The Afton Hill Climb Recon Ride Part 1

Any “Monster Ride” requires a bit of recon and careful planning to pull off unless you desire failure. I’ve never desired failure but I’m damn fine at achieving it.

Case in point I wanted to get out and pre ride a few sections of this 140 mile maybe impossible route before actually getting a large group of guys together for a high power round of disappointment.

I prepped friend and co-worker Rick Babin by saying “there will be a lot of climbs and I’m going to try to maximize the amount of gravel road riding. This should make for some great Southern Cross training….but…..I’ve never been on over half of this pre-ride route so other than cold I don’t know what to expect.”

The night before was spent researching a few internet sites to gauge the temperature for the day which looked to be starting out with a Weather Channel.com “Real Feel” of 19 degrees. Now if it feels like 19 degrees and you are in a well known colder area next to several creeks all day then you tend to plan for a bit chillier. Finally I decided that pre-planning a wardrobe just isn’t my thing so I packed everything I owned for cold weather gear into the bike bag and went in to work the graveyard shift. I managed about an hour of sleep before meeting up with Rick with a 5 Bucks triple expresso caramel mocha with plenty of extra sugar and a sprinkle of gay on top. *That’s a Ralphie May thing.

When we arrived at our destination the weather was closer to 25 degrees according to the Garmin so naturally we suited up for some chilly riding. Well out of the parking lot with no warm up it was slightly shy of 3 miles and a touch over 1,120’ of elevation gain until we hit the first turn. Both of us quickly realized that our cross bike saddles were too low for serious climbing and that we were way overdressed for a climb. We were sweaty already. What’cha gonna do about it now? Press on into the gravel unknown.

The gravel continued to climb skyward for a bit before looping back around near the trail head at which we had parked then took a turn from a gravel road to what Steve described as “The Jeep Road from Hell.”

After a bit of rocky jeep road climbing we hit the summit and headed down.

After several times of stoping to check the map and a few wrong turns we got back on track and faced a series of creek crossings. Now ordinarily this wouldn’t have been a problem but today the weather was below freezing, the creek was really flowing and we were at least 20+ miles away from the car with no cell phone service.

On a mountain bike the creek crossings could possibly have been ridden but I’d bet money that even the cleanest riders would have dabbed or worse hit the swift current and fallen in and submerged in icy cold water 20 miles from the car with no chance of rescue and in sub freezing temps just isn’t how I was looking to spend my Friday off work so we elected to spend some time finding alternate ways through the various creek crossings.

After several water crossings we finally made our way out to the next gravel road turn.

Just as we approached the turn a friendly German Sheppard who had previously been asleep on his porch decided that he felt like a 15 mile run and leapt off the porch and begin to chase us up the road.

We stopped several times and attempted to send him back home but he would have no part of that. I guess friendly mountain dogs need some attention and exercise too. The next section of gravel road was better maintained than our descent and stayed flat just long enough to get our hopes up before starting into a gradual climb. After about a mile or so that gradual grade turned steep again and we switch backed our way up the mountain to Salt Log Gap.

We stopped for a minute at Salt Log Gap to ascess our situation.

The original 80 mile loop seemed pretty much out of site. We (I) had spent too much time making sure that we were on track then getting lost then back on track, shoeing off dogs and fording creek crossings. We were only about 22 miles into the route and now had less than 3 hours of daylight left to get back to the car. With the temperature dropping quickly, the cloudy day turning into long shadowed late afternoon, a body covered in wet clothes and no lights we decided to play it safe and nix the 2nd loop and instead find a good way back to the car. That bail out included a screaming 40 MPH “gravelish” descent that had me loosing all feeling in my hands and toes about 2 minutes into the drop. At the base of the descent shivering almost uncontrollably we hooked a right and headed towards Irish Creek Gap and praying for some more climbing to warm us up. Well we got it and opted to skip the Irish Creek gravel for a spin on the Blue Ridge Parkway back up to route 56.

The parkway climbing warmed us up enough to be smiling and chatty when we hit the route 56 descent. My last words to Rick were “Ok I won’t lie, we are going to freeze our nuts off and be blue by the time we get to the car BUT it’s only about 15 to 20 minutes. I suggest you keep it in the 50t x 11t gear and spin like you’ve never spun before.” Sure enough we both arrived back at the parking lot shivering, blue and shelled. It’s just about how you would expect any wintertime ride in the mountains with me to turn out. Rick being the forgiving soul that he is even picked up the tab at our post ride Devil’s Backbone Brewery diner. Thanks again dude.

So now I have some new info about the route and some more realistic expectations. There will be a round two attempt of the 80 mile route that I hope will get us a little bit more dialed in for the 140 mile beast.

Frank and Snowman if you are reading this I suggest you get on board for some DK training.

Peace,
Metro