GORGEous Week IV

Mon - 0hr - rest

Tues - 1.5hr/ 9m/ 1800' - Little Mtn - Up and down the 2 times for a nice easy workout with some good elevation gain.

Wed - 48min/ 4.8m/ 1000' - Little Mtn - Didn't feel too well today, so I opted for just one out and back, plus a little exploration.

Thur - 43min/ 5.1m/ 300' - Latta Plantation - Was running out of daylight on this one and finished the last mile in the dark.  Good easy effort run, minus the last 2 miles pushing to beat the dark back to the car.

Fri - 30min/ 3m/ 1000' - Bakers Mtn - Thought I'd hit up a short summit run on the way out to Marion to hang and prepare for tomorrow's run with Matt.  This place still amazes me by its difficulty.

Sat - 6h38min/ 23m/ 6000' - Linville Gorge - Northern section of the GRAND LOOP exploration w/ Matt.

Sun - 0hr - A well deserved rest although I was itching to get out the door, but ended up being a lazy bum.  I'll run tomorrow which is my usual day off.

Totals =
Hours - 10hrs9min
Miles - 44.9
Vert - 10,100'


This week of running was pretty good, although I didn't really put in a hard effort at all this week.  I finished the week with well over 8 hours, even though the associated mileage wasn't really reflective of the time, but that is what happens when you run in the gorge! The highlight this week though was definitely Saturday's run in the gorge.  Matt and I have been thinking of attempting the GRAND LOOP in the near future and have both never been on the maze of non-recognized trails in the northeastern section.  Just to let you know, the GRAND LOOP is an ~ 40 mile all trail loop in the Linville Gorge.  Navigating and orienteering ourselves with the northeastern section of these trails was imperative for a successful attempt at this route in the future.  We made a few wrong turns at a few intersections, but we pretty much immediately realized our mistake and back tracked and found the right turn.  I was really impressed with the trails up in this section as they were fairly runnnable and not technical.  We did run into a problem on top of Hawksbil trying to find the Ledge trail off the summit and eventually had to turn around and run down the the summit trail back to the road to access Spence ridge.  We must have bushwhacked for 30 minutes trying to find the trail, but I'll get out there and access the Ledge trail from Spence in a few weeks.  We were running out of our allotted time for the run  on the river trail and we decided to go ahead and go straight up Cabin trail and hit Kistler instead of pretty much walking the the rest of the horrendously technical River trail, which would have probably taken us another   hour to finish the last 4-5 miles of it.  Plus, discovering Cabin was awesome.  I had never been on this trail and it has to be the the steepest consistent climb I've ever done.  I would hate to go down it, that is for sure.

View of Gorge from Sitting Bear w/my ugly mug blocking the view

Map Master Matt

Matt on Hawksbill

View of gorge from Hawksbill

Spence Ridge Bridge

Matt, Uwharrie, and I at the finish

Cabin Trail is STEEP!

View of gorge from River Trail looking north