I
got the idea for this run after plotting the results of my mountain
bike ride on the NCWMA “Four Lane” two weeks ago (Here),
and from my Brimstone Road mountain bike recon trip in 2014 (Here).
Based on what we’d seen on the Four Lane.
it
looked like there would be along skinny loop out of Lone Mountain Church at the
south end of the Brimstone Road. Both trails 39 (Flower Mountain) and 33 (Mill
Creek) show as roads rather than ATV trails, so they should be mountain
bikable at best, and runnable at worst. There were three options to connect the
two, trail 79 at the shortest and the Gobey Crest Road at the longest. I
targeted the middle route, a blue “foot trail” along the 2600’ bench for our
route as it would give us a nice long middle third of new trail to explore. My
initial estimate for the route length was 13.1 miles.
The
drive in the trailhead may have been the toughest part of the trip. Leonard and
I met in Oak Ridge, and the drive to the trailhead via Highway 27 took about
1:15. I didn’t remember that we needed to climb a small hill to reach the Lone
Mountain Church, but luckily Leonard had spotted it from the bridge below. We
elected to park at the Church, figuring it would not be busy on a weekday.
 |
| The start of the trails. |
The
start of roads 39 and 31 was not marked at the intersection with the Brimstone Road,
but we found it by walking just 100 feet or so back down the road from the
church. Almost immediately the road forked at signs for TWRA and CNX Gas. We
took the left fork to do the loop clockwise and begin along Mill Creek. The day
before had seen an inch of rain in Knoxville and there had apparently been much
more here. Mill Creek was full, almost bursting its banks. |
| Wet weather falls on Mill Creek. |
The
trail took us by some old trailers in a field in the east end of the meadows
below the church. As is often the case we found that there were many more
intersections with ATV tracks than our maps showed.
 |
| Crossing a side branch of Mill Creek. |
There are no gas wells
along the first few miles of Trail 31. We saw the Trail 77 junction and worked
to keep our feet dry at the crossing of several side creeks that are likely
normally dry. The surface here was gently graded well packed gravel that would
have made for nice biking. The trail hugged the creek until it approached its
headwaters near the junction with Trail 79. As the trail pulled above and east
of the main branch, we could see a concrete block building below us along a
side trail. But, since we had a long loop ahead of us, on almost completely
unexplored trail, we didn’t check out the structure more closely. |
| Old building along Mill Creek. |
Beyond
the structure and the Trail 79 junction, Trail 31 climbed steeply as a rocky
and eroded ATV route. We began to parallel a utility line and also saw the
remains of an old 4” pipeline partly excavated in the road. The pipeline could
have been buried in the road from the start, and just not exposed by erosion,
but we weren’t sure where the start of the utility line was. Both lines probably
once fed the old coal plant that was sited above us on the north side of the
east end of Sandy Gap Mountain. |
| Leonard along Mill Creek. |
Near
the top of the climb, we made our only navigation error of the day. We spotted
the start of foot trail that we thought we be our connector, and did the smart
thing by continuing a short distance up the road to the junction with the Four
Lane to get our bearings. Then we went back down to our foot trail and followed
it a short way before it began to fade away as it approached an old mine site.
We quickly realized that this was not our trail, and went back up the junction
with the Four Lane and found our trail leading out of the back of a gas well
site. More careful reading of the map would have told me that hiking to the
Four Lane level was needed here. The confusion added maybe 0.5 to 0.7 mile tour
route.
 |
| Don't turn here (photo by Leonard). |
Our
“foot trail” was obviously well used by ATVs, but at least it was open.
However, the “trail” followed an old coal mining bench at 2600’, so it was
essentially too flat to drain. After our efforts along Mill Creek to keep our
feet dry, we were soon plunging through one nasty mud puddle after another. It
was a slow slog through a pretty area. At one point I noticed a 6” diameter
hole in the middle of the bench, too deep (>3’) for me to reach the bottom
with a stick. I wasn’t sure if this was an old blasthole that was just never
fired, or if it was an exploration hole drilled to examine the coal seams
below. |
| Following the old coal bench (Photo by Leonard). |
The
west end of the bench had seen some recent scraping with a bulldozer, as did
the first bit of Trail 39 that we turned onto leading up to the junction with
the west end of Trail 79 on Fork Ridge. The mile of trail around the east side
of High Knob was one of the two sections of trail that I’d done previously, and
I didn’t remember this dozer work from my visit earlier in the year. The trail
was faint past the last gas well, and I wondered if Trail 39 was really the better
used road on the west side of High Knob.
Once
around to the north side of High Knob we were on the home stretch. There was
some recent intense logging on the west side of Flower Mountain around the head
of Indian Creek, near our south end. The split left to Gosnell Mountain was
faint, but I think there was no logging north of there. We cruised along
another well-kept gravel road, ignoring the splits that led to gas wells or
unmapped ATV trails. Here we passed our only person of the day, a lone ATV
rider who told us we were on the correct road (!) and that he also had parked
at Lone Mountain Church.
 |
| Leonard along Trail 39. |
The last three miles of the loop were downhill, and
the tread mostly good enough to be bikable, so we did our only running of the
day here. Back at the church we found that our ATV rider worked for the gas
company, so we can hope that some modest maintenance gets done on the existing
TWRA roads.
