Blue Ridge Adventures’ end of the year event, the “Sycamore Cycles Swank 65” is getting a new course this year. The new course removes “Farlow Gap” from the event and adds old FS 140a and FS 5003. While this sounds like replacing a gnarly rough trail with 2 roads I wouldn’t break out the road bike just yet. The new course might not have as much hiking involved but it’s still going to be rugged, gorgeous, and a whole bunch of fun. I had the chance to get out there this week and man am I looking forward to this weekend.
The race starts at Cove Creek Campground, the start is usually pretty hard as everyone is rushing to get to the bridge first. You can go through the creek, and I will at times depending on water level, temperature, etc. but that’s always a game day decision. Once through that bottle neck, there is a right turn onto 475 for a fairly flat ride over to the Daniel Ridge lot. We’ll go through the lot, over the bridge and make a right onto FS5046 this year. This is an old road and mostly doubletrack at this point. FS5046 climbs up past a couple waterfalls and gives some time for people to spread out pretty well before making the right onto the Daniel Ridge loop.
The right onto the Daniel Ridge loops starts a steeper trail climb, with some rocks mixed in. It pitches up pretty steep here for a little bit before giving way to a fairly technical traverse over to a rough rocky descent down Daniel Ridge back to the parking area. With the rains recently and in the forecast this has potential to be really wet and slick. This descent takes a little work but isn’t very long.
After the descent it’s back through the parking area and Aid 1 (About 7 miles in), to make a right onto 475 and start the climb up to Gloucester gap, all gravel, not excessively steep, and the gravel is in great shape right now. Make a right onto 229 and to continue the climb up towards Farlow Gap. 229 has all kinds of grading work being done on it right now and is basically a gravel road vs the old rutted up “road” that it was. It’s pretty smooth right now and as fast as I’ve ever seen it. The grades are still the same but it’s relatively easy riding. The climb from the Daniel Ridge Lot up to Farlow is about 6 miles and 2000 feet.
Near the top as it transitions to trail (229C) the forest service has dug some tank traps, they’re big, and sloppy, bring your toe spikes. Once over those it’s a double/single track climb the rest of the way to Farlow Gap, not too bad, but you’re still going uphill. This year instead of making the right onto Farlow, we’ll go left onto 140a. This is an old road, it hasn’t been maintained in many years, it’s rocky, there is oftentimes only one line, sometimes more. This is a part of the forest a lot of people never go and are missing out. It’s really pretty and honestly a whole lot of fun. It’s rough riding but it’s all rideable and will let you go fast. Just make sure to keep your tires inflated.
At the bottom you come to a clear cut and stay to the left to get onto 5003, there’s a punchy little climb out before the road levels some and starts to trend down. Parts of this will get really fast and more fun than an old decommissioned road should be. This will bring us right back to Gloucester gap and aid 2 at about mile 17. This time we’ll head straight onto 471 and make another short gravel climb and descent over to Butter Gap. Making a left onto Butter Gap, we’ve got some doubletrack to climb before starting the tricky Butter Gap descent. If you’re with a group make sure you’re where you want to be here. The descent is pretty tricky at the top.
After descending a while down Butter, it’s time for the left onto Long Branch. This starts with a punchy little climb and levels out to a more manageable trail climb before turning into FS5095 and a double track traverse/descent back to 475. A quick right and left onto the Daniel Ridge loop puts us at Aid 3 and about mile 27. Also the start of the last big climb of the day. A trail climb up the rocky side of Daniel Ridge (how the race used to start). This time we’ll climb up to the connector trail, take the connector to 225 and traverse 225 over to the top of Cove Creek.
When we hit 225 you can start smelling the barn. There’s some climbing involved but not much then it’s time for Cove Creek to the finish line. Cove Creek is mostly downhill, a little pedally, but mostly downhill.
Swank without Farlow is kind of a new concept to me. However, having recently ridden some of the additions I’m pretty excited about the day. After writing all of this out I can’t wait for Sunday
