less significant loss, but it meant I might not be able to explore as much as I'd like. I generally like to have a map with me when I'm off trail.

I'd stopped twice earlier. Once on the side of the road, right by my car, to let my GPS sync up, then again later to fiddle with my pack. Perhaps I'd set the map and phone down on the ground at one of those locations and left it. It took a bit of work but I found the spot I'd stopped to fiddle with my pack. No phone. No map. However, as it turned out, for some odd reason, I'd put the map in my pack. Why? I don't know, but I did. Ok, one down. The phone was not there though. I whacked back to the road as quickly as possible but the phone wasn't there either. Had someone picked it up? Had I dropped it somewhere else? No. I'd left it in the car. In the car! I was glad that's where it was, but seriously, that's just silly.

With phone, map and GPS, finally in hand, I hit the reset button on the adventure and made my way back up to that road I'd found earlier. It turned out it led to a campsite one way and FS69 in the other. Maybe somebody had always been camped there in the past and I never had an opportunity to check it out. Ok, mystery solved.

The map alleged a trail around there somewhere, leading up to Little Frozen Knob, but after quite a bit of looking there was nothing to be found. There was supposedly another one to the south though, so I headed that way along the road.

Along the road, as I am prone to do, I got distracted by the sound of rushing water and headed off immediately into the woods to check it out.

Yeah... Good call.

There was an old road there too and either an old bridge or ford right below the falls. It appeared that I wasn't the first to discover it though.

The old road appeared to have been the route used to build the dam that forms Rock Creek Lake.

I couldn't resist following it for a while, nor following the fishing trail that it led to which went almost all the way around the lake.

There were a couple of people camped out on the east side. It's amazing how well voices carry across calm water. From all the way across the lake, I could hear them speaking as if they were 20 feet away.

When the trail petered out I picked up Old 69A and eventually just bushwhacked down to Rock Creek where I reprised my Friday luck and crossed on some fallen trees without getting my feet wet. Ha!

The loop around the lake was a nice diversion but it didn't get me any closer to my objective. I didn't see any distinct trail where one was alleged to be, but I'd long noticed a little trail leading up the hill across from the lake, not terribly far away from there so I checked it out.

Somebody had been camping along it and had apparently heard that you can start a fire with dryer lint.

There was also a balloon nearby, lending further credibility to my one-ballon-per-square-mile theory. This one wasn't mylar though.

A densely overgrown logging road led uphill for a while, then became clear enough for a nice view of the hillside below...

...before ending abruptly.

Grrr. No trail. Fine! No trail. I headed uphill anyway.

I first crossed another old roadbed, but it ended right where I crossed it and led downhill in the other direction. Before long though, I ended up crawling my way up over a series of rocky outcroppings.

The whole western face was strewn with outcroppings and cliffs. It was tough to capture the coolness of it in a photo though.

As I neared the summit, a "trail" appeared, coming in from the northwest. It matched the location of the first one I'd been looking for. I yearned to follow it downhill and see where it came from. How could I have missed it earlier? I say "trail" because it barely counted as a trail. It was more of a "people-go-that-way". I followed it up though and once I had a line on it, it was fairly easy to follow. It led right where it should have too, up and over Little Frozen Knob and east along the ridge.

Unfortunately there wasn't much to see up there. There were a few interesting rock formations, but nothing big and crazy. The views were mostly obstructed by leaves or brush. I alternated between following a well defined trail and just going in the most open-looking direction through the woods. Several old logging roads intersected here and there and a couple of trails looked like they led out along various spurs or ridges. There was very little trash but the bits I found looked like Ranger gear.

Toward the eastern end, I did, finally encounter some points of interest.

This tree had been struck by lightning, had burned almost completely and was barely hanging on by an inch or two of wood at the base and then again halfway up.

I feared that the wind would blow it over before I got the photo.

On Frozen Knob proper, another tree was eating this ancient WMA boundary sign.

While ascending Frozen Knob, I heard what at first I thought was a deer sneezing. As ridiculous as that sounds, it sounded even more ridiculous in my head when I first thought it, but I couldn't imagine what else it could be, unless it was some other animal sneezing. It wasn't a snort. Then I heard it again. And again! I finally just stopped and stood still for a while. It never happened again though and eventually I moved on.

Not a quarter mile later, I discovered a big pile of trees that had just been cut. They still smelled strongly of sap.

I puzzled over the trees for a few moments. They hadn't been dropped across the trail, nor over a campsite. The trees themselves looked healthy. They were of several different sizes and species. There was no paint on them, nor on any other trees in the area. I could not, for the life of me understand why they had been cut. Finally though, I noticed that whoever cut them had tried a few times on each tree before finally getting their cut in the right spot. Maybe somebody was practicing cutting down trees. Hmmm. There was no oil smell though. Maybe they were practicing with a crosscut saw. Maybe the sound I'd heard earlier was the noise made by a crosscut saw. Maybe they were still practicing and had just moved to a different location. Who knows. It made more sense than a deer sneezing, but it remains another mystery.

At Low Gap, I lost the trail and spent a while looking for it. Maybe it ended there. No, I eventually found it. It looked like an old road led over the top of the knob to the east and the trail followed it.

At the top of the hill, there was this ancient orienteering marker.

"Number 2." There are markers all over the place in the woods surrounding Camp Merrill. I've found dozens of them over the years, and posts they've been removed from. This might be the oldest generation of them though. Newer-looking ones are made of plywood and a few years back they started using professionally-made-looking ones coated in reflective paint. I think this one might be the most distant from the camp that I've found yet. And, it's funny, every one of the ammo-box markers that I've found have been filled with acorns.

It doesn't look like anybody goes past Low Gap all that much from the west, or approaches from the east very often. There were a series of old logging roads leading down from the knob to Frank Creek but they were barely passable.

When I got to FS346, it wasn't dark yet, but I didn't have that much time before it would be.

As much as I wanted to backtrack and discover the source of the trail along the ridge, I knew by the time I got there, it would be too dark to follow with any confidence. Oh well, maybe next time.

I jogged along the road for a mile or so before giving that up and just marching. Man, I suck at jogging.

It got darkish in the woods around 7:15 but I made it back to the car before it was officially dark.

Once again, I managed to knock 3 dotted lines off my maps, only to add about 15 more. That's how it is. What would I do if I ever ran out of places to go.

Silver Comet

This past Saturday was family day.

We hung around the house all morning, then around noon we headed over to my parents' house for an hour or two. They were still in town, but leaving for Dallas on Sunday.

Since we were on their side of town, we took a little ride on the Silver Comet.

Kathryn's got a new Townie. I wasn't too sure when we were first looking at cruisers at the shop but this one has plenty of gears, 700c rims, skinny tires, presta valve road tubes, quick release hubs, and it weighs only slightly more than my mountain bike. In other words, I can throw it around, put it on my rack and fix it in the field without carrying anything else, unlike the girls' bikes which require different tubes, different CO2 thingies and a 15mm wrench to take off the wheels. Not too bad.

We parked somewhere out in Paulding County and headed west.

It was mostly uphill on the way out.

At one point we had to take a little detour.

When my dad and I had been through there on the side-trail a few months back, bad rain had triggered a couple of landslides in that area. The side trail had been crushed and there were plastic fences along the silver comet.

They weren't working on it at the time, but they had put a lot of work in recently. They'd even put in a bench cut about halfway down where I suppose the side trail will be run.

It's funny though, the Silver Comet is a rail-trail and for the most part, doesn't exceed 1% grade, but the detour was steep.

Inconceivably steep for somebody that rides the Silver Comet often. Sophie and Kathryn had to walk but Isabel stood up and cranked it out. Nice climb Iz.

We rode all the way out to the Tara Drummond trailhead, then took a snack break.

According to a memorial there, the trailhead is dedicated to a local woman who died in a training accident while attending the police academy.

There was another family there with 3 little kids. The older boy and girl were sharing a bike and their parents were videotaping them. Meanwhile the younger daughter kept picking berries off the nearby laurel bushes and putting them in her mouth. The parents were preoccupied with the other kids so Kathryn had to mention it to them. They tried to keep an eye on her but if they turned their backs for a second, she was right back at it.

I talked to a guy who had 10 miles left of a 50 mile out-and-back. He looked like it would take everything he had to finish.

There had been a bunch of people in CBC jerseys earlier too. It seemed like every group we passed had one or two in it. I kept wanting to spin back and ask them what CBC stood for but after I thought of doing that I didn't see another one all day.

The return trip went by a lot faster.

Primarily, it was almost all slightly downhill, but also, the girls and I rode an pseudo-paceline most of the way back. The last time we were out there, we'd done it team time trial style but this time we did quick turns and we were really flying. Kathryn declined to rotate and had to yo-yo off the back all the way in.

We rode by a snake and turned around to check it out.

At first I thought it was a rat snake but I mostly see black rat snakes in Georgia so I didn't recognize it. It turns out it's a grey rat snake. I've only seen one of them before and that one was a juvenile, which is much lighter between the spots. I love snakes.

The rest of the trip back was uneventful. Kathryn even had a good time. On the way out she'd been a little uncomfortable but we adjusted her bars and seat at Tara Drummond and they felt good on the way back.

My folks joined us for some dinner at The Italian Oven which is one of my favorite places to eat in all of Atlanta. I usually go for their Pasta Deluxe but this time it was the Barbecue Chicken Pizza. Oh yeah. BBQ and Pizza.

Top notch.

Oliver Branch

Oh man, I've got a backlog. Too many adventures in too short a time. I'd better get to more writing or less exploring. One or the other.

After a miserable failure last Thursday I went back to the Oliver Branch area Friday evening and made non-stop discoveries until and even after dark. One was so significant that it felt like discovering the northwest passage. That was literally the first analogy that came to mind when I found it. I've been reading a lot of Jules Verne lately.

Apparently there's an old road that runs along the ridge to the south of Oliver Branch. It eventually peters out but there's a "trail" along the ridge too that leads up to good old "89".

I'd been up there from several different directions before but never this one. It's a neat little place.

I still want to know who numbered it 89 though, and why. There's a 59 at FS42 and 42A too. Mysteries.

I long imagined there might be a route in the general direction of the one I took but every time I looked in the past, I just found old overgrown logging roads. This time though, it was the northwest passage.

On the way back down I discovered a shoe.

It was a really old-school running shoe. An animal had eaten the soft part out of the sole. The weirdest part is that I'd seen the other shoe of the pair earlier in the day, torn to shreds and 3/4ths embedded in the ground about a mile and a half away. How it is that someone came to lose both of their old-school running shoes in the absolute middle of nowhere is another mystery. The first shoe was so deteriorated that I'd left it alone. This one though, I packed out.

The woods is full of old cables. This one appears to have once been strung between two trees on the other side of an old ford on Oliver Creek.

I'd bet that in years past there were properties all up and down FS69 like there are along Conasauga Road today. The area beyond the cable is wide open too, with big trees, like maybe it had never been logged. I can only imagine an entire forest like that.

As cool as it was to find a route up to 89, it wasn't really what I was hoping to find.

Ages ago I'd walked out past the end of FS251 for a while but I was a less accomplished explorer back then and didn't venture too far. There appeared to be a maze of old roads back there though and if you look at the topography, it just really seems like one of them ought to drop down to FS69. So far though, I'd found nothing leading up there from below.

I had one last unexplored little spur on my map though. It looked promising but it didn't work out as well as it looked like it might. It led in the right direction but eventually became very overgrown after first becoming so steep that I can't imagine anyone ever driving anything on it. Clearly they must have though.

The view down into the valley was beautiful.

It's trying really hard to be fall.

I looked around and it was clear that people head up the old road then take a left up the adjacent hillside. I thought the old road had been steep but the hillside made it look like nothing. It was hands and feet all the way up. I assume the route is used by Rangers, with their 60 pound packs and unlimited hardness. I struggled with my little camelback. At the top it teed into a maze of old logging roads which eventually led to the end of FS251. Surely the one that used to be the continuation of 251 would go somewhere, right? Nope. It was mostly clear but right before it led into the Mill Creek valley it became highly overgrown. I always wonder how that happens. Did I miss a turn that most people take? Do hunters just walk out, set up in a tree stand all day and walk back? Is it just open as much as it is because of explorers like me? I always wonder.

I'd wagered daylight on Old 251 leading somewhere and when it didn't pay out, I was stuck with two pockets full of dark. Fortunately the moon was full, and for a while I had enough light to sort-of see by. I didn't really want to descend that hillside I'd climbed earlier though so I took another old road down. As fate would have it, it ended up going exactly where I'd hoped Old 251 would go. It was truly dark though. The hillside even hid the moon. I don't know whether to classify the trail as reclaimed or not. It felt overgrown, but in the dark, anything but the clearest trail does. Somewhere near the bottom I lost the path. It had either ended or turned abruptly. After a short bushwhack I found Rock Creek though, and in a rare stroke of good luck, I hit it right where a bunch of trees had fallen across. I didn't even get my feet wet.

In the moonlight, the road was as clear as day and I got back to my car quickly. Some people were setting up camp nearby and seemed somewhat surprised to see me walking by in the dark.

All right. Now that's what I'm talking about. Much better than Thursday. Still though, I'd hoped to be able to eliminate a bunch of little dotted lines from my map but in the end I think I actually added some. Isn't that how it always is though?

Oliver Branch

Me and Tim's Winding Stair excursion the other day gave me a hankering to do some exploring. There's an area up in the former Blue Ridge WMA that I've wanted to go wandering around in for years. It even looked like there were a couple of trails there and I had an idea where they might go, or at least one of them. Today I drove up to check it out.

Unfortunately I forgot to change the batteries in my GPS before I left and it died about 20 minutes into my hike.

Come on!

I had a map and a compass and I know how to navigate, but I didn't even have a pen so I couldn't plot the trails on my map or crunch the data later, which is about 20% of the fun for me. Blah.

I wandered around for a while but I didn't find anything that went where I thought it would.

For my trouble though, I was rewarded with some interesting sights.

This barrel was apparently discarded long ago and then the tree grew in around it.

I also found a small falls on Rock Creek.

The forest to the north of Oliver Creek appears to either have never been logged, or logged infinitely long ago. It was wide open with big trees. All the trails in the area appear to have been part of a logging network though. Maybe they spared that little section.

The area was interesting and I'm going back next chance I get. Hopefully next time I'll remember to get some new batteries.

Buford Dam

Kathryn and I went for a walk around the Buford Dam area today. I'd noticed a day or two ago that on my trails site that I don't have photos of a couple of trailheads around there. It's just up the road so it seemed like a good place to go.

We parked at the Lower Overlook Park.

Here's that trailhead.

Exciting, eh?

Kathryn stopped to tie her shoe and I noticed she was surrounded by a veritable forest of poison ivy.

It's all turning red and dying these days, but it was amazing how tall it was growing. The stalks were even thick and woody.

We took the Laurel Ridge Trail down to the Lower Pool Park. It looked like the Corps had done some work since the last time I was there. They'd gravelled a few sections and trees were dropped across a bunch of the little side trails. I can't remember when I was last there, but it must have been a while ago because the trees they'd cut down had already turned old and black.

Here's the Lower Pool Lot.

Again, exciting, eh?

There are some nice sights at the Lower Pool though.

A footbridge over the Chattahoochee River:

The gorge cut to reroute the river through the powerhouse.

There's a parking lot up above the river that has almost never been open. Over the years I've lived here, it and the road leading to it were steadily deteriorating into gravel. At the top of a hill to the east, there was a park with a playground and some pavillions and we'd always noticed that it was deteriorating too. Last year though, everything was repaved and cleaned up and I swear I saw a few cars in the upper lot a couple of times.

Today we walked back along the newly repaved road, but it had a new gate across it at the top. The road leading to the Upper Overlook Park was marked private too and the "Upper Overlook Park" sign was missing.

We looped around and took the trail up to it though. It was all shiny and new looking, but definitely closed.

There were cones blocking the road leading in.

Kathryn said she'd read that several parks around the lake were being closed; there just isn't enough money to keep them open. It actually made sense for that one to be closed. It's up at the top of a hill with no bathrooms and no access to anything but the Laurel Ridge Trail. There are like 5 or 6 other parks within a mile that have direct lake or river access, and trail access, and bathrooms, and a larger lot. I guess it's too bad they decided to close it right after it was fixed up though.

Yay, I got the photos I wanted. Our walk was good too.

Score.

Jackrabbit

Oh! It's fall. Fall, fall, fall. That means 65 degree temps and beautiful weather. There's nothing better than doing stuff outside in early fall.

Nothing!

My folks are in town and today my dad and I took full advantage of the fall weather.

Full advantage!

I'd told him all about the race at Jackrabbit last week and how awesome the trail was and it piqued his interest substantially. I wouldn't normally ride the same trail two weeks in a row, especially if I just spent 6 hours there, but I've done it before at Dry Creek, and for a trail like Jackrabbit, it was worth making another exception, especially since my dad has never ridden there.

We got a late start but it didn't matter, there was still plenty of daylight when we got there.

I called Clark on the way up but he and Suzy had just finished riding at Yargo. Hah. I was up by his house and he was down by mine.

Every ride has its share of adversity and right off the bat we had a bit to contend with. My dad has lost a good bit of weight lately and his shorts are now sagging down in the front. That's probably the best problem you can have with a pair of shorts though. Tomorrow's his birthday, so maybe we can find a solution.

Jackrabbit is great. I'm not sure what I can say that I haven't before. It's fast, fun, swoopy and well built. Refer to my recent entry about the race there for a full description.

The next bit of adversity we had to contend with began as soon as we rolled out. My dad pedaled forward but his bike didn't go anywhere. The pawls just didn't engage in his hub. Then it worked fine a second later. He thought maybe it had dried up a bit and the cold weather compared to what they've been getting in Dallas was making the grease sticky.

Hmmm.

We proceeded.

Jackrabbit delivered. The weather delivered. We suffered neither sweat nor boredom, nor lack of beautiful scenery.

The overlook.

Saba Beach.

While I was taking pictures, my dad was fiddling with his phone, also taking pictures. I should have taken a picture of him taking a picture of me.

There was a Persimmon tree out by the beach with the biggest persimmons ever dangling precariously from its branches. I picked a ripe one.

Persimmons taste like that Dreamsicle flavor. Kind of vanilla-orange. My dad trusted me and ate part of it. I like persimmons because they're so big and sweet. Most wild edibles are either little berries or some horribly bitter shred of greenery. Even wild apples, or feral apples as they might be more properly called, are usually bitter. But persimmons are big, juicy and delicious, assuming they are ripe. Yum.

That problem my dad had with his hub earlier kept recurring. He'd coast for a few seconds and then it wouldn't engage. At first, he could just pedal quick and it would pick up. After a while we had to shake the wheel. When that stopped working, he had to fling the pedal around super hard to get the pawls to fly out. Eventually that would only work after trying a few times. I've had similar problems with the ring drive in a King hub and when it happens, the teeth wear down really quickly. If you don't stop and rebuild the hub immediately, it's all over. I suspect the same would happen with a conventional hub. We got all the way around to Sneaking Creek before things got dicey and from then on he had to ride the brakes to keep the pedals engaged.

We barely made it out without walking but we did make it out.

Hey, these things happen. It would have been fun to ride another lap but we still had a great time.

It's too bad my dad's not a hiker or we'd have run up the road a bit and hiked Jackrabbit Mountain proper. Instead we headed out and grabbed some pizza at DJ's in Helen.

As old-school as my bike is with its small diameter stem, 3x9 drivetrain, 26 inch wheels, non-tubeless tires and 80mm fork, I am, at least, running disc brakes. My dad though, despite having a bike that is several years newer than mine, is still running V-brakes. Why? Kind of for the same reason I'm running all those old-school parts. They either refuse to wear out or randomly end up being super cheap to replace.

Destiny must be at work here though. In 2001 I bought a wheel set with King hubs, Mavic ceramic 517's and Revolution spokes. I got the hubs for like $100 because they were purple and the guy just couldn't sell them. I loved those wheels but I burned up a bearing in the hub way back, rode a pair of Cross Max while I waited for the bearing to come in and ultimately replaced those with a set of disc wheels that I'm still riding today. As much as I loved the Purple King/517's, it was just not meant to be and they've been decorating my various garages since 2003. Nobody else has ever needed them. Everybody else is running disc. Today I gave them to my dad, along with a box of spare spokes I've been hanging on to, just in case. He can use them as-is or rebuild his rear wheel with the King hub. On the upside, the wheels will be useful again. On the downside, I've helped postpone my dad's transition to disc brakes. Hah. Trade-offs.

He's leaving town on Tuesday and I don't know when we'll get to ride together again, but I'm guessing that the next time we do, it'll be at Jackrabbit.

Jake Mountain

Today's work party kind of fell apart. I couldn't make it, Debbie couldn't make it. Eddie and Pat tried hard to scrounge up some troops but it just didn't work out.

Iz had her first gym meet of the season today at 8AM. That's why I couldn't make it. But, my folks are in town, they took the kids after the meet and Kathryn was selling some of her wares at a local craft show all afternoon. So I was free to do whatever and I wasn't about to let the work day go completely to waste.

But first things first.

Sleep. I was sleepy after the meet so I took a short nap.

Food. I tried to hit the Dutch Monkey but they were closed. I knew they closed at 1 on Sunday but they appear to also close at 1 on Saturday. Dang. The donut failure left me with a mighty hankering for junk food so I ran by the gas station.

Lunch:

Yeah.

Kathryn had my car so I was in her Fit. In case you were wondering, you can drive a Honda Fit on FS28-1 all the way to the Y at FS77. Also, in case you were wondering, the little road that cuts across the Y is called "High Rock Trail" according to her GPS.

Using the "longitudinal deberming" technique me and Sophie figured out last month, I knocked out 3 of the sections we'd flagged way back. I got a lot done but I'd have gotten a lot more done if I'd had one of them to help me.

After working a section, I laid sticks across the disturbed soil to discourage riders from venturing into it. I thought about just placing a bunch of debris there but I didn't want it to act as a silt trap so I just put a few sticks, in the direction that the water should flow, should it ever rain here again.

It wont be long before it's all covered with leaves but I figured I should do something before then.

While I was working I ran into a guy on a bike with a "Life Behind Bars" jersey. I have that same jersey! He was doing the Chain Buster 6 hour series too. We talked about that for a while. He'd also gotten 10th in his class at Jackrabbit. He rides at Bull/Jake lot and was hoping somebody would build bridges across Jones Creek and Moss Creek so you could ride all winter without losing a few toes. I'd looked into building a bridge somewhere else recently. A licensed, insured engineer, certified in the district must either build the bridge or approve the plans. It's a lot of work. We've got a lot more to do first. That's the only person I saw all day.

I knocked off at 7 after working a little over three hours.

We're going to try to schedule a make up work party later this month. If you're reading this and you ride Bull/Jake, be there!