Cross Mountain and Windrock Mountain form the southeast side
of the Cumberland Mountains. Visible from Oliver Springs all the way north to
Caryville this high rim of mountains is rarely visited, except by ATV riders.
Much of the land is private, owned and operated as the 73,000 acre Windrock ATV
Park. My friend DK had begun running at Windrock not long after his move back
to Oak Ridge. He often trained by running the paved road from the base to top
of the mountain, but also had explored much of the surrounding area that his
annual pass gave him access to.
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| Our Route in Yellow. |
DK and I dreamed up this run shortly after the Cumberland
Trail 50K race. He knew from his Windrock training that there was vehicle
access from the main Windrock Trailhead near Oliver Springs east along the
crest of the mountains to TN 116 at Graves Gap. The Windrock Trail Map showed
trails extending northeast from Graves Gap nearly to Tower Road west of
Caryville which we had used to access parts of the Cumberland Trail 50K course.
Also, Tom Dunigan’s East Tennessee Mountain Biking website
listed a route he described as the challenge ride that extended from Caryville
to Frozen Head State Park. We probably couldn’t run that entire 42 mile challenge
route, but wouldn’t it be exciting to run the section of it along the crest of
the mountain? We picked the intersection of the P1 access road and G1 in
Windrock as the west end, and would start at the top of Tower Road on the crest
of Cross Mountain on the east end. We’d be running on some unmapped trails in
the North Cumberland Wildlife Management Area until we reached the edge of the
Windrock property somewhere near Caryville Flats.
I’d been long intrigued by this route. I had done a version
of Dunigans’s challenge ride that had bypassed Windrock, and was looking for a
more doable version. This run would fill in the only gap I had in the original version
and would get me 22 miles of new trail, not an easy thing for me to do in those
days that close to home. We would surely be the first to do this route as a
run, even the folks at Windrock seemed to think it was a long trip by ATV.
Using both Dunigan’s GPS track and the Windrock ATV map I
guessed that the run would be about 22 miles one way. After my planned hike for
the 17th was postponed, we quickly recruited Leonard, Kathy, Susan, and
Stephanie who were all strong, experienced runners. I didn’t take notes during
the trip, but GPS’d the route. Leonard and others (Kathy?) took some pictures,
and DK took video.
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| With Leonard, Susan, DK, and Stepahanie |
The first snag was getting permits to use the Windrock
Property. I had thought I would be able to get permits for the group the night
before, but DK knew that the permits came with a liability wavier that needed
to be signed. That meant a later start for us as the Trailhead didn’t open
until 8AM, and we wouldn’t be able to shuttle vehicles without our permit.
Normally a late start would not be an issue, but the weather forecast for the
day indicated that steady rain would be likely after noon, and we had little
chance of finishing by then. Temperatures were forecast in the low 60s in
Knoxville for the day.
Luckily, the security guy pulled into the Windrock Trailhead
just after we did, and we got a bit of a jump start. He was friendly and knowledgeable.
Susan had done the Windrock summer adventure race, and Stephanie had done the ultramarathon
stage race at Windrock, so we had some credibility talking with him. When the
TH operator arrived, she mentioned that “there’s a guy here who runs up the
road training for Pike’s Peak,” which of course was DK.
We shuttled Kathy’s and Stephanie’s cars to the top of
Windrock, and DK and I drove our cars to the top of Cross Mountain up Tower
Road from Caryville. I neglected to time either shuttle trip, but it was
probably in the 45-60 minute range. Hoskins Gap Road is only partly paved, but
is still much faster than detouring through Oliver Springs.
When we started the run around 9:30 at the crest of Tower
Road on Cross Mountain. The weather was
warm and blustery, with some ominous clouds off to the west. Our first trail
was a decent ATV track. After going over the first knob we ran through a
community of trailers with some yappy dogs that fortunately left us alone. What
those folks were doing there I didn’t want to know. It wasn’t too hard to
follow the right ATV trail to Caryville Flats (McGhee Flats on the topo), which
is the edge of the Windrock property. There was no property sign or trail sign
here. I’d heard of the flats from ATV riders since I first started exploring
this area by mountain bike around 2008-2009. It is supposedly the former site
of an US Air Force installation. The flats look like the Cumberlands equivalent
of a southern bald, a roughly half mile long stretch of flat, open, and grassy
ridge top. It was likely stripped flat by surface mining for coal, but it’s
hard to explain why there is no revegetation. There were great views of
Caryville and the valley from the flats off the remarkably steep flank of the mountains.
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| Caryville Flats. |
We hurried through the flats as the wind was gusting and
rain couldn’t have been too far off. We were now navigating with the official Windrock
map. In the first gap at the junction with Trail 62 we saw a group of dirt
bikers. We’d see one other group of dirt bikers before Graves Gap, and a lone pickup
truck beyond, but otherwise Windrock was ours alone for the day. Once on Trail
54, the trails were well marked, and the map became easy to follow. DK also had
a useful phone app (Maprika?) that used GPS to show our position on the official
trail map.
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| Leaving Caryville Flats |
Maybe it was the weather, but the northern end of the trails
seemed the prettiest. There was a lot of mature open forest and we got a lot of
good views off to the east over the valley. All of the trails had rocky cliffs,
most left over from the old contour mining for coal. The trails were in decent
shape, not the rutted muddy mess that I expected from an ATV Area. We were
sticking as close to the crest as possible, rather than trying to follow the
Dunigan route.
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| Enjoy the views while they last. |
The trail was pretty mountain bikable until the drop into Cold(?)
Gap where it got eroded by the steep grade at Devil’s Elbow. Beyond here our
route was essentially the same as used by the Dunigan Challenge ride. I remember
some long stretches of mudholes where the trails followed the old contour mines
and what was probably the northern end of Trail 53. We were trying to keep our
feet dry and danced around the edges of the mud holes, which became a little
tedious and took a lot of time. We all made the decision to plow through the
water at some point, and were able to move better. By the lower half of Trail
53 the footing got less muddy. When we crossed gravel G53, the road looked
fairly steep. but well enough kept up to be passable by car.
West of G53 we ran Trail 50 pretty hard, but somewhere in
here it started to rain (~1PM). There’s a lot of activity around the crossing
of TN 116, but we found Graves Gap and the 3 gallons of water that DK had
cached there for us the day before. I’d estimated this section at ~12.5 miles,
but it turned out to be 13.5 miles, not a good sign as the rain looked to be
staying for the rest of the day. But from Graves Gap to Windrock our route
stayed on gravel G1, so we were expecting to go faster here as the surface
would be easier, and there wouldn’t be as much navigating. Just waiting around
at the water drop got everyone chilled. I pulled on light weight wicker over my
T-shirt, it was barely enough.
Kathy was the most chilled, so she ran ahead straight to her
car. DK and Stephanie ran together followed by Susan and me, and with Leonard
behind. With the fog keeping the visibility down to around 100 feet, there
wasn’t much to see, so we just ticked off the junctions as they went by, trails
33, 9, etc. Our paper maps eventually
got too wet to use. The first few miles of G1 looked well maintained, but at
some point there were a few sections far too rough for cars. G1 would make for
a good mountain bike ride. Unfortunately, the rain kept the enjoyment factor
pretty damped down. I would have loved to stop and do more exploring, but even
the most obvious overlooks were nothing but a bank of gray clouds. I expected
that any old mining artifacts had been cleaned up, but there have to be some
old trails that the ATVs don’t use that would be worth exploring for artifacts
or fossils.
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| Rain and fog on G1. |
We got to some open areas earlier than I expected. I thought
these might be the location of the old Windrock #1 mine, but it was too foggy
to see, and too miserable to do any extra exploring. At ~3:15, a bit ahead of
schedule, we heard the buzzing of a pair of ATVs and met them at the junction
with paved road P1. They told us the cars were just a bit down the road. Kathy
had made it in 30-45 minutes earlier, but it turned out Susan and I were just a
few minutes behind DK and Stephanie.
After some quick drying off in the light rain Kathy took
Susan and Leonard back to Oak Ridge, and Stephanie drove DK and I back to the
cars at the top of Tower Road. We retraced the shuttle and drove back home. I
had about 98 miles of driving for the day from home.
Route Summary
22.3 miles, 3200 feet ascent by GPS, 5:45 run time
Start at crest of Tower Road west of Caryville, Finish at junction
of paved Windrock Road and G1
Route = Crest of Cross Mtn. south to Caryville Flats and
then into the Windrock area and follow trails 66, 54, 53, and 50, then gravel
road G1
