The North Cumberland Wildlife Management Area is a tough place to find your way around. The maps of the area are lousy, there’s almost no signing, and there is a dense, confusing network of ATV roads. This means that hikers generally stick to nearby Frozen Head State Park and that mountain bikers rarely visit the area at all. But the area is still popular with ATV riders who pay a much smaller penalty for getting lost, just some time and a little fuel. No gut busting climbs for them.
A
few years back I’d spent some time exploring the area, mostly by mountain bike
and occasionally on foot, but it had been several years since I’d done an
exploring ride there. One of the few items left on my list was the “Four Lane”
aka the Brimstone Haul Road, reputed from information on Tom Dunigan’s East
Tennessee Mountain bike website to extend from the Brimstone Recreation Area
near Huntsville, TN south into the NCWMA. On a prior ride I’d ridden the first
couple miles of the Four Lane on the south end. I started looking into taking another shot at
completing it after reading two articles online in the Oneida Herald written by
Ben Garrett. Hypothetically, the Four Lane could give me a long ridgetop ride
through the heart of the Cumberlands, without requiring multiple major climbs for
just the modest price of a TWRA permit.
My
older rides in the Cumberlands had been replaced by some exploring in Windrock,
usually with my friend DK who had tons of experience running, riding, and
jeeping in that area. We were still doing some modest mountain biking together and
thought we might be able to pull off a 28 mile out and back ride to connect the
north end of my NCWMA riding to the south end of what I’d ridden on a previous
trip to Brimstone. The weekend offered a pre-gun season, rain free forecast,
and prime fall colors, so we decided to give the route a shot despite being far
from trained up for the adventure.
Key
to the plan was using DK’s jeep to climb into the heart of the mountains and
deposit us up on the mountain crest.
We started at the coal plant and soon were bouncing up the rutted, rocky road. Not too far in we got a warning light on the jeep, but a quick stop and some easing of the road grade enabled us to continue. Once at the awesome overlook that marks the end of the main climb the driving improved. But the road proved to be much rougher than in past years, and we decided to start riding before reaching our intended launch point, figuring we could go about as fast of the bikes as we were driving.
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| Overlook |
The
start of our ride was on road I hadn’t been on recently and proved much rougher
than I remembered. But soon we were on familiar ground with enjoyable riding.
Most of our riding would be on old gravel roads, dotted with puddles and
mudholes on the flats, and loose and rocky on the steeper sections. The roads
receive some maintenance, probably to allow access to the gas wells that dot
the Cumberlands, but we also saw that much of the Four Lane was also marked as
a pipeline route. Though it had been a day and a half since our last rain, the well
shaded roads hadn’t dried up at all, and we rode all day with a thin layer of
mud covering the hardpack.
It was about four miles of riding to our intended launch spot and by then we were riding smoothly. Much of the way we had the modest curves and rolls that make riding so much fun. We met two guys on a four wheeler, and they confirmed we were on the right road and that there were no major climbs ahead. Next, we came to “the slide” where part of the roadway had washed away and collapsed. The route was still plenty wide for bikes (and ATVs).
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| Landslide on the Four Lane |
Almost the entire Cumberland Mountains have been mined for coal. The existing roads tend to follow the coal seams or have been used to reach the mining sites. The highwall mining used often in the later stages of mining had its advantages though. Many of the roads, including much of the Four Lane, are bordered by high rock walls opened up by the miners. With the regrowth of the forest these areas are now remarkably pretty.
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| DK at the Slide |
We were seeing a few signposts marking our route as trail 1. Though there were numerous side roads splitting off, we only saw a TWRA sign at the intersection with Wolf Pen Trail #22. Maybe this lack of signage was for the better. In contrast to the sign, the online map for the NCWMA shows this as unnamed trail 56 and that Wolf Pen Hollow itself was several drainages away. Next up we made two crossing of a powerline cut that opened up some views for us, including the transmission tower aptly on top of Signal Mountain.
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| NCWMA Trail Sign |
Given
our slow time on the drive in and our need to ride 4 extra miles to the start
we’d realized right off that we wouldn’t make it to our original intended
turnaround. We rode down one more significant hill before stopping for lunch at
the intersection with an ATV trail that turned out to be NCWMA #55.
Though
we’d lost elevation on the ride out, the ride back went more quickly. Maybe
we’d rediscovered some bike handling skills, or were just nervous about having
issues with the jeep driving back. DK, though complaining mightily about the
hills, attempted to ride all of them and was successful on most. I’d ridden a
lot less this year and knew I needed to conserve my energy, so I could
rationalize walking my bike up anything long or steep. We’d only seen a couple
folks on the ride out, but there was more ATV traffic on our return. Bikes were
obviously a novelty, and we got a lot of friendly comments from the other
riders.
By after noon the dense clouds in the valley had dissipated and we got better views at the few overlooks. Our pattern was to ride together on the flats, and DK would wait on my at the top of the hills. I was really enjoying the Four Lane, it was exhilarating riding and would also make for great “trail” running.
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| Muddy Bike |
With
plenty of time, but not much energy, to spare we made it back to the jeep. Both
riders and bikes were coated with thick layers of sloppy mud spun up from the
tires. The trip down the mountain proved blessedly uneventful. We talked up a
couple of ideas for future rides, always the sign of a successful trip.
Links to articles in Oneida Herald:
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