Double Dare, the last event in the King of Pisgah Series, is a tough one. This is a two day event that starts at noon on Saturday has a hard cutoff at midnight, a challenge at 12:15 am, then starts again at 6 am Sunday with a hard cut off at 6 pm Sunday evening. Each day consists of 10 checkpoints where only 1 of them is mandatory but if you want to compete the more the better. The top teams will likely end up with between 18-20 and the event is staged out of Cove Creek Campground which is about 25 mins away from town/our house. So it’s not completely convenient to come back out between the “Days”.

This event like PMBAR is also a partner event and it’s not always easy to find someone willing to do this kind of event particularly if you want to ride a singlespeed. Andy from New River Bikes up in WV had agreed to come down and ride with me. So when Saturday morning rolled around we got some breakfast, gathered our stuff, picked up some food for the day, and headed out. Our thought was this race was a lot like PMBAR so we should be able to be done with the day in around 8-10 hours, we’d come out get a hot dinner and grab breakfast food, then go back in, do the challenge at 12:15, and sleep in the cars, then get up and be ready for the morning….more on that later.

Noon rolls around, Katie and Chris make it for the start, I’m not sure that I realized how much that meant until they were there. We got all lined up and in typical Eric Wever (race director) fashion we’ve got to do a prologue loop just to get the passport with the checkpoints on it. Fortunately it’s just lap around 475B to Cove Creek trail, pretty easy, mostly fun, and we managed to roll with a group of folks who I knew were all going to be part of the leaders. Thomas Turner, Nick Bragg, Mike Hudson, Kieth, the “Not-Brothers”, so it was fun conversation and a decent “endurance” pace all the way around

We get back and pick up the passport, hmm…., this is going to be a doozy. The mandatory is at the top of Pilot Rock, optional hike up to Mt. Pisgah for 2 bonus checkpoints, 2 in North Mills, a few down in the hole of South Mills/Bradley/Squirrel, and one up on club gap. I look at it and the first thing that comes to mind is a decent loop going out squirrel, around…, but that puts the mandatory almost last. I really want to have some bailout options. I really just need to finish to complete the KOP (King of Pisgah) series which is a decent achievement and I don’t really know where Andy’s fitness is.

After rethinking, we decide the loop is almost as good the other way, we’ll go to the mandatory first, then we can make some adjustments as needed. The unfortunate part is, that means we go up Pilot Rock, which is pretty much a 4 mile hike, since most of it is completely unrideable in the upwards direction on a single speed. All and all the hike wasn’t bad, we made it up and found out the special challenge there was either to name 25 of 50 state capitols or shoot 4 of 5 BB’s into a 1″ group at like 20-25 ft or something. I think we could have done the capitols pretty easily but Andy is pretty solid with a BB gun and that was way more fun.

From there we decide to do the hike to Mt. Pisgah, you don’t have to take your bike, and from what I was seeing on the map it wasn’t going to be that bad. It was going to be cold, but we’d be moving pretty well. We got about half way there, I check the map and realize what I thought was the destination was only about 1/2 the way there. Well crap, we’re committed now. At this point I started doing the math and realized in order to get the checkpoints we wanted we were going to be out at least 10.5 hours, probably more. We weren’t going to have time to go out and get dinner and our food plan was not going to work.

Luckily, there is some cell service on the way up to Mt. Pisgah and Katie was willing to run some food out to the campground. Which was a lifesaver and an amazing treat when we got back to the truck much later. It’s a little hard to describe how good a pepperoni pizza and pecan bar are after almost 12 hours in the cold riding bikes. Anyhow, we make it to the top for the view of about 5 ft since the fog was so thick. Turn around and start hiking back. The looks from the other hikers were pretty good since we were in full bike kits and with the temps we actually left our helmets on for a little extra warmth. So here we were hiking in helmets, bike shoes, and spandex, alongside folks with trekking poles, backpacks, etc.

We got back to our bikes in just over 2 hours, which really was pretty good and turns out wasn’t a bad move. We made some adjustments to our route and headed on. Down Pilot, up to the Slate Rock overlook before dark, and over to Yellow Gap to get to Laurel Creek. With this there was one decent creek crossing, I’m a shoes off kind of guy in the cold weather creek crossings. So we stop, take off shoes and step in, Andy first. He falls, water trying to pull his bike away. He gets up and is soaked, I start across and make it, but it’s a little sketchier than normal. As we’re getting ready to roll he realizes he’s missing a sock. So he had to ride the rest of the way back with only one, he was already starting to run out of steam and this wasn’t a good sign.

I’m starting to get worried about how much time we have left to get back. The planned route has a lot of singletrack, 4 checkpoints on it, but a lot of single track and not many bailout options. We get moving and it’s pretty slow for a while. Any climbing is pretty tough on Andy. We run into Tristan Moss and Scott and talk for a bit and realize my time concerns are legit. We chat a bit more and conclude the only bailout includes going up Horse Cove gap and dropping back to the road. It’s still going to take some time but puts a lot more of the ride home on gravel/pavement which has far less unknowns. Unfortunately that leaves 2 checkpoints that we planned on out there. However I want to finish that KOP.

We get to where we have to make the call and we decide to take it, I didn’t want to chance not making it. I think we could have made it but any problem would have potentially knocked us out. The other way included at least one more hike and 2 decently challenging trail descents that could have easily had a mechanical in them. So I think we made the right call given the circumstances.

The ride out was pretty uneventful except the weather started to get a little rougher, cold drizzle, temps falling fast. It was so nice to get back to that pizza and treat. We started the car, turned on the seat heaters, and pigged out before having to get out for the challenge. The challenge was a short little lap race around the campground, 7 laps, about 4 mins a lap or so. As soon as that was over we loaded up and headed back to the house for some sleep in warm dry beds.

Then we did a 7 lap race in the dark around the campground because….

Day 1 complete, about 60 miles on the bike 6600′ elevation, about a 6 mile hike with 1400 feet in it, and 7 Checkpoints to tie for 1st SS. While I would have loved to have been in overall contention, this was a pretty good result given the circumstances.