Arrogant Bastard

Oct 18, 2003

You aren't worthy... Stone Brewery got it right on the nose and not just about the beer! This trek, as mapped below, began at the North River Campground and was riden counter-clockwise on the best fall day possible by Jerry McCurdy, Roland Millican, Neil Richardson and myself, Woody Elliott. The sun was shining and the temps were steady at 55F.

We left the North River Campground around noon and proceeded back toward Todd Lake Campground by Fireroad 95. With a brief climb to warm up, we bombed back by the Campground to FT715 on the left side. A couple of creek crossings later and a brief swim for Jerry, we ended up at FT716. From here the terrain got steeper. Granny Gear became our best friend for the next seven miles. As we neared the top, the terrain took a turn for the worst. While the grade may not have been that bad, the fact that we had been climbing for 6 miles made the last mile hard to turn those cranks!

Upon summiting, we took a break on Little Bald Knob(4361ft). Eventhough the KNOB may not have been BALD, we did enjoy hanging out on such an awesome day. Once wrapping that up, we started our descent back down to the bottom. We started off with a nice rocky bomb down to the cliff line. Along this part, we hugged a steep cliff and found some great viewpoints. After this we began the steepest part and found ourselves bouncing around putting our full-suspension rigs to the test. No sweat!! The only problem came when I heard my chain explode for what appeared to be no apparent reason. Two chain links later, we were back to the bottom to cross a nice chilly river. The total downhill was about 3 miles.

And to finish, we follow the fireroads back to FR95 arriving back at camp around 4:30. Just before we lost that last bit of sunlight.

This route was difficult. The spin up reminded me of Colorado riding(granny gear rules)without the massive altitude. We did climb from 2000 ft to 4361 ft in seven miles. So as I started with, YOU ARE NOT WORTHY!! Challenging and rewarding.

AREA: Todd Lake
DIFFICULTY: Expert