Catching Up

Well, it's true that it has been a while since my last article, but you'll forgive me when you know that I've been occupied at a family reunion. Yes, I did bring my survival kit (bicycle, helmet, shoes, and Hammer Gel), so I'm managing to enjoy myself to an unprecedented degree...to start, let me catch y'all up to date:

Tuesday Night Pain Train (06/27): Great ride, super legs...felt great the whole way 'round.

Wednesday night I was playing basketball with the young men from church. Doing my best imitation of Dennis Rodman (rebounding...not kicking cameramen or bad mouthing Mormons) the ball hit my hand and I felt and heard a nasty "POP" in the middle finger of my left hand. One would think that this wouldn't affect my ability to ride. I discovered differently on Friday as I found I use it to shift between my chainrings, put a great deal of pressure/strain on it while climbing out of the saddle, as well as releasing my rear brake closure cam when beginning a climb. I also use this finger in concert with it's brothers to remove and replace a water bottle for hydrating properly. The moral of this story is, be careful playing basketball with Scouts, because cycling involves all body parts, not just the parts you think are obvious.

So, onto the ride report...I just returned from Sevierville, Tennessee, immediately adjacent to Pigeon Forge (home of Dollywood) which sits between Sevierville and Gatlinburg (I don't think it's named after Larry or any of his brothers). Gatlinburg is on the edge of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The GSMNP is unique in the National Park system because they are not allowed to charge admission. It has something to do with the way the deed was written when the park was created, but I think it probably has more to do with the fact that if they charged the standard $25 per carload to get between tourist traps #1 & #2 (Pigeon Forge/Gatlinburg) and tourist trap #3 (Cherokee, NC) that the local economies of all three would suffer because thousands upon thousands of dollars per day would disappear into the dark recesses of the federal machine (on the other hand, perhaps the federal machine would use some of those dollars to install water fountains in the park). Or folks just wouldn't go back and forth, but the net effect would be the same.

Anyway, also unique to the GSMNP is that the second highest point east of the Mississippi river is found within its borders. This peak is Clingman's Dome, and is where I spent last Friday morning remembering why I love to ride my bicycle. I left our vacation home around 7:45am, and found myself whipping through patches of fog as I made my way south along the main road that runs through Sevierville, PF, and Gatlinburg. Once south of Pigeon Forge, the road becomes a divided 4 lane with a nice forest with a creek separating the two halves of the road. As I would many times later on the ride, I found myself wishing I had a camera with me.

I made my way through Gatlinburg, which can best be described as crowded and touristy, but a very charming little tourist trap never the less. Loads of character. And condos. And hotels. And time shares. And fudge shops.

As you leave Gatlinburg, you enter the National Park. I made a stop at the park welcome center to make certain that I was on the correct road, and found no help there as the girl who was impersonating a parks employee claimed she'd never heard of Clingman's Dome. "Hello...this is the biggest attraction in your park lady...get a clue!" Fortunately for me, there was a 3 dimensional model of the park and I was able to find that the road I was on was indeed the one which would deposit me at the highest point in the state of Tennessee.

So I went back outside and resumed riding. At this point, the climbing begins in earnest. (of course, "earnest" is a relative term, there's nothing too steep here) While I'd been gradually ascending for the past 5-6 miles already (at this point I had ~300 feet of climbing in), it is just inside the park boundary that the road really turns up. Now, I don't mean that it's steep, because it's not. I'd guess (without having downloaded my Polar data yet) that it averages 5-6%, with some shorter sections hitting 7-8% as you climb the switchbacks near Newfound Gap. The challenge here is that the climbing lasts for 22 miles. Plus the 5-6 miles outside the park. It's not a tough climb, and you can really move through some sections. There are a couple of tunnels that are a little scary due to the "riding in a dark tube with cars" thing. But this is a heavily shaded road, with lots of wildlife to see and thousands of rhododendron bushes to look at as you climb.

About 3 miles into the climb, I was passed by a caravan of family reunioners (my wife's cousins and uncles) who were driving to Newfound Gap to hike the Appalachian Trail section between that point that the top of Clingman's Dome. I made it my objective at that point to get there ahead of them.

I slowed down near some of the overlooks to check out the scenery. It's always a very cool thing to see the road that you've been riding waaaay off down below you somewhere, and I wasn't disappointed.

At Newfound Gap, you leave the main road and climb for another 7 miles to the observation tower at the highest point on Clingman's Dome. Except for a short 3/4 mile downhill on this part of the road, it's a steady climb from Gatlinburg to the top. It took me a touch over 2 hours to climb to the top, but I was riding into a headwind most of the way to the top. I also was taking time to really look around and enjoy the scenery, which is spectacular.

About 5 minutes after I arrived at the top, as I was searching for a water fountain to replenish my bottles, my wife showed up with a couple of kids and a cousin or two. She had dropped my son off farther down the mountain and he was riding up to meet us. So I kicked around for a while waiting until he arrived. Then we checked out the view from the observation tower, from which you could see Mt. Mitchell (highest point east of the Mississippi) about 50 miles east. Then we climbed on our bikes and headed down the mountain.

Now, if you've ever ridden in mountain canyons, you know that the temperature of the air in the mountains vs the temperature of the air in the valleys affects the direction the breeze is blowing. Remember I had said that I had a bit of a headwind for the climb. I wish I could say that it was a tailwind for the descent, but it was not. We had a headwind for the entire way back down the mountain, and still we managed to run at 35-40 mph the whole way. Despite the wind, it was a fun descent.

It was 43 miles from our lodging to the top of Clingman Dome. The first 20 miles of that was nearly flat, with only 300' of climbing. The next 20 miles climbs an additional ~5200 feet.

I'm already looking forward to my next chance to ride it.