A diversion to climb Beech Mtn

Thursday July 9  Day 5   Laurel Springs to Little Switzerland, NC  113 miles, 13,476' of climbing

Chuck, Alvin, Bryan and I took a special diversion/excursion to Beech Mtn, which is famous in the world of cycling since it is such a steep climb. "Everyone" wants to see if they can do it, or to see how fast they can climb it. It had been a climb in the Tour DuPont, and then Lance Armstrong made it famous in his book because that's where he realized he had fully come back from his cancer.

Let me just say: My time was "only" 10  minutes slower than Lance's! Doesn't that sound impressive? Well, not so much if you give the times: His was 17 minutes, and mine was 27 (so I was 59% slower). Alvin said he beat his old best by three minutes, and he was one minute ahead of me.

The day started with us needing to ride 6 miles to a place that served breakfast earlier than 8 am - a gas station! (with an attached cafe). This added 6 miles to our planned total, but then the four of us added about 18 miles in going to Beech Mtn. anyway.

Mark and Jeff emerged from their rooms with these jerseys. Both their wives died in recent years of cancer.

The topic of the breakfast at the gas station-cafe was "livermush". Most of their items offered a choice of bacon, sausage, or livermush. Not even our two North Carolinians had heard of it. The waitress could not describe it. We all agreed it sounded yukky, but hey, I decided to give it a try. It was a square patty, and Carol came over to take a picture of it. How did it taste? Well, pretty bland; I did not even note any liver flavor. Oh well, I tried it. The fried eggs and grits were normal/good.

Quite a few times we've seen old cabins just off the parkway. Cool to see them. By the way, you can see it was another glorious day. When I did the ride 7 yrs ago, it was another rainy/foggy day, so I was seeing lots of things for the first time.

I always stop (almost) at every overlook, of which there are hundreds along the BRP, not only for their vast views, but also because sometimes they provide local color or history. I loved this one, although I always thought it was spelled Dooley.

 Another old cabin. I couldn't help but stop to take its photo.

That looked like an interstate down there, I'm guessing I-81. There's never a shortage of great views from the BRP as you've surmised by now -- as long as the weather is as nice as this.

"Daniel Boone was here."

The Moses Cone mansion was just off the parkway, and it's now a craft center. This is the only home like this we've seen from the BRP! From the front porch, you could see down into the valley where there was Price Lake, which we descended to quickly once we left this mansion.

Nice porch, huh?

Here's the lake you could see from Moses Cone's front porch. Bordering the lake over there on the left are more rhododendrons. We have continued to enjoy the flowering bushes along the parkway since we first saw them several days ago.

Eventually we reached an engineering masterpiece for the BRP, the Linn Cove Viaduct. It was not completed until 1987, which means the BRP took 52 years to finally be finished. I didn't marvel it seven yrs ago because it was raining and foggy, but this time I took lots of pictures!

The bridge is 1243-feet long (414 yds), and is S-shaped around the side of the mountain. It consists of 153 50-ton pre-cast sections of concrete, which you can see in the photo below. No two sections are alike, and only one is entirely straight. The amazing thing was how they built it so as to not disturb the forest around it.

They set the main posts first, but then put the roadway pieces together piece by piece working from one side only on the bridge they'd already assembled. My description is probably difficult to picture in your mind, so here are two pictures I took in the visitor center to illustrate how they did it.

Even the ranger at the visitor center could not understand how these sections of unsupported bridge could hold all that weight of the cranes as they continued to attach each 50-ton piece. It had to do with how deep the tongue-in-groove attachments were and how strong the epoxy was to glue them together.

Our lunch was at the visitor center, and during this rest, we talked ourselves into riding up Beech Mtn. We put our four bikes on the truck and Suzette drove us the 10 miles to the base of the climb (past a huge crowd of people attending an annual Grandfather Mountain Festival).  The climb is really steep. Most of the BRP climbs average 4 to 7%, but Beech Mtn had consistent stretches of 15% and a maximum section of 18%. Alvin had done it many times, and actually didn't think we'd all make it up without getting off to walk for a part.

Well, we all made it! I had to use my lowest gear for the first time this week, but it wasn't that bad. We just plugged away. After a short rest, we continued up the mountain -- not quite as steep -- to see the Land of
Oz:

See? That's the Yellow Brick Road! It really was an amusement area halfway up a ski slope, called Land of Oz, but the gate was closed and locked. So, I took this photo through a crack in the gate.

Here's a selfie of us just outside Oz. On our descent across the ski runs, a hiker took the picture at the top of this blog posting, and off to its left you can see the chair lift.

Descending the Beech Mtn road was dicey due to how fast we would accelerate by simply releasing our brakes. Alvin gave us some serious advice about how to descend it safely and to make sure our rims did not overheat due to constant braking. Once down, we had to ride about 20 miles back to the BRP, re-entering it many miles south of where we departed it. By then it was getting awfully late, about 7:00, and we still had 15 miles to reach Little Switzerland and our motel. I didn't make it until 8 pm.

This was a welcome sight, our Alpine Inn, built off the side of the cliff, a mile downhill from the BRP, all by itself. We took showers as fast as we could, and then drove off to the nearest restaurant that was open that late (9 pm). We even got lost getting to the town of Spruce Pine, and arrived a bit after 9 pm, but they let us in anyway. It was a buffet, and we gorged!

We got back after 10:00, and I was so tired I went straight to bed (I am writing this blog posting the next night in Asheville).  My riding time was 8:31, but motel-to-motel time was 13 hours! Hard to believe we climbed 13,476 feet! It was comforting to know that the next day's ride would be 53 fewer miles!