Bull Mountain

This also happened long enough ago to be a little fuzzy in my mind. What was it, a week ago, two? The 9th. That's two.

Ok, two weeks ago the frere and I felt like getting some good miles in at Bull Mountain. Mark, Marc and Eddie did too, so they met us there at about 9AM on Sunday morning.

A crew of like 6 other guys also showed up. I didn't know any of them, but apparently Mark and Marc did and we all ended up riding out together.

On a side note, there were also some guys up there from Florida too, and I talked to them for a while about riding in Florida. Surprisingly, one of the guys had never ridden at Santos, despite having living there since before it was built. One of them also had a Litespeed Cohutta, which was cool because I'd been wanting to take a look at since it first came out.

But, that's a side note.

The main note...

Me and John and Mark and Marc and Eddie and the 6 other guys all rolled over to Bull Mountain together. We'd planned on getting in some long miles, so John and I both brought camelbacks with 100oz bladders. I don't know about his, but mine felt intolerably heavy. I mean, just intolerably. As I rode, I questioned the logic too. I rode the TNGA with two 24oz bottles and iodine tablets with no trouble finding water, and I knew every stream in the area. The water felt heavier than my bikepacking gear. Could it actually be? Either way though, I ought to be able to carry a load like that, and I eventually just gave up thinking about it, except when it would get sideways on me, and then I'd be like "Dangit Dave, how'd you get to be so soft?!"

At the foot of Bull, we all decided to "climb Bear Hare" which to me, Mark, Marc and Eddie meant circle around the back through Booger Holler, but I guess to the other guys it meant, climb Bull, descend the Whoops and then circle around the back, and they just quietly split off.

It was odd, but hey, we figured we'd meet them again eventually. Eventually, we did, but we did so descending Bull Mountain, which meant that they would be climbing Bull and descending Bare Hare. In retrospect, I'm not sure what they intended to do, but it's hard to have a bad ride out there, so I'm sure it worked out.

The new Booger Holler trail was as great as I'd remembered it from the last time, and this time I got to ride it the other direction, and get GPS data for it.

But, the climb up Bear Hare was difficult and I felt pretty bad doing it. I've said it before, and I'm sure I'll say it again. No amount of not climbing in the mountains can prepare you for climbing in the mountains. I definitely need to do more climbing, in the mountains.

It seems like I had some minor mechanical near the top, but I can't remember what it was.

I had a much more significant mechanical on the way down though.

I'd apparently cracked the parallelogram on that ride with Billy a few weeks back. It fatigued and failed, spontaneously, went flying into my spokes, and blew itself to pieces against the chain stay. I haven't seen a more spectacular derailleur failure, except possibly when Tim's took out almost all of his spokes.

Terrible.

I was still about 5 miles from the car, but it was fortunately almost all downhill. John volunteered to pick me up, but I managed to get all the way to the last little climb up to Nimblewill Church Road before I ran into him.

I'm not sure how the rest of the guys fared. Hopefully their rides turned out better than mine.

John had a spare 9-speed XTR derailleur at his place, for some reason, and I put it on my bike today. Hopefully I can keep from destroying it anytime soon.

Low Gap Creek (again)

Goodness, this happened so long ago that I don't have a clear memory of it now. Busy, busy, busy...

Lets see if looking at the photos jogs my memory...

Ah yes, it would seem that I'd hacked my way up Low Gap Creek, only to run completely out of time, and return the next weekend to try to get the job done for real.

It would seem that I started south of the campground again, and took a photo of the first ford, rather than the second.

And, it's starting to really come back now...

Not too far off the beaten path I started seeing more pig sign. Not so much rooting this time, but lots of wallowing.

Not a big fan of gigantic feral pigs. So far they've left me alone though, and I've certainly made good use of their trails, but still, not a fan.

Kind-of knowing where I was going, I made really good progress compared to the week before. I pushed past my previous mark with no danger of running out of time. Sadly, the trail became quite difficult to follow not even a quarter mile upstream from there and I found myself moving much more slowly from then on.

If you're ever looking at a map, and there's a spot that looks nice and flat and inviting, where a couple of creeks come together, at the base of the surrounding hills, you may imagine a serene little valley, but odds are it's rhododenron hell down in there. I've seen places where it's not, but I've seen way more where it is. I hit rhododendron hell almost immediately. The old railbed was exceedingly difficult to follow. It was like videos I've watched of people working their way through mangroves, just without the water and crocodiles.

Several times I was sure that I'd lost the trail, but then I'd find some old fortification...

...or remnant of an old bridge...

... or a bench cut, and I'd see that no, I was still on track.

There are two rhododendron hells between the Beech Meadow and the head of Low Gap Creek, and the trail between them isn't much less overgrown, just a little easier to follow.

You know what else there is up there? Yellow Jackets.

Lots and lots of Yellow Jackets. I saw at least 6 nests.

Go Tech.

Since the AT along the ridge follows an old rail north from at least Poplar Stomp Gap, and Low Gap is just a mile or so south of Poplar Stomp, I'd assumed that the rail led up the creek, all the way to Low Gap, and then proceeded north along the ridge.

But...

Not a quarter mile from the gap, it just gets way too steep. The rail couldn't possibly have continued without an extensive network of switchbacks. No such thing appeared to exist, and I looked hard. The hillside looked like it could have accommodated them, if anyone had wanted to build them, but there was no trace. If such a thing existed, then it was entirely elevated and now, entirely gone.

I whacked uphill along the creek until I found what I thought was another pig trail. It got wider and wider though, and eventually led to the Low Gap Shelter.

There were 4 guys there (not pictured), hanging out, taking a breather, and we had the standard "where you coming from" kind of discussion. They were hiking the Georgia section, had been on the trail since Amicalola, and were heading to Poplar Stomp to make camp. I didn't want to be too much of a nuisance, and I had questions to answer, so I didn't stay long.

At Low Gap proper...

I hung a right and explored a bit of the AT. It appeared to be an old rail bed to the north.

But there wasn't any evidence of switchbacks or any side track in that direction.

The only interesting thing that I found up there was a stash of tools.

They weren't very inconspicuously stashed though. The bright green tarp and bright yellow handles made them easy to spot. They were a ways up the trail from the gap. It seemed odd that they weren't stashed closer to the shelter. I'm sure there's a reason though.

I didn't push too far north before turning back. I'd made good time, but I was a long way from the car, didn't see a good alternative route back to it, and still had two rhododendron hells ahead of me.

On the way back I passed the quartet that I'd seen at the shelter earlier and wished them luck.

The AT south of Low Gap appeared to be purpose built singletrack. If the rail continued south, the AT didn't follow it. I explored most of the campground there, looking for switchbacks, or curves, or any indication that the rail dove down off the ridge toward the creek, but I couldn't find a thing.

It was quite a puzzle. There were clearly railbeds on the ridge, and up the creek, to within a quarter mile or less of the ridge. It seemed like that the two ought to be connected, but maybe they weren't.

Weird.

I pondered my options again, and decided, yes, the best route back would be a direct abort, right back downhill. But, first things first. My feet needed a little rest.

And my body needed a little fuel.

I might have enjoyed the rest a little too much. When I got going again, the trail seemed a bit rough.

I managed to follow the "pig trail" a little more carefully downhill and stay on it all the way to the creek, where it joined the old rail. It got wider and deeper and looked like it may have been a skid at some point. I guess the rail led as far upstream as possible and timber was just skidded down to it from either side. It seems unlikely that it connected with the rail along the ridge at Low Gap. The rail along the ridge must have been built later, possibly after winning the court battle with Vandiver in 1916 and gaining access to the ridge from Poplar Stomp Gap.

Or, maybe there's some other explanation. Who knows. Maybe the guy that wrote this book, which I plan on getting at my earliest opportunity.

Anyway, musings aside, I'd committed to a direct abort, and I made my way as quickly as possible back downstream. I bypassed much of the rhodoendron hell by sticking to the neighboring hillside, but I did get forced down into it a few times.

I also explored some of the side trails leading to and from the Beech Meadow.

(The Beech Meadow)

They also looked like skids, or at least didn't look like rails.

The previous week, and on the way up, I'd seen what looked like the footing of an old trestle in the middle of a feeder creek.

Got a photo of it this time.

I went for another quick swim in the pool at the top of the second falls too.

And this time I remembered to take a selfie.

Since the previous week, a new tree had managed to lodge itself in the pool though, entirely obscured underwater, with branches sticking up. As such, jumping off the falls would have been ill advised.

On the way up, I'd actually heard other people, down on the creek, and seen their footprints on the trail. I couldn't see them, but I assumed they were fishermen, just using the trail to access the creek. I didn't see them on the way back, but I saw their southbound footprints. I kind-of hoped I didn't catch them though. I've run into people before when they expected to be inaccessibly far back in the woods. No way to tell how people will react when they don't expect to run into anyone.

I can't remember if it was that weekend or the weekend before, but two guys (and their old ladies) had ridden Harleys all the way to the back of the campground and really struggled to turn them around. I was walking down the road from the north, right as they were trying. The bikes were super loud and dozens of campers were all standing there, staring at them, like a mob. I kind of felt bad for them, actually, though I did wonder why it seemed like a good idea to ride a street bike that far down a gravel road.

Other than all that, there's not much else to write about. I walked out, got in the truck, and headed home.

Goodbye Low Gap Creek.

Thanks for the good times. It may be a while before we meet again.

Low Gap Creek

The backlog is shrinking. Only 2-deep now. Lets see if I can knock out another one...

Not last Saturday, but the Saturday before, I made my way back up to the Upper Chattahoochee to put my follow-that-old-rail-bed skills to the test, once again. Feeling reasonably tired of the Chattahoochee itself though, I turned my attention to Low Gap Creek. The Low Gap Creek Campground was allegedly a logging camp at one point. There's a definitive old railbed heading south from it that tees into the old Chattahoochee rail, and the lidar data clearly shows more to the north, including several of what appear to be switchbacks.

The Upper Chattahoochee is north of Helen, and the town of Helen is such a popular destination this time of year that it can take 45 minutes or more just to get through it. I usually circumvent the madness on Asbestos Road. I'm not alone in this, and on a good weekend, I'm joined by all sorts of colorful characters. This time I got behind some guy rollin' coal.

Man, the photo just doesn't do it justice. The thick, black smokescreen looked like something out of James Bond. Every single hill.

He took a left though and I took a right, so I only got to "enjoy" it for a mile or so.

I parked south of the campground in one of the two spots reserved for day use. There are only two spots. Offhand that would seem to under-serve the area, but in the last 15 years, I've never seen either of them occupied, except by myself. And the other spot has never been occupied upon my return.

North of the campground a guy was poking a stick at a timber rattler.

Not sure I'd be poking a stick at it, but it didn't seem too upset about it. No rattle. A far cry from that one I ran into on Tibbs a few weeks back.

I approached the ford in the creek...

Took in the natural beauty for a minute...

And got down to it.

Years ago I'd been up that way, looking for Low Branch Falls. I'd found a waterfall, but it didn't look much like other photos alleged to be of the same waterfall.

This time I wasn't looking for waterfalls, but from that excursion, I was fairly familiar with the trails in the immediate area. This helped, and I was able to locate the old railbed right away. A little exploration revealed that part of it had at one point been converted to a road and rerouted. There's even a "closed to vehicles" sign back there, but it looks like it's been a very long time since you could have driven up to the sign.

The rail though... It crisscrosses Low Gap Creek twice before ascending up an old overgrown bench cut along England Camp Branch which ends abruptly. There must have been a bridge there at one point because it picks up on the other side, leads directly to this waterfall (which is not on Low Gap Creek, but is the one I think people end up finding and taking photos of)...

And switches back right there.

Past the switchback, the trail appears to get a lot more traffic, though "a lot" is definitely relative. It looked like maybe people boulder hop along the creek and scramble up the falls, rather than following the old rail directly.

The trail was remarkably easy to follow from there on. It looked a lot like the old rail along the Chattahoochee, just a bit more overgrown. There were a few spots with truly difficult deadfall, but it was mostly not-too-bad.

There were two spots where small feeder creeks came in from the left, and there must have been trestles there at some point because the main trail disappears, a small worn-in trail continues, and then the main trail picks back up on the other side.

There was another waterfall along Low Gap Creek itself, above the one I'd originally found way back.

It seemed to be really tall and composed of multiple cascades. Unfortunately I couldn't get too good of a look at the whole thing, just bits and pieces of it.

The trail led directly to the top of it though, and there was a decent pool at the upper cascade.

It was in the high 90's at the time, so I took a short swim, and man, was it refreshing. The cascade was only 4 or 5 feet tall too, so I even climbed up on it and jumped off a few times. Ha! Picture that. All by myself, just for fun, nobody to watch me, jumping into the water like a kid. Kathryn was like "Why didn't you take a selfie in front of the falls?" "Because I'm not our 15 year old daughter?" It doesn't occur to me to take photos of myself except when there are cyclists behind me. Maybe I should take a few more though.

At any rate, after playing around a bit, I made my way upstream.

There was another falls further up too.

Also quite tall. Didn't look like it had much of a pool at the bottom.

The old rail switched back twice there, presumably to get up over the falls.

The switchbacks were fortified with stacked stone in the same way I'd seen creek crossing fortified before.

Out at the end of one of the switchbacks there was an old fire ring, and some piece of metal, presumably somehow related to the rail. Maybe some part of the switching mechanism itself.

Not far after that, I found a dead mouse on the side of the trail, being eaten by yellow jackets.

Poor little guy.

North of that, the trail was quite a bit more wide open than it had been earlier. There were long stretches without deadfall, and very little overgrowth to speak of. It didn't look like the trail got much more traffic there though. Just some quirk of nature kept it clear, I guess.

There was an old spike sticking out of the ground near a creek crossing.

No doubt that once helped hold a trestle together.

And then I found this old moonshine jug.

Hey! I'd been there before!

Way back on that first excursion up that way, I'd followed another trail that crossed right there.

At the time, I'd marked on my map that there was a spur leading north. I hadn't seen the one leading south.

The rail crossed the creek and bent north. There were ribbons leading west, but that was definitely not the right way to go.

Half of an old garden hose lay there in the middle of the trail.

Weird. Was it somehow related to moonshining? If it was, it was from a very long time ago.

Past the garden hose there was a small meadow. It was starting to get taken over by beech trees, but they hadn't filled it in yet.

There was a huge amount of deteriorating black plastic up there though.

It was riddled with aluminum cans and other garbage, but the plastic didn't look like garbage bags. It was thick. It wasn't that erosion barrier material though. I was honestly stumped. I kept finding it to the north too, like it had originated upstream, and the whole clump had somehow ended up there. Upstream was Wilderness though. There were even signs to that effect posted on trees along the northern edge of the meadow. That just added to the mystery.

Several beech trees had fallen over into the meadow, recovered, and kept on growing.

A piece of plywood had been nailed to a pair of them, making a neat little table.

For cleaning fish? I've found several makeshift fish cleaning tables over the years. Who knows though, it could be for anything. Whatever it was for, it hasn't been used in a while.

I pushed on upstream. The rail crossed the creek and resumed on the west side. It kept going and going.

I kept an eye on the time. I had to pick my mom up from my brother's house that evening around 10. It takes an hour to get from my place to my brother's, and it takes two hours to eat and get back to my place from Helen. So, I needed to be out of the woods by 7. It was about 4. I'd gotten started around noon. I had about three hours to get back. On the way up, I'd spent a lot of time poking around and double-checking that I was going the right way. The trip back down really shouldn't take three hours... I gave myself another fifteen minutes.

I'd kind of hoped to either run out of trail or something, but no, it just kept on going, clear as a bell.

There was what appeared to be a switchback on the other side though, so when I did finally turn back, I took that rather than making a direct abort.

Turned out it wasn't a switchback, but just an old road that also led to that beech meadow.

Of course, there was a mylar balloon lying there on that road, as I imagine there is in every square mile of the woods.

I made great time on the way back. The trail seemed more overgrown on the way back than it had on the way out though. I guess it was just because I was moving faster. Funny though, I really noticed it, and I don't usually.

Berries of some kind were growing all over too. I hadn't noticed them on the way up either. I've also seen them in and amongst blueberries on Trail Ridge. I don't know what they are though, so I took a photo so I could do a little research.

Still haven't done that though. It's been a busy couple of weeks.

I took a slightly different route out and found this old sunbleached turtle shell on the side of the trail.

And that was about it.

Goodbye Low Gap Creek.

Your mysteries are not yet entirely revealed, but perhaps they will be soon.

I did make it out in time, did make it home in time, and did pick up my mom in time. I then stayed up all night, took her to the airport at 4AM. Talk about a full day. A long, long, full day.

I slept in on Sunday.

Berry College WMA

My Adventure backlog is still 3 Adventures deep. At this rate, it'll be that way forever. Right now I'm waiting on a long running build process though, so I have a little time. Maybe this week I can find a little more and get caught up.

The last time Billy and I were up at Berry College, we gave it a good once over, but even after 40 miles of riding, there was still plenty left. Sunday, a week ago, we figured we'd see what else we could see.

Sometimes I do a little research on the places I'm planning on riding, and sometimes I run into some really interesting stuff. One of the roads we hadn't ridden last time was CCC Road. If you google "ccc road berry college" you'll find that there are legends galore about how it's all haunted and stuff. It's also referred to as Seven Bridges Road because there are allegedly seven little bridges along it.

"There are stars in the southern sky..." That Seven Bridges Road? Maybe. The song wasn't mentioned in what I read, so maybe not.

At any rate, if you head out one way you'll count seven bridges and if you head back the other way you'll only count 6. Thus, it's haunted, or so the story goes. After stumbling across something like that, I couldn't resist making that the first stop on our journey.

My map-printing skills left a bit to be desired that morning, and it actually took us a while to find CCC Road. It's also known as Selman Road. Or, more correctly, it's Selman Road for a block or two, then becomes CCC Road at the edge of the WMA.

We parked just past the game check station, got the bikes and ourselves all put together, and proceeded west toward a gate.

The sign at the gate seemed a little threatening, so I called the number.

Berry College police answered and assured me that it was fine for me to proceed around the gate on a mountain bike or on foot, just not in a motor vehicle. Excellent!

We proceeded.

It was very hot, the sun was very bright, and the dead straight, dead flat expanse ahead of us reminded me of riding in Florida.

The only difference was that the road was gravelly rather than sandy.

We counted 1 bridge right at the gate. There was a culvert a ways down the road, and then in the middle of a clear cut that stretched across both sides of the road, there was some old-looking little rock construction on the north side of the road that might have once been a little bridge, but was totally backfilled now.

And that was it. No other bridges at all. The heck? Is there a different CCC Road near Berry College in Rome? At the time I figured there must be, but after looking into it since I got home, no, that was it. After re-reading the descriptions though, the road is alleged to lead to the Mountain Springs Cemetery. The road that we rode did not. Instead, it teed into another road and the cemetery was to the north. There is a road that connects the cemetery to CCC Road, and I suspect that in antiquity, CCC Road may may have followed that connector, but since then it's been cut through to the other road. Now I'll have to go back and see where that other road goes.

At the time we were puzzled, but we had plenty more to see and do, so we kind of forgot about it right away.

At the end of CCC, we turned right, climbed the Hurtin Gator, which seemed to put some serious hurtin on Billy.

We passed a group of women hiking it, and it seemed to be hurtin them too.

At O'Bryan Gap, there's like a 5-way intersection. One way is the way we'd come from, another leads to the House O' Dreams. The other 3 we hadn't explored as yet, but had planned to.

Turns out the old road directly across from Hurtin Gator doesn't go anywhere interesting. It bombs down off of the mountain and ends at private property about halfway down. There's a beat-up old sign indicating that the land is private, but man, if I ever own land with a road on it, I'm going to put up a "Private Road" sign. I've seen so many cases where the land to either side of a road is posted, but the road itself is open. A lone sign to one side of the road, just isn't enough to clearly delineate the property. I am not a fan of trespassing though, so we went as far as to check the lot lines on Zillow to determine whether it was ok to proceed. That's right. We stood there in the woods, with a smartphone, looking up property boundaries on the web. Yep. Because we're nerds. Indeed, the property boundary clearly crossed the road ahead of us.

Dangit.

We climbed back up.

It was definitely OK to the east though, so we went that way.

There was another gate nearby though, and some wild cotton growing near it.

Never seen that before.

While walking my bike over to check the sign at the gate (which said the same thing as that one earlier), I managed to somehow get my rear derailleur wrapped up in my spokes and either bend the hanger or the derailleur.

Man. I do that more than anyone I know. By a lot.

It took a little adjusting, but I got it working well enough after a minute or two. It wasn't anything terrible.

The road we were on was Lavender Mountain Road. And like the rest of the roads up there, it was closed to vehicles most of the year, and in really, really beautiful shape.

It ran along the ridge for quite a while before finally diving down off of it near the highway.

We passed a guy hiking with two kids. He was hiking with a baseball bat in his hand. We weren't too sure what to make of it. Protection? From animals? From us? We kept moving.

There was one spot with a great view of The Great Valley though.

We debated what hills those are in the distance. The view was to the southeast so they weren't the Cohuttas or Taylor's Ridge. I couldn't offhand think of what lay in that direction other than the hills around Burnt Mountain but those seemed like they'd be way further away. I could see Plant Bowen to the right (outside of the frame) and the airport down in the valley too, but they didn't really help. Turns out they're ridges I've never heard of: Ward Mountain, Armstrong Mountain, Cass Mountain behind those... Might be worth a look someday, on the road bike at very least.

We ended up on Scenic Road and then Highway 27.

It was super hot. Goodness, it was hot, and exposed on the road, we burned through the water we had quickly.

Fortunately we were on the road, and there were gas stations. Unfortunately, the one we picked was one of those bulletproof glass guard shack type gas stations with no public restroom. They did have a spigot outside though, and that was fine with us.

The loop we'd ended up doing wasn't anything like what we'd hoped to do. We were near the car, wondering what to do next, trying to avoid backtracking as much as possible, and hoping to incorporate at least some amount of shade into the ride. The plan we ended up with was heading back down CCC, riding some stuff we'd ridden last time, coming back on a road we hadn't seen yet, and calling it a day.

And we did exactly that.

As we approached the car though, we noticed that somebody had opened the gate. It was definitely closed when we parked there, I'd called that number to be sure it was cool to go through. Now it was open. Odd. Was that like a once-a-week thing? Is it always open after noon on Sunday? Or did we happen to hit the one day a year? No idea. But hey, one less obstacle to negotiate.

On the way out the first time, we'd seen what looked like an old silo off to the left.

No way I'm not checking that out. I'd seen what looked like a little road leading over to it earlier too. There were signs saying "foot traffic only" though, so we parked the bikes and walked. Turned out that it would have been faster to just walk directly to it from the main road though. It was a lot further back in the field than it looked.

Yep, definitely an old silo. Must have been a farm there at some point. I imagine the whole area may have been farms at some point.

We took a short detour to the old cemetery, thinking maybe there was a cut-through to where we wanted to go, but there were several cars there, several people milling around, up to something, and they indicated that there was no cut-through. It occurred to us that they might have been the ones that opened the gate, needing to get to the cemetery for maintenance or something.

Near Old High School Road we saw a few deer.

Decent sized buck there.

There are plenty of single and double-track trails, but Old High School Road is the only triple-track that I know of.

It was really nice and shady too, a welcome break from the ever-present burning murder ball we'd been dealing with all day.

Near the campus we hung a left, took that other unnamed road back to CCC Road. There was an electric fence running down the right for a while. Later it looked like a bridge had been demolished. The road just fords the creek now. Not that it's really much of a creek, or much of a road, for that matter. The trail fords the trickle.

And that was about it.

It was a nice ride. I'm not sure how many miles it was, but the diversity of trail experience and challenging conditions made up for any lack of mileage.

Berry College is a unique system. Lots of roads, but they're all so different from each other, they're all closed to cars most of the time, and some of them are really more like singletrack-on-an-old-roadbed than a road proper. It's a great system. The Pinhoti runs through somewhere to the north too. I bet there's an epic loop in there somewhere. I might have to put something together and give it a try, sometime in the next few months.