Stone Mountain

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My folks came to town last night, and I took the day off to hang out with them. I was planning on riding with my dad, but bad weather foiled that. We'd talked about all going to Stone Mountain, but he ended up doing some work with my brother and I ended up going there with just my family.

We climbed the Hike-Up trail...



There was a lot of old graffiti...



And some old gum...



The "Halfway House"...



The views were pretty nice. There were a bunch of huge vultures circling to the north, black and turkey, but they disappeared when I tried to get a shot of them.



Close to the top, ATL in the distance...



When we got above the trees, it got really windy.

The Iz on the steepest part of the climb...



We walked around on the top for a while.



We'd planned on taking the gondola down but it was closed because the winds were so high. The wind was amazing. We had to yell to hear each other, and we could lean into it.

With no gondola to ride, we had to hike back down. Sophie's favorite thing is climbing around on rocks, so she was happy to walk.



After that, we rode the "ducks", these awesome boat-bus things. On the water, they let the kids drive.



We did finally get together with my parents and my brother's family at Doc Chey's downtown. There were 10 of us, so we pushed a bunch of tables together outside. Pretty soon it was raining, then pouring, then hailing. But we were pretty well sheltered and we had a good time. Kind of surreal though. How often do you sit down for dinner with your family in the middle of a torrential thunderstorm?

Carter's Lake

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Darn rain. I haven't been riding enough lately. Some buddies of mine were up at Mulberry Gap but I got up too late to hook up with them. I kind of felt like riding at Conyers but the entire metro Atlanta area was getting drenched. The mountains were clear, but I got enough of that yesterday. Maybe.... Carter's Lake?

My brother just bought a new house and was busy working on it. My buddy Travis was on his way to Gainesville. Solo again.

Everybody calls it "Carter's Lake" but technically its the Ridgeway Recreation Area on Carter's Lake.

Nice facilities.




Even a parking lot just for the bike trail.



The trail is on Army Corps of Engineers property. That's what the little castle on the sign means. I was very confused about that the first time I rode there.



When I first moved to the ATL in 2000, from Louisiana, where trails are comparatively flat, I tried, and failed, to ride Stanley Gap. The next weekend I wanted an easy trail, and the Carter's Lake elevation profile looked tame. But no, no, no. And I suffered. Since then I've only been there for races and all races are hard. I've never had an easy time there.

Here's why...

Straight up.



Straight down and then straight up. You can't even see the down part, it's so steep. Those little roots halfway up eat all your speed too, whether you go over them or around to the right.



But look at this glorious flow. Lots of long, rolling descents at Carter's Lake. Woohoo!



Not too much scenery. There's one nice creek, and this field.



I guess I've gotten a little stronger since I first moved here. No suffering today. I mean, it was tough, but I had it. Yay.

Apparently there's a nature trail too. I'll have to take the kids someday.

Slaughter Creek

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It's rained for 2 weeks straight. I got dropped bad on the last 2 group rides. This weekend my wife's got stuff to do all day Saturday and it's supposed to rain Sunday. No ride for me unless the weatherman changes his mind.

I have feet though, and and so do my girls.

Lake Winfield Scott. We parked here.



We began our trek climbing the Slaughter Creek Trail. Sophie had some serious trouble with a little bridge that seemed trivial to me and Iz.



She's little though.

Up, up, up...



Into the wild...



We planned to stop at the AT. Sophie was getting slow, tired and whiny and kept calling it the "Aggravation Trail". Where's the Aggravation Trail?

When we finally got there and recharged she was fine. The gnats, though, oh boy, ten billion gnats. The girls know the trick about putting your hand over your head, but they also figured out that if they stood close enough to me, almost all of the gnats would just go to my hand. Clever I guess. I still feel like they're crawling on me though.

Lots of groups came through and some of them had dogs.



Next we climbed Blood Mountain. Along with dozens of other folks.



Sophie borrowed my hat for a while.



At the top, we poked around the shelter. Someone had sprayed bug spray and it smelled like carrots.



West.



Someone had cut off their dreads up there. Neat, but really more just gross.



Sophie was way off-balance for some reason. She kept wanting to look over the edge, but kept stumbling around too. Eventually I just made her sit down. We ate, drank, recharged again. The girls had brought along cooler clothing and changed into it.

The trip back tested us all. We backtracked to the Slaughter Creek Trail intersection, but rather than descending there, we continued on the AT, over Turkey Stamp, over Gaddis Mountain, to Jarrard Gap. Those extra few knobs really put it to us. Everyone we passed was starting to set up camp for the night. Even I was getting tired. We planned on descending the Jarrard Gap Trail, but ended up on Jarrard Gap Road instead.



Jarrard Gap Trail is blue-blazed. But, AT "get-water-here" trails are also blue-blazed, and there was a sign saying "Water ->" at the Jarrard Gap Trail, because you can, in fact, get water along it. So, seeing "Jarrard Gap Trail ->" pointing down the road, and both "Water -> " and a blue-blaze pointing down the trail, I figured that the trail was just the AT water trail and kept following the road, figuring it was the Jarrard Gap Trail. We only discovered out my mistake when we got to the intersection of Slaughter Creek Road and found the lower trailhead. Woohoo!

No big deal though, we still got back to the car, maybe faster even.

I like hiking and all, but these days I barely even feel like I'm a cyclist any more. Hopefully I can ride my bike tomorrow. If not, I'll be back on foot, somewhere else.

Old FS69A

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The drenching rain finally let up yesterday at noon. I'd been wanting to explore a bit of the Blue Ridge WMA off of FS69A for a while now. Time to go hiking.

The road in...



There's a rock wall or something just off the road. Maybe there was an old farm here. Next time I see a Ranger, I'll have to take a look at his map.



FS69A is "maintained" up to a point. After a small roadblock, a trail continues on the old roadbed. I dub this trail "Old FS69A" though probably it and FS69A had some other name before the FS designation. It's clean for a while but after the first little gap, its overgrown with rhododendron. The old roadbed is still easy to identify and a trail is discernible. But you've got to push through it.



A balloon. I've seen several of these over the years. A kid lets it go, it flies really far, loses altitude, hits a tree, pops and lands in the woods. It's surprising to me how many end up on an actual trail though.



I was treated to a small sliding falls. Looked cooler in real life.



The trail eventually improved and led around to the back of Rock Creek Lake and along upper Rock Creek itself, then suddenly ended at the creek. Across the creek was a dense nightmare of thorns, relatively free of trees, except for holly, which also has thorns! Maybe there was an old farm here too, or at least a field. After getting cut to ribbons looking around I finally just headed up to FS69.

The Edmondson Pond Nature Trail was just up the road, so I made a quick loop around it. With the recent droughts, the pond has dried up a bit each summer and each time the beavers have moved their dams further in. The pond is probably a third of the size it was a few years ago.



I'd seen a spur trail back on Old FS69A that looked interesting, so I headed back to check it out. It was surprisingly clean. This is a mystery. Maybe folks use it to get to the back of Rock Creek Lake rather than dealing with the thorns?



I almost stepped on this little guy.



The trail cut some time off my trip back to the car. It was still early though and I had plenty of legs left. I'd always wondered if there was a trail leading up Mill Creek. I mean, it's called Mill Creek, maybe there's a mill up there somewhere. I'd seen a well-groomed trail leading up it's south bank before. How far did it go? There's also a trail way up by the Benton MacKaye at the very top of Mill Creek. Do they connect?

Turns out the well-groomed trail went a few hundred yards to a dam. It's so well groomed that it even has streetlamps. Beyond that, a trail did continue. At first it was just a little overgrown, but eventually it was choked with downed trees and rhododendron and very hard to push through. It crossed the creek umpteen times, sometimes in thigh-deep water, and passed through several flats where no trace of it remained but remnants of old fords. In one spot, a spring had formed right in the middle of the trail. I kept wanting to turn back, but then kept finding more of the trail. I'd also hoped for an awesome waterfall or something, but no luck, just a couple of little shoal-like thingies.




At infinite length I did give up on it. The trail may continue beyond where I left it, but I was running out of daylight. And the rain was back. Woo.

Chicopee

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Toward the end of last weekend's 6 hour hand-slammer, I firmly resolved to ride something smooth and flowing as soon as possible. At first it looked like a bunch of us might go camp and ride at Tsali. When that fell through, my brother suggested Chicopee. In the past it was pretty rough, but recently most of the trails had been rerouted following IMBA guidelines. I hadn't ridden any of them, they might be just right. No plans on Saturday, so I gave it a shot.

Comfy swag from last week's 6 hour.



New signage everywhere.



This is the definition of flow. Ahh, el luxurio. I rode this all day long.



Some pretty scenery.



Some somber.



I rode every inch of every trail in the system, and a couple of loops twice. Definitely the right decision. It was dicey getting back to the parking lot though. I ran out of water and had long since given away my Clif Blocks to a lost and bonked couple on the Flying Squirrel. A few miles more miles and I'd have been in trouble. This explosion of purple lifted my spirits on the climb out. The photo doesn't do it justice.



Back at the parking lot there were bigger problems, a kid had ridden off away from his dad and was now lost. I still had legs, the bonked out couple was doing better and the kid's dad was feeling strong too. We had about 2 hours of light left, so we planned out a search pattern. But, just as we clipped in, the kid rode out of the woods. Ahh, perfect timing.