Hot ‘N’ Humid Intermediate-Advanced Mountain Bike Basecamping at Sherando

OVERVIEW

Attention all Shrednauts: as if that verbose title wasn’t self-explanatory, let’s go bike camping. Not car bike camping, but straight bike camping. Here’s the plan with handy reference map:

http://www.cambc.org/images/sherando_map.pdf

Park at the Mill Creek trailhead, ride in a mile or two with gear affixed to our backs until we find a suitable campsite and settle down. We’ll try to pack light, but it may be necessary to make two gear runs. Saturday, we’ll leave our base camp and continue up the gradual incline of the Mill Creek Trail until we hit The SWITCHBACKS…That’s when things get real: 1000 ft of vertical in about a mile. Once we reach the top, we’ll hop on the “very rocky” Torry Ridge Trail and follow it until we reach the Mill Creek Connector which we’ll take back to camp where we’ll spend another night. Saturday will be on the order of 15 miles, depending on where we camp and what detours we may want to take. That said, I’ve never done this before. I’ve hiked parts of it, and I think it’ll be loads of fun, but this is not a beginner trip, and you need to be comfortable on a mountain bike as well as reasonably fit, so email me (mtc3wf) if you’re not sure.

We’ll need both biking and camping gear and what you don’t have we can get from the gear room. We’ll try to pack as lightly as possible, and the hot weather should help with that.

The start time is preliminary and flexible, so if it’s too early for some people, we may be able to work around that but we need to get there well before dark to find a good campsite.

Club provides: Transport, Bikes, Helmets, Meals, Camping gear

You provide: Intense grin, Small backpack for riding, Extra snacks, Water vessels

Cowabunga