Friday June 9th, 2006 - 1300
I scored a four day pass from Uncle Sam for doing swell on my Army Physical Fitness Test and decided to spend said pass on NORBA NMBS #2 which was being held at Sugar Mountain Ski Resort in Banner Elk, N.C. I would be joining my usual group of riding friends which includes Steve, Karen, and Big Joe.
Here begins a five hour drive to Banner Elk.
Shortly into South Carolina, Steve called to inform me that his bike was fucked up, he didn’t know if he could fix it, and he wasn’t sure if he would get to ride at all. (I honestly can’t remember what was actually wrong with his Blur.) That’s never cool. This news actually added to a predetermined laundry list of possible negatives for the weekend which included; Sugar Mountain was a shitty venue, there was no Hayes vendor at the event, and no one seemed to be quite sure what kind of riding was in the area for us grass roots non-racers.
Hmmmmm…
Somewhere on I-85 south while driving and looking at my atlas I failed to notice that traffic was slowing down well below the posted 70 mph and had the opportunity to lock up my brakes as I skidded to a stop a few feet too close to the vehicle in front of me.
I should put that map down now.
A few hours after my close call I was traveling on State Route 321 North which had digressed from a 4 lane to a 2 lane and began a steady climb into some very lovely blue mountains. As usual it was quite a delight to be out of Augusta and somewhere more scenic than the ghetto. If you’re not careful Augusta will warp your mind.
So, anyway, after following an 18-wheeler at 35 mph for about an hour I finally rolled into Boone, N.C.
Boone was a small college town that hustled and bustled with the likes of Wal-Mart, Lowes, and numerous hotels and restaurants. Here I stopped at a Food Lion and acquired milk, bread, lunch meat, and cheese for Karen and for myself, a six pack of Smirnoff. Due to circumstances I have no desire to expound upon, I’m only capable of consuming “wuss beer”.
If you can even call it beer… (You can’t. It’s actually a “malt beverage”.)
From Boone State Route 105 twisted its way southish to my destination, Grandfather Campground, taking me past many tourist gift shops and trendy mountain restaurants. It was not unlike a scene from the mountains of West Virginia.
The city dwellers will be trapped like flies. Those hand woven baskets are just too trendy
Upon my arrival at the camp site, which I initially drove past, I found Steve and Big Joe working on Big Joe’s Giant as Karen slowly spun her way around the campground on her Blur. Indiana Joe’s bottom bracket had seized up while he was riding earlier that day and the prognosis was that he was done riding for the weekend. Basically, he was as equally fucked as Steve. (I still can’t remember what the hell was wrong with Steve’s bike.)
That has to suck. You drive all the way from Ohio for your bike to shit its pants. I felt bad for both fellas, but what can you do? I guess you could always bring more bikes.
I set up my base camp and settled in for dinner. I disappointed the crowd by not eating nearly as much as they expected. I usually entertain a voracious appetite due to my constant swimming and cycling. Anyway, four malt beverages and a short walk later I found myself standing by a Christian youth retreat campfire, “beer” in hand, listening to ghost stories.
That didn’t last long.
Good night.
Saturday June 10th, 2006 – 0600
It started to rain at 0600. I got out of my tent briefly to help Steve cover some shit up with a tarp and then crashed again. At 0900 it started raining again.
Really big drops.
Really, really big drop…or was that…what the fuck…
Steve will throw rocks at your tent to wake you up. Asshole.
We conducted our usual breakfast routine before loading up our bikes and heading over to Sugar Mountain. We rode in two vehicles, my truck and Steve’s station wagon. Karen and I were going to take my Tacoma to the Wilson Creek Area to do some riding while Steve bummed around the vendor area getting different people to work on his bike.
Wilson Creek Area
Here I would usually write something clever about the route and I’m about to ride and all the associated trails. Problem is, I don’t know anything about Wilson Creek. In fact, no one in my group did. We just had a sketchy hand drawn map that was supposed to get us to the Wilson Creek trailhead. This free hand masterpiece was created by the Defeet socks salesman and didn’t really make sense, but I had faith that Karen could get us there.
Naturally, Karen and I got completely lost on the way to Wilson Creek. We wound up on the fringes of Morganton, N.C. and pulled into an old gas station, because I was getting low on fuel and we were, well, lost. Karen found a coverall wearing, thick bearded local that understood English and confidently asked for directions to Wilson Creek.
I pre-paid for 10 bucks of gas and we were outta there.
The old man’s directions were right on and once we hit Wilson Creek the second part of the Defeet map somehow started matching up with our location in reality. Wilson Creek was surprisingly beautiful and rugged even though it was also redneck resort land. It started as an RV campground complete youngsters speeding around on ATVs, then, transformed into a rugged gorge with massive slabs of exposed rock dotted with coniferous trees.
I felt like I was out west in Colorado or something.
It was a long drive to the parking area shown on the Defeet map, so, I had plenty of time to enjoy the scenery. According to Karen, which was according to the Defeet guy, when we parked we would have to ride up an unspecified gravel road for a short period of time before making a right onto the trail.
Things didn’t quite go like that.
After parking the truck and changing clothes, we ascended on the unspecified gravel road for three miles. We came to an intersection with another gravel road that had a brown gate. The name of this road was Chestnut Ridge, I think. There was a truck parked in a wide spot on the side of the road with a bike racked in the bed. Promising. Karen deduced we make a right onto Chestnut Ridge. I concurred. We continued to ascend for another three miles.
None of this was on the Defeet map.
The double track that we had been riding on for the last three miles suddenly leveled off and disappeared into the woods as single track. Finally. This stand of single track was pretty sweet, but I don’t know what its name was, I suppose Chestnut Ridge Trail could be the title, but I prefer to call it, “Ah, fuck no”. This is based off of an event that unfolded during the ride.
The trail was great, winding its way through the woods at a steady descent. It wasn’t insanely technical, but just tech enough to keep you on your toes. The best feature on the trial was undoubtedly the bank turns. There were some sick, sick chutes to ride in and you could carve high and fast on the chute’s wall.
And how the trail gets its name…
Karen and I were about half way into the single track and I was riding just out of sight in front of Karen when I heard a huge rock tumbling down the mountainside through the brush somewhere behind me. The small boulder came to a stop. Then, Karen started shouting my name. It actually wasn’t a boulder tumbling down the mountain. It was a human. A human named Karen.
As I sprinted back up the trail the words “Ah, fuck no” flashed brilliantly in my mind. I had ridden with Karen when she fractured her ankle at Holly River State Park and I feared a repeat. I pictured myself carrying Karen out of the woods on my back.
Karen was out of sight. I could see her bike about five meters down the hill, but her body was a good 30 meters down, lost in the thick jungle of rhododendron. She started shouting that she was ok and all in one piece.
“Thank God” I thought. If he’s out there that is.
I retrieved Karen’s Blur and then assisted her in climbing back up to the trail. Dirt and scrapes marred Karen’s limbs, but she emerged with a huge grin stretched across her grill.
What a rad lady.
We looked the Blur over to find that it was unscathed, fortunately, and continued the ride. The trail continued to be a kick ass stand of single track all the way to the terminus at some unknown gravel road. We stopped here at what appeared to be a popular spot by the draft for sun bathers and cooled our heels. It was about a three mile ride on the gravel road back to the Tacoma. When we rolled into the parking area, I decided that I wasn’t finished riding and asked Karen if she wanted to ride the loop again. She declined, but offered to shuttle me to the Chestnut Ridge Road turn off and then meet me at the bottom of the trail. I took her up on her offer and we executed the mission. I threw the Trance into the big ring on Chestnut Ridge and hammered as hard as I could up the climb, then ripped the descent for the second time.
Wicked dude.
Karen was at the draft allowing her legs a break in the water. I followed suit and also drank a bottle of Accelerade.
We took an overly scenic route back to Grandfather Campground on gravel roads. It took well over and hour and the drive wore me out more than the ride did. So, we returned to camp to find that Steve had somehow fixed his bike (I still don’t know what was wrong with it) and wanted to ride. We told him the length of the single track was not worth the length of the drive.
We had the opportunity to spend our evening with the likes of Steve Thaxton, Nick Waite, and the Clothiers. A true West Virginia crew. It was fun to be around some old riding acquaintances from the WVMBA racing days and the mood was up, because Nick had placed fifth in pro cross country earlier in the day.
Way to go Nick!
Sunday June 11th, 2006 - 0800
We the people of the campsite arose at some point during the hour of 0900. Ok, seriously, I was the last one out my tent. Piss off. We all set about tearing down and packing up so that we could make for Sugar Mountain to watch the downhill competition.
I pissed Indiana Joe off by firing up my Tacoma while it was still parked in the campsite, stating that he didn’t want to “suck fumes”. I guess I don’t blame him, but I was trying to hurry Steve up who was taking his sweet ass time getting out of Grandfather. Medium Joe barked about my pollution and, finally, Steve backed his Taurus out and we were off.
Sorry Big Joe.
Upon our arrival at the venue we milled around the vendor area scavenging for free shit before heading up the mountain to watch pro downhill qualifying.
Stickers galore.
I scored a blue Velcro VW wallet, Steve amassed a small mountain of Sport Leg pills, and Karen made like a bear and raided the Bear Naked granola tent. Karen spent too much time at the Bear Naked tent so Steve decided we would ditch her ass and start our hike up the downhill course.
Asshole.
The sun was out and damn was it blazing hot. Most ski slopes happen to be treeless and my white boy complexion soon started sizzling. I was stoked to transform into lobster boy and start kicking villain ass.
Steve had been on the downhill course the day prior and knew of a “really sweet spot” from which we could spectate. Steve said the spot was a small creek crossing with a stone wall built on the higher bank so that riders could launch over the creek. I asked Steve if the stone wall had a lip or if it was just a drop. He said it had a lip.
Liar.
The spot was bogus. The creek was about a foot wide and the wall was about 4 feet tall with no lip. Drag. We watched about 5 riders hit the drop and then we bailed to find another location to watch from.
At this point we were about 1/3 of the way up the ski slope. Steve, Karen, and Big Joe decided to sneak onto the lift at a convenient low point, but I decided to continue the hike up the mountain, purely for the exercise. Most of the downhill course was unquestionably LAME. Its better parts were found at the top where rock gardens protruded menacingly from the earth. I picked my way to the top of the lift just as the three musketeers were getting off of it.
We ended up settling in at a short rock garden that was located about 100 meters downhill from the starting line. It was a short section with “large” rocks that was easily ride able at a slow speed on an XC bike, but it was way cooler to watch the down hillers huck their rigs across the slabs of rock at a fast speed.
One young semi-pro rider took a line to the left attempting to launch over the whole garden. Unfortunately the line simply threw him off of the trail and into the woods. His armored body sailed through the air like a rag doll. He landed hard and after collecting himself, grunted, picked up his ride, and sped off while we all rooted him on. Watching the semi-pro qualifying was fun, but only for so long.
That is until a smoked up videographer rolled up on us.
His partner in grime had already been at the spot as long as we had, balancing above the rock garden on a tree limb, filming riders with a Canon XL1. The new camerman seemed to be insanely stoned and was insanely loud with a vocabulary that was heavy on dude, awesome, and fuck the labor union.
Steve and I joked about asking the “dude” if he had a fat sack of weed to roll some blunts with. We only joked.
Semi-pro qualifying ceased and we decided to leave the event exiting via the ski lift.
Have you ever ridden a ski lift DOWN the slope? Sugar Mountain was my first opportunity and let me tell you…it was wicked fun! First of all it constantly feels like you’re going to fall forward out of the chair. Then if the lift stops, which it did multiple times, it feels like your being thrown off the mountain. You’re not rocking comfortably back into the chair, but you’re rocking forward out of the chair.
Neat.
Anyway, we touched down at the bottom of the mountain and proceeded to our vehicles. I said my goodbyes to Steve and Karen, hopped in my truck, and pointed compass south to Augusta.
A brief moment of negativity...
Sugar Mountain was possibly the worst venue to hold a NORBA event at vice the hill in my backyard. The downhill and XC courses were exceptionally lame and the dual slalom course…I’m not sure I can conjure up the proper words to bash its existence. Worst of all there were no Hayes Disc Brakes vendors present to fix my So1e brakes.
Fuck ‘em.
Steve and Karen agree that the event should be returned to Snowshoe.
Get Riding!
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