Pisgah Death March
Chris Brown and Jay Curwen start out of Turkey Pen in Saturday’s PMBA
Oh my gawd!
The 2007 edition of the PMBA (Pisgah Mountain Bike Adventure) or “Pisgah Death March” was far more than heinous! Certainly the longest strung together piece of singletrack I’ve ever done (Chris Brown and I got the minimum of 4 CPs, took 9 hours, covered about 50 miles and rode gravel roads for less than 20 minutes!)
For those of you that know the Pisgah area…here was the format:
Start and finish - Black Mountain trailhead near the Pisgah ranger station.
7 available CPs, including 2 mandatory CPs (you choose one) Teams of 2 must come back with 4 CPs (including one mandatory) to be official. There was a 5 hour bonus for each additional CP obtained. You must be off the course in 14 hours.
CPs were in Turkey Pen (mandatory), Bradley Creek, top of Cantrell Creek, Club Gap, then over to the west side of Pisgah for Daniel Ridge, Farlow gap (mandatory) and Courthouse Falls.
Most of you won’t know these places, but suffice to say the singletrack is very technical and it rained most of the day…almost all of the forest service and paved roads were off limits…the choices were grim.
Typical section of trail in Turkey Pen
2 teams came back with everything (an unbelievable accomplishment)…The RD said they had to have covered over 100 miles with 85% on very difficult singletrack.
Chis and I stayed in the top 5 for the first 2 CPs and then his brakes went completely out at about the 4.5 hour mark…we were forced to run all the downhills from there…spent maybe 2.5 hours off the bikes and on our feet…Needless to say, 4 points was just fine w/ us and we settled for 12th I think…a bit over 9000 feet of climbing.
This is an incredibly difficult event…I have ridden every one of the trails in question at some point…In the best conditions and with no mechanicals, I’m not sure we could have cleaned it…but I will definitely be back to try.
http://www.mtbikewnc.com/maps/drcgridemapa.html
http://www.mtbikewnc.com/trailheads/mrinteractivemap.html#Points%20of%20Interest
http://www.mtbikewnc.com/maps/danielmapa.html
Jay Curwen
Black Dome
