Brimstone Four Lane Loop , 7-1-21

 Leonard and I hoped to sneak in a quick pre-crowds trip before the 4^th of July weekend. After our fun trip to Brimstone in November we thought to try to finish off a new section of the “Four Lane”, aka Trail 1, also aka the old Brimstone Haul Road. I put together a loop with some trails I’d done before to give us a roughly 14.5 mile loop.

We would start near the Slickrock Creek Church on the Brimstone Road, and park at the “Missing Link” trailhead where trails 89 and 8 both intersect the Brimstone Road. Our loop would take Trail 8 to Trail 1, then south on Trail 1 to the Wolfpen Trail (#55 on the online map, but #22 on the signs), then west along Little Creek and across fields to the Brimstone Road. None of the loop would be on private Brimstone property. I collected a GPS route, and I’ve borrowed some of Leonard’s pictures to add to mine.

Trail 8 starts with two quick turns past a pair of houses. Then it is just a long wide gravel road. The gravel is loose and the road wide enough to get lots of sun, so this would be a tough go in midday heat. Our forecast called for potentially heavy rain by early afternoon, so we’d gotten an early start ~8:45. But it was still warm with lots of horseflies until we hit the Four Lane.

TWRA Property SIgn.

We walked up Trail 8, and then ran the first mile of Trail 1 to the Sexton Cemetery junction. Next up is short climb to the old coal bench on the 2300’ contour, which the Four Lane follows for much of its length. South of the cemetery, Trail 1 was back to jeep road wide and was a much nicer and shadier trail. Trail 14 (Round Mountain) was signed and looked well used. Trails 31 and 29 (Signal Mountain) were steep and very loose and rocky, and were also signed. The Four Lane would have been fine for biking, solid and not too bumpy. We rounded the nose of Signal Mountain and soon got to the end point of my October 2020 ride with DK. This meant that I had finally completed the Four Lane!, at least excluding the part through the developed area of Brimstone through to River Road in Huntsville.

Leonard on the Four Lane.

Our reward was the descent of Wolfpen Trail. Wolfpen started with a few extremely steep pitches, but otherwise descended through some pretty forest that looked nearly as old as that around Frozen Head. Sparkman Hollow is a pretty stream and there are some rocky cliffs and likely some small waterfalls when the water is up. When we hit Little Creek, Trail 76 was signed to the east.

The lower part of Wolfpen.

The only flaw in my planning was getting from Little Creek west to the Brimstone Road. The online NCWMA map didn’t show a connector, but the Wolfpen Trail and Lone Mountain Church were close, and I thought surely the ATV’ers had found a way across. We saw Trail 22 leaving Little Creek to the south, and an old road going ahead west. The old road looked good until we hit a fence with a cattle pasture ahead. The pasture looked empty, so we started across. There was another pasture to our right, but it was separated by some nasty looking underbrush. Fearing ticks and chiggers we stayed in the first pasture until we ducked another fence and hopped across a larger stream, probably Mill Creek. From there an old farm road got us back to the Brimstone Road, right at the point where the road starts its climb to Lone Mountain Church.

Rainy Road Running.

To repeat the loop without cutting through the farm property you’d need a shorter loop via Trail 31 down to the sidings, or a longer loop continuing around on Trail 22 and eventually connecting back into to Mill Creek.

The skies had been misting off and on during our descent of Wolfpen, but by the time we hit the Brimstone Road the light rain was continuous. We walked/ran the four miles back to the car, just hoping to get there before the harder rain hit. There are houses along the way, but luckily no aggressive dogs. We saw only four cars, including one logging truck and a gas/oil service truck, North of the Little Creek Trail the Brimstone Road is paved though the asphalt is often broken up or rutted.

Total mileage was about 14.3 miles. With a lot of walking and having to pick our way through the cow pastures the loop took ~4:40. My Maprika App recorded 1400’ of climb, not nearly enough for the Barkley Fall Classic and other ventures we’ve got on our training horizons. Still, this is a nice area, and uncrowded at least during the week, we saw no one else on our trip. I imagined the upcoming July 4 weekend will be a bit busier.