Was supposed to go back to Cloudland Canyon State Park in GA yesterday to do their Bear Creek Backcountry Trail, but I saw on the map that it was subject to closure, so called ahead. This was before the storms that just moved through this part of the country hit, and the trail was already closed, because the creek you have to cross was flooding. After hearing about the winds in N. GA flipping a bunch of vehicles over on the interstate, I've decided I'm not too broken up about not making it up there...
Instead, today I rode my first real mountain bike trails
Went back to Oak Mountain State Park to check out the MTB trail that I'd hiked a short section of previously.
Map:
http://www.alapark.com/parks/images/oak-mountain/OakMountainTrailMap.jpg
I started at the North Trailhead, and did the following sections, counterclockwise:
Cat Dog Snake
Chimneys
Rock Garden
Garrett's Gulch
Seven Bridges(haha, there are actually 8 bridges)
Lake Trail
Mr. Toads
Jekyll and Hyde
Bump Trail
Jeep Road Climb
Red Road
There are a couple of places whose distances are unaccounted for, but it was 19 miles, maybe a little more.
I came back to my truck exhausted, soaking wet, splattered with mud, and with a clearer view of how I'll approach some of the trails NEXT time
Kiosk at N. TH
Terrain near the start, and some small branches on the trail.
I also stopped probably a dozen times to move larger limbs left from the wind storms yesterday.
"Cat Dog Snake" was a nice section of trail, and rolled along nicely. I did not see any cats, dogs, or snakes.
Then there's the "Chimneys" section, the origin of whose name is a great mystery to me.
Entering the Rock Garden. I thought it was a cross and decorations, like a marker for where someone had died when I first saw it from a distance.
I don't guess you want to see pics of all 8 of the 7 bridges...this is the only one I took, anyway.
In some places, there was much water flowing along or across the trail.
The Lake Trail.
Nice bridge over a spillway adjacent to the dam that you might can see to the left in the above photo.
From the dam. Interesting how water looks blue facing toward the sun, and green facing away from it.
I really liked the Lake Trail. Lots of rolling hills.
Wasn't much to Mr. Toads, but then you get into Jekyll and Hyde, which I was approaching from the wrong direction as it turns out. The other way, it's a wild roller coaster ride down a huge ridge, with lots of little drops, twists, and clusters of rocks, then up and down the lengths of progressively smaller ridges with constant ups and downs, but generally downhill. So that means that for 4.4 miles I was generally going uphill, and that it ended with that big ridge, and walking the bike half the time. I spooked a couple of whitetail does coming around the top of one of the smaller ridges. It was bizarre. I was sort of, uh...screaming..out loud in pain as I pedaled over the ridge, and they acted like they didn't even hear me. I stopped when I saw them, and they stood there staring for a few seconds before raising the white flags, and bouncing straight down the ridge, and up over the next one. They sure made it look easy
That was a frustrating section for me, because every time you get to the top of one ridge, you can see back over the ones you've already come up, and the next one is always higher above you.
Zoomed in on the lake, I think these last are from the Bump Trail, approaching the Red Road, which runs along the top of the highest ridge.
Nearing the highest ponit of the ridge, approaching the final 2+ mile downhill(that was much rougher than when I hiked it last year) is an intersection with the Boulder Ridge trail, which I naturally was not about to do, as it's for "Expert Riders Only!". That line where it says to check your "landing zones" made it pretty clear that this was not the trail for me right now. Plus I could barely stand for my butt to touch the saddle, and had started walking everything that wasn't flat or downhill, as I couldn't really pedal any more.
Fortunately, I didn't have to pedal much more after that, just try to keep from burning my brakes up!
The road has a bunch of drainages across it that they've made to keep it from washing out, and it was flowing 1-2ft deep at every one as I blasted through, which was kind of cool, both literally and figuratively.
Posted this pic of one last August:
I really like the prominence of Whaleback, and the dramatic sweep it forms at the back (south end?) of the canyon. It's just visually striking. I'm adding Deadman Canyon to the list :thumbup:
