Tag: Bike Camping

TransNorthGeorgia Day 2 [Unfinished]

Waking up this morning was the driest I’ve been at a campsite in a long time. A quick cup of coffee, a tube of jerky and a refill of the water bottles in the creek and we were on our way up to Tray Gap.

Within ten minutes of starting the day, I had already convinced myself three times over that not riding this stretch the previous night was the right call.

Roads like these...It ended up taking us another 3 and a half hours to make it to the place where I’d planned on camping while doing our ride planning. Continue reading TransNorthGeorgia Day 2 [Unfinished]

TransNorthGeorgia [Day 1]

[Preface]

Jump straight to the ride

With my recent success on the Huracan350, and always eyeing bigger and more challenging things, I decided to try to take on the TransNorthGeorgia route, which traverses the northern part of the state from South Carolina to Alabama.
Screenshot 2015-04-29 08.45.00
Like the Huracan, it’s better than 90% dirt. Unlike the Huracan, this route is not flat. Over the same distance (325ish miles), it climbs upwards of 55,000ft vertically. For some perspective, The GreatDivide which is 2700+ miles, climbs 200kft, so this is somewhere on the order of 2.5x as much climbing per mile.

Ouch.

For a little more perspective, that little blip towards the end of the elevation profile between 255 and 280, that’s Snake Creek Gap.

This is a serious route, listed as one of the top ten bikepacking routes in the US over at singletracks.com, with the warning: “If you’re thinking this might be a good beginning bikepacking route to tackle, think again…” Continue reading TransNorthGeorgia [Day 1]

Riding the Huracan300 [Part 4]

After three good days of biking around central Florida, the time had come to drive the final nail in this ride. Just about 70 miles or so stood between me and completion of my first ultra-endurance race.

We had camped the night before near the north edge of Seminole State Park. The route after the park winds over and hits Maggie Jones road. This road was singled out in the narrative as truly unpredictible. It might be fast hardpack or it might be loose slow-going sand. This little bit of the course description weighed into our decision to stop where we did the night before. We’d rather tackle it fresh in the morning than spend a couple hours pushing our bikes after midnight. After all, we weren’t in this to win anything. Continue reading Riding the Huracan300 [Part 4]