Sunday’s North Slope adventure

Went to Pisgah today, the crew was Shawn, Jeff, The Parkers, and then two guy’s I had never met, Eric and Matt. It was a beautiful day, warmed up quite nicely from a frigid start. We started the day off riding North Slope. I had never been on this trail before; it’s a seasonal loop out of the back of Davidson river campground. We road it counter clockwise as was recommended. Lots of big patches of ice in the beginning, followed by some challenging water bar climbing got us up to what seemed an endless downhill. Shawn and Jeff fell of the back to get some room for the descent. Shawn’s stem came loose and his handlebar practically fell of his bike. Funny that between Shawn and Jeff, both where on brand new bikes out on a big backcountry ride and neither had an allen wrench. I hiked back up the hill to help Shawn out so he could enjoy at least a bit of that sweet downhill. North Slope is going to be one of my new favorite trails in Pisgah it is a blast of a downhill for minimal climbing effort.
From there we headed out to the highway up 477 to Clawhammer, down Buckhorn gap to the Pink Beads, back over Club Gap and down Avery. I think everyone got a little wet on the Pinkbeds and though it was warm out for February, wet toes and 50 degrees aren’t a good combo. The initial plan was to head back up Maxwell and down Black mountain to the car, the day had been big enough already for most of the group and they were all ready to bail. Shawn and I started back up the ridge but couldn’t get too excited about parting ways with the group so we turned around and hammered 477 back to the car. Mexican in Brevard to finish off the day. It was a great day as always in Pisgah. Total time was about 5:20.