South Carolina mountains annotated
My grandmother died on Saturday, and since we were already in South Carolina when we found out, we decided to stay here until the funeral on Wednesday. Today I went for a ride up Sassafras Mountain that brought back lots and lots of memories. The last time I did this ride in the middle of the summer was with my roommate and teammate from Clemson University, Bert Hull. We did the ride in the middle of summer from 10-3PM on what was probably the hottest day of the year. Well, here we are close to 15 years later and I pretty much did the same ride again today from 10-3PM on an incredibly hot day (see temp graph below) –
Sassafras Mountain ride with temperature and elevation – annotated
I have climbed Sassafras a few times in the past few years, but always on our fall break trip, never in the middle of the season. I chose a route that was similar to the route that Darol Timberlake and I used the very first time I ever climbed Sassafras. I just spent a few days at Darol’s house while racing in Charlotte so that was special, too. Even though I was kinda tired from the 5 day omnium that ended yesterday, I thought I would try and hit the Sassafras climb hard. Well, I did the Beasley Gap climb pretty hard (304 watts for 14 minutes) on the way out there and pretty much decided after that the rest of the ride was going to be pure survival, including the climb up Sassafras.
The Sassafras descent, however, was up for grabs and I hit a new speed record (62.5mph) on the freshly re-paved road.
Chimney Top descent to Rocky Bottom
I may have gone faster on the descent, but Jeremiah Bishop smoked me on the climb by 2mph. I was pretty much in survival mode, though, on the climb after overreaching on the Beasley Gap climb.
Finally, here is a map with some of the more popular climbs in the Greenville area highlighted.
Sassafras area map with a couple popular climbs annotated
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