In 2007 the State of Tennessee completed a land acquisition
project called Connecting the Cumberlands that greatly expanded public access
to land in the Cumberland Mountains. Combined with other properties previously
acquired, there was now a large swath of public land combining Frozen Head
State Park and the Royal Blue and North Cumberland Wildlife Management Areas stretching
across the range from I-75 on the east to Wartburg on the west. Jean and I were
immediately interested in the new property. In 2008, we began exploring on foot
in the new property around the edges of Frozen Head, and I also started
exploring the wildlife management areas on my mountain bike.
The new properties were open to hunting and crossed by a
network of old roads, some active, but most only passable to ATVs. The new properties
had either previously been private land, or had been used only by hunters or
recreational ATV riders. We could find few decent maps, even the state agencies
didn’t have access to anything that showed the current road and trail network.
The best source I eventually found was Tom Dunigan’s wonderful
“East Tennessee Mountain Bike” website. The maps there were even then about a
decade old, but I was to discover that almost all the trails shown were still
passable. Also, at that time the standard Google satellite maps pulled up by
most websites were remarkably useful. In contrast to the current set (2020),
the photos available in that era were taken in winter thus offering a view through
the tree canopy, and of such remarkable resolution that it was possible pick
out two track ATV roads at maximum resolution.
For the next couple of years I pecked away at the list of
rides on the Dunigan website. I posted short reports of most on Matt Steagal’s
Knoxville Cycling message board, including a shorter version of a description
of this ride. Late in the game, I found a link to Dunigan’s epic, or challenge,
ride from Caryville to Frozen Head. There are a couple different versions of
this ride described on his website. The original 42 mile ride used quite a bit
of land that is now part of the Windrock ATV park. With my friend DK we would
eventually do an abbreviated version of that route as a trail run in 2013. A
latter version by Cheryl and Curtis Travis went down to the New River and back
up via Bootjack Mountain. Our own variation, via Cross Mountain, Ash Log
Mountain, Smokey Junction, Hembree, Fork Mountain, and the Garden Spot with
about the same distance and more climbing was legit enough to make the official
epic list.
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| Resting |
Mark Shipley is probably the strongest climber on a bike I
know, and has the combination of plentiful backcountry riding experience and
lack of common sense needed to join me on the ride. We left Knoxville @5:45. We
left a shuttle car at Frozen Head and were pedaling out of the Cumberland Trail
Trailhead at Cove Lake by about 8 AM. We parked at the CT Trailhead, but did not
ride any of the CT. The shuttle drive from Frozen Head to Caryville took only
an hour. We had prepared for a full day of riding, but found out we were not
quite ready for a maximum effort day in the full 90 degree 90% humidity of
summer in the Cumberlands.
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| Overview of our Challenge Ride Route. |
We started by riding back under the interstate and then north
on the frontage road. We hadn’t yet ridden the start of the Red Ash/Mine 10
road, it but turned out to be great riding. However, it was steep, and it was a
little depressing for one of us to have to walk a few pitches so early in the
ride. At the top of the climb there are a few miles of easy riding after
Wheeler Gap where the road follows an old coal bench out toward Mine #14. Mine
14 was still operating back, then and had such a small equipment storage area
it looked like the road was going to take you right into their shop.
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| Approaching Mine #14. |
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| National Coal Mine 14 |
Beyond Mine 14 we planned to take a new-to-us ATV connecting
trail up to Grave Gap so that we could descend the route I had taken previously
down from Ash Log Gap. A much more humane way to do the challenge ride would
have been to stay on the Red Ash/Mine 10 Road over Massengale Mountain, and ride
directly down to the Coal Plant at Smokey Junction. The direct route would have
taken several miles off the route and replaced some of the tougher riding with
some fairly easy gravel road.
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| Mark on the Red Ash/ Mine 10 Road |
The ATV trail up to Grave Gap, turned out to be steep and
rutted, and again required some pushing of the bikes. In general, all the ATV roads
and trails we used were rougher than they had been on the past trips. I think heavy
storms of that spring and early summer did a lot of damage to the ATV roads,
especially those that didn’t get any maintenance. There are still some great views off the old
strip mines on Ash Log Mountain, and we rode by at least one old abandoned mine
building. The trail along the crest is getting looser, rockier, and more overgrown,
but is still fun and the 6+ mile descent off Ash Log to the New River is a
blast.
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| Old mine building near Ash Log Gap. |
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| Descending Ash Log Mountain |
The middle section of the ride follows the New River Road north
to Smokey Junction. This is maintained road with little traffic and nice views
of the river. With the day heating up it was nice to be able to ride fast
enough to get some cooling breezes. I was having a little trouble with my front
derailleur, but managed to get it into adjustment. Arriving in Smoky Junction
we stopped at the Hembree Store for cold drinks and bags of chips just for the
salt. I think we freaked out the crew hanging out on the porch when we told
them we’d rode over the mountain from Caryville. I don’t know what they would
have thought if they’d known we were bound for Wartburg.
From my previous rides in the area I was familiar with the
roads up the Smoky Creek to its headwaters. This is some of the most remote
parts of Tennessee’s Cumberland Mountains, the owners of these few lonely
homesteads surely appreciate their solitude. A few more miles on the flat valley along
Smokey Creek brought us to Hembree and then to the concrete bridge over Greens
Branch. It was time to pay the price for all the easy riding.
It was hot and muggy when we reached Greens Branch, so we
ate a bit more and laid down in the creek to cool off before the trip got
really ugly. The climb out of Smokey Creek is a bitch at best, and conditions
that day would be far from the best. From the concrete bridge all the way to
the crest of Fork Mountain the road had just been graded to support a massive
logging operation in the upper Smoky Creek Watershed. This grading and gravel probably
helps the coal and timber trucks, but a couple of inches of loose, coarse rock
and mud don’t do anything at all for traction on a mountain bike. I’d “biked”
up this climb on a ride the previous year and dubbed the section “The Road of
Horrors”, but had not been able to find any other alternate way to connect the
Smoky Creek area with the area around Frozen Head. After sloshing and spinning
a few feet up the hill we got off the bikes and started pushing, and kept pushing.
The climb was nothing short of horrific. We did catch a bit
of a break with the weather as it started pouring almost as soon as we started
the climb. It was midafternoon, temperatures in the 90s and we were fully exposed
to the sun. The road rock was so coarse and loose we could hardly walk on it,
much less push the bikes ever upward. The few stretches of climb in the sun
were almost unbearably steamy. Our only salvation was getting hit by summer
thunderstorm. The rain washed the stinging sweat into our eyes and the mud
slumped on our tires made the bikes even harder to push. We couldn’t have
gotten any wetter from the rain, and it least the water was only lukewarm.
We both had our moments on the climb, mostly from
dehydration. We had some cramps and a bit of the spins, but no puking or
anything worse. Good thing too, this isn’t the kind of place where someone else
is going to ride by and bail you out. We’d downed a couple of Gatorades apiece
at Hembree Store and drank ~150 oz. of
fluid over the course of the ride, but it was just impossible to drink enough
to keep up with the rate we were sweating. It ended up taking all of two hours
to push the four mile, 1600’ hill.
But once on top, we had one of my favorite rides, along the
crest road past Burge Mountain, and then down onto the contour road that
circles the head of Indian Fork. We were too hammered to really appreciate the
view, but at least we were back on familiar ground.
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| Windmills on Buffalo Mountain. |
From Indian Fork we had to push one last pitch up Fork Mountain,
then rode over to Cold Gap and into Frozen Head. I had to air up my tire at the
Gap, but fortunately it held up for the rest of the ride. By this time we were
about out of water. The wild boar were getting pretty thick around Frozen Head
and we saw a lot of sign of them near Coffin Springs. However, the spring house
itself looked pretty well protected, so we hoped some old iodine tablets would
do their job.
The upper part of the Frozen Head Jeep Road is another of
those fun flowing double tracks that I like so much. We were able to recover a
bit, and had a great descent down most of the road into the park. The lower
mile plus of the jeep road had gotten really eroded over the previous winter,
and we ended up walking down a few stretches that were nothing but boulder
fields. We saw Ranger Michael Hodge in the parking lot at FH when we finished
around 5:40 for a 9:40 ride. Michael has seen a lot, but I think we were his
first visitors to cycle in from Caryville. Otherwise we saw only two coal
trucks and some ATV’s all day, probably ran across more deer and turkey than we
did people.
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| Challenge ride elevation profile |
Overall, I had about 44 miles by GPS. My bike odometer had
43.8 miles , but it wasn’t able to pick up some readings during the second
climb, I think because the heavy rain shorts out the connection between the
pickup and the computer. The GPS showed 5,900’ of climb, which might be a
little high. I’d do the ride again, but maybe not in mid-summer (the high in Knoxville
for the day was 96F), and definitely not right after the road grader had passed
through. This was another ride where I did not carry a camera, so I have used a
few images from my earlier rides in the area.
