The Vista 2022

I had thought in the few weeks leading up to our start that I was well prepared, but that was far from the case as I discovered in the week leading up. After a chat with Nick a few days before, he reminded me to check my brake pads which had been on the bike for what didn’t seem like all that long. Apparently I was wrong, however, and they definitely needed to be replaced. After checking online, I couldn't find any that would be there before I made the drive up to the start Thursday after work. I sent out a message on team snap on the off chance that someone would have the very specific pads for my brakes. Someone said they did, but after picking them up I determined they were marketed wrong, and didn't even come close to fitting. Through some more last minute scrambling, THE Dana Terry found some at Sixes Pit bike shop, and was kind enough to leave work early to go pick them up. They were the same pads as I had before, so there were no fitment issues, but the front brake rubbed pretty badly with the pads being far thicker as they weren't worn. I got them as good as I could Wednesday night, and figured they would only get better the more I rode. I also replaced my chain on Tuesday which screwed up the shifting, so I had to miss practice to get that fixed. After doing both of those things, I was pretty confident that my bike would be good to tackle the route. Since I was working on my bike instead of packing the few nights before, I finished throwing all my stuff together on Thursday after work and made the 3 hour drive up to Fireside Outpost. We stayed in a nice cabin there, but there were only two beds, so I was stuck on the noisy and pretty uncomfortable cot. I was so tired that it didn't even matter, and I had no trouble falling asleep. We were up at 5:45 on Friday morning to hopefully start by 6:30, which is when the grand depart rolls out. We were pretty slow getting ready, and rolled out at 7.

Bike setup. Very light in preparation for TNGA '22.

The route immediately starts with the pretty difficult climb up Coffee Branch, a rocky climb with tons of baby heads and a few trees down. It was a tough way to start, but the next miles up to Tellico PLains, the first resupply, were pretty easy. I hadn't done much research on the route beforehand, so I had only found out a couple hours earlier that the next resupply point would be about 140 slow miles later. We all shoved as much food as we could in every pocket and bag of our bikes as we could, and rolled out to Indian Boundary. The Store there closes at 6pm, which is pretty tough to make it with the slow miles leading up to it, and our later start time made the task even tougher. I was really hoping to make it, so I put in a hard effort on the way there, but at 5:55 I was still a couple miles away, so I stopped and ate on the side of the road since I wouldn't make it in time. I was pretty bummed as any sort of cold drink would have been a huge boost, but we all had enough food to safely make it to the next resupply. Me and Nick waited for a while on Cedar, who turned out to have stopped just behind us, but the break was welcome. Rolling out of Indian Boundary, we started the long paved climb up the Cherohala Skyway. It wasn't crazy steep, but definitely enough to make it tough, and I was having a pretty bad time. I think it was mostly because I was angry that I missed the store hours, but I just couldn't hang on to Nick and Cedar’s wheels as we worked our way up. Towards the top I started to snap out of it, and the long, twisty gravel descent down the other side at night brought me back completely. Me and Cedar flew down it, and I came within a few feet of hitting a wild boar in a corner which was a bit scary, but that was the only wildlife encounter of the trip. After that was some not too long, but super steep climbs that we were just crawling up. At the top of the worst one we took a half hour or so break where Nick and Cedar took a short nap while I just sat there and rested for a while. A little while later we had our first real sleep at the Coker Creek welcome center. We expected there to be vending machines there, but there wasn’t.

Lavish sleep situation at the Coker Creek welcome center.

After an hour of sleep on a bench, we started towards Buck Blad, the next major point on route. This was also when we got the first real singletrack of the route. The uphills were crazy steep hike-a-bike while the downhills were straight down and pretty tech. It was pretty fun, though, and mostly rideable so I wasn't too upset. The Buck bald climb itself is pretty short and not super steep, and it was cool to see the view at night as I've only ever done it one time during the Dirty 130. The descent down was a little chunky, and then sometime after that we did the last climb of the D130 which was rough as well, but the sun was coming up sometime in that period. The downhill after that climb brought us to a section of (relative) flats for a while on the way to McCaysville. There we had our first sitdown meal at a deli where I got a brisket sandwich and two bacon egg and cheese biscuits. We then rolled the 4 miles to Ducktown where we went to a gas station for a resupply. Shortly after Ducktown we started on some pretty easy but overgrown singletrack that was relatively high traffic compared to everything we had rodden thus far. It may have been easy, but it was hot and I wasn't having much fun. I was pretty slow getting through it, then we started the much more difficult singletrack around the Ocoee Whitewater Center.

Riders on this year’s grand depart got to go around some of it this year as it was burnt down and it was being investigated at the time. Those trails were less maintained and ridden, and there were several downed trees that were extremely difficult to manage to get a heavy loaded bike around or over. Those trails dropped us out next to Thunder Rock campground where we refilled on water. Cedar checked rwgps which was marked to have many more trailheads upcoming. After so many slow miles, all we wanted was some gravel to knock out some distance, but the route had proven to never be that easy. Most of the said trailheads were the starts of doubletrack, so it wasn't quite as bad as we were hoping. Then there was Sylco trail. Easily the worst trail in the entire world. I think I could walk through some forest that has never been touched by any human ever and there would be a better trail. It may have been a real trail at some point, but by now it has been almost totally reclaimed by the forest and is unrideable for most of its length or so it seemed. At one point me and Cedar were just hiking around through thorns and downed trees without our bike trying to just find where in the world the trail went. After many non-NICA approved words and much hiking, we finally made it to the 40 miles of flat gravel and pavement that we had all been looking forward to. We stopped at another deli for a sitdown meal. I ate a Philly Cheesesteak there and brought one to go which felt great to eat real food. We made a quick stop at a dollar general a couple miles later for the last time of the ride. We knew there were a few tough climbs to go and thought they were all on gravel, so I didn't need to buy much as I had leftovers from previous stops. A few more miles later we stopped on the race organizer’s porch to sleep for another hour around 11-12pm. We all were ready to knock out the last few climbs and finally be done and get some real sleep. If only it was that easy. I had looked at the elevation profile on Wahoo, and it showed that the first of the climbs that we started from the flats was red, meaning extremely steep. The first half or third of it was fine, but once it turned to gravel it turned into a hike-a-bike pretty fast. I was beyond happy to make it to the top of the climb after probably close to an hour of walking the 2 or so miles straight up the mountain. And even better, there was pavement! Once Nick and Cedar made it to the top of the mountain, I took a closer look at the map, and it was a massive punch in the face. We didn't go on the road, we had to go on another trail. It was another backcountry style trail that was pretty similar to the Pinhotis. A good thing was that it was pretty well maintained in the way that it wasn't crazy overgrown and there were hardly any trees down, but the endless spider webs that I broke at night in conjunction with the steepness was getting old. All I wanted was fast miles and we were covering miles at a snail’s pace. Me and Cedar stopped at the campground to refill on water with pretty low spirits. He was tired and wanted to sleep, so we laid down for another hour on the concrete walkway right next to the bathroom entrance. I don't think anyone came into the bathroom, but if anyone did I can't imagine what they would've thought. When we got up we saw Nick had text a few minutes earlier that he was out of the last of the singletrack, or maybe a mile or two ahead of us. We packed up and finally made it up to the pavement on top of the ridgeline and on the way to the second to last climb of the route. The climb wasn't bad at all, and we were relieved to have it done and we started to cruise down the mountain when I got a puncture and lost almost all air quickly. After putting two STans darts in and another bacon strip, it still did not seal up, so I had to throw in a tube which was really annoying. Then shortly after that we saw Nick coming the opposite way up the mountain. There was only one out and back on course, and it was many miles ago, so someone had to be wrong. It definitely wasn't us, so we decided Nick either was having GPS issues or had the wrong course. He turned around and we all got on the paved road on the way to the last climb. When I put the tube in my rear tire it wouldn't seat the bead for whatever reason, so there was a section of the revolution that was a smaller radius than the rest, so I was constantly doing this bouncing thing that was especially apparent on the road. It wouldn't have been the end of the world if I wasn't as badly chafed as I was, so it felt like someone was taking a belt sander to my butt. The last climb of the day was around 9 miles and not all that steep, so thankfully no hike-a-bike. I gingerly made my way back down as I was trying not to also puncture this tube when I saw Cedar standing off to the side of the road in front of a trailhead sign. Not again. Another trail that we had to hike up followed by some terribly overgrown, steep descents with thorns sticking out into the trail everywhere. And more spiders of course because why make it easy? After being on that trail for an eternity, me and Cedar popped out onto the gravel and refilled from a pipe a quarter mile off route before finishing the last stretch. We had a few easy miles on the road before a little bit more flat singletrack back to the finish.
I had definitely underestimated the difficulty of this route as doing and hearing everything everyone said about TNGA made it seem like everything else around was easy, but it was not. Lots more singletrack than I had expected by a massive margin as well as tough climbs. I never did have to filter water, however, which was very nice from a logistical standpoint. I think if we had made it to Indian Boundary before closing food logistics would have been made much easier, but other than the 140 mile stretch between Tellico Plains and McCaysville it wasn't a big issue.