Panoramic view from a grassy knoll just below the summit of Brasstown Bald – the highest point in Georgia at just under 4800′Wrapping up a wonderful weekend of riding, racing, and climbing in the beautiful North Georgia mountains outside of Dahlonega that included the Southern Cross Ultracross race, I headed out for one last ride right after the nice breakfast provided by the awesome folks at the Hiker Hostel. My daughter’s church choir program was at 5PM back in Birmingham, and I really wanted to be back in time for it – so my original plan of 85 miles and 11-12,000 feet of climbing got scaled back to 65 miles and 9,000 feet of climbing.
Having thrown out my original route plan, I decided on a modified route that included 4 major climbs (Cat 2 or higher) and a few smaller climbs (Cat 3 or lower). I climbed Woody Gap from the R&R ranch and then proceeded backwards on the Six Gap century course climbing over Wolf Pen, then heading out to Jack’s Gap and taking the 180 spur all the way to the top of Brasstown, turning around at the top and reversing my course but this time heading up Neel’s Gap on US129. The final climb of the day back to the Hiker Hostel had the steepest gradients with a crazy steep driveway access road that climbs up and over a couple mini-ridges before turning into a dirt power-line trail with gradients well over the 30% that ended up getting recorded on my iBike.
iBike data for the ride
3D map of the route annotated with gaps and mountains (click to enlarge)
2D annotated map with roads and mountains labeled (click to enlarge)
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