I Explored Helene Damaged Mountain Bike Trails

It's been almost four weeks since the aftermath of Hurricane Helene left Western North Carolina completely flooded and the US Forest Service just opened up the Pisgah Ranger District. They left this sign here. Hazards may include washed out bridges, tripping hazards, landslides, eroded areas, muddy or slick footing, and downed trees. Look up, look down, and around. And so we're going to go for a ride today and see what it looks like. This is not going to be a normal ride. We're going to be looking around every corner. We're not going to be descending with reckless abandon. This is a scope out. So we're going to be climbing a bunch of single track before we get to any downhill, and then we'll see what the downhill looks like. I'm pretty amazed at the condition of the trail. I'm sure they did some work out here, but also it just looks like things held up. There's definitely evidence of branches being dragged away, that kind of work, but we haven't seen any mudslides yet. Just really rough and rutted, but nothing too bad thus far. Yeah, so far this is great. I can't believe how much headway they made already. What's going on up there? I can't even really tell what I'm looking at, but I guess we're going to get closer. Wow. Is that the trail up there? So what was once a left turn is now a ravine. It was a spring, now it's a creek. Oh my. Wow. That is just—wow. Now my topographic maps of Pisgah are antiques. That trail connected there. Oh, is that the Blue Ridge Parkway up there? Oh, wow. Did the road give out, or? So this is a huge mudslide that starts at the Blue Ridge Parkway and goes all the way through the trail into the valley. It's giant, but if you don't see the emotions that I was showing in Swannanoa, it's because there's no human cost here. This is mother nature, mudslides happen, but it still has a huge effect on western North Carolina. So why do people visit western North Carolina and spend money? What drives the economy here? Well, it's not the strip malls. It's definitely the mountains. It's the beauty, and this is how you access it. And this economic impact that these floods have caused, it's not just limited to outdoor stores and bike shops and guides. This is down to people like wedding photographers, restaurants, hotels, gas stations. Everybody here is feeling it in some way, and we're trying to get things back to normal. We're trying to give people supplies and help them fix their houses and get their lives back on track until their economic future is secured. They're freaking out. Everybody is freaking out because the biggest asset in western North Carolina is badly damaged and hard to access. In a given year, the U.S. Forest Service has a budget of $6,000 for trails in the Pisgah Ranger District. That is not a whole lot of money. These public-private partnerships are essential to keeping this place running. Otherwise, they might have no choice but to shut down this trail. There's been a response team that was out here, and that doesn't come out of the $6,000. They came here to get everything running and to clear trees and to do as much work as they can to make sure things are running. But the little details are kind of on our own here. Some of this is incredibly complex. You can't just necessarily break out a path through this landslide and build a trail back over it. There's going to have to be some engineering involved. Most likely, and it has to be deemed as safe. You know, all the ground is super unstable right here, and so you can't necessarily put a new trail on top of unstable ground. So for each one of these landslides, what type of cost are we looking at? Stuff like this, I would guess tens of thousands of dollars, at least. Just to get it rideable, just to get it hikeable. It may get opened and, you know, have a path through for far less, but to be properly done, it's going to take some serious funding. Yeah, for sure, a temporary fix is going to be made here. We're able to push our bikes across. Somebody's going to rake a little path, but that's not going to be long term. It's just going to collapse again. So what is the problem anyway? Don't hikers and bikers come out here for a challenge? I mean, this is as raw as it gets. Yeah, it can be interesting once or twice, but when you got to keep dismounting to climb over trees or over mudslides, it gets kind of annoying. It's also not very sustainable. Do you know any trout fishermen? They'll tell you how things get when all the mud washes into the river below. Now we're back on trail like nothing ever happened. That is wild. And now we've got beautiful singletrack. It's like one area just got wet and then it dries up and the other area gets wet and slides all the way down the mountain. This is kind of as good as singletrack gets. Rocky, rooty, challenging pisgah singletrack like we're used to. So Dan informed me that there may be crews up there of sawyers clearing trees out of the way. You got to be certified out here. This is U.S. Forest Service land. It's not like, you know, your town mountain bike park where anybody can go out and do work. And so if you want to help, it's going to be with dollars. There are other places you can support by volunteering and there are public workdays. Look at Pisgah Area Service Instagram page and sync up with a workday where you can kind of be on the crew and have a designated trail leader. Oh, this hasn't changed much. Just super challenging and steep. OK, wow. We're not out of gas yet. There's no more climbing now. It's all downhill, but we don't know what's up ahead. So we're going to have to be cautious. Before we get going, I told you I was going to show you my chainsaw. So the intention with this is not to do trail work. This is for emergencies. You really have to get cut out of somewhere. Got a little pouch. It is just like the chain you would put on the bar of your chainsaw. And it's got two handles. You saw like this. You can put it around something and go like that. Really easy to carry around. Really lightweight. And I can assure you it works everywhere you go. There's sawdust, cut limbs. They've been out here going at it. Yep, there's another one. Wow. That's just the tip of the iceberg. Yep. Wow. Yeah. OK. So what you have to think about with this stuff is it's all technical. It's storm damage. It's not just one thing down. So if you cut that little guy, it's going to release tension over here. And then this is going to fold or roll. And so it's all really sketchy. So the best thing to do is just leave it to the professionals. You want someone that knows what they're doing and knows how to cut. Yeah. And you have to look at the whole thing. It's like a big system. Because if you take one limb out, that limb could be holding up something else. And then it spring back a different way or twist or pop. And that's how people get really hurt. And that's the difference between a sawyer and a guy with a chainsaw. 100%. Oh, we came up from that big guy up there. I figured we'd be hiking this morning. It's going to take a little studying. I see what you mean. It's putting pressure on the bottom there, on the top there. There's a ton of stored energy in this right now, and it's wanting to get out. It seems like it's so simple. It's cut four pieces off, and then you work your way up. And that's not at all what you would do. The ground just got so soft that even just those tropical storm force winds was just knocking things over everywhere. Oh, wow. This is going to take some doing to get through. Is there a list of trails that are already clear? Yeah, we got a list of trails open on our website. Nice. I'll put a link there. That's great. I guess this trail isn't on the list. No, that will be after today. Oh, that split off of there. Wow. Look at that. That tree must have stretched all the way out to the middle of the trail in terms of where that root ball was. Like, it must have gone all the way across. Oh, it looks like somebody definitely touched this. I see tire tracks, and it definitely looks like a blower or something was through here. Maybe rakes. This is beautiful. This is as good as it gets. There's no in-between. The trail's either perfect, covered in trees, or completely destroyed. Oh, here we go. How are you? Good. Good to see you. Thank you so much. Thank you guys for the work you're doing. Yeah, this is awesome. It should be clear above and below those tangles. So the Fox crew came up and got to the tangle, and I came from Spencer and got to the tangle. I cleared up Spencer Gap and then to the tangle before we ran out of time yesterday. And then the Fox crew actually came up from here. I don't know how many they got. I think, like, 10-ish. And I got 12 trees yesterday, probably. Yeah, there were a lot down. Yeah. Thank you, guys. Great to see you. Did you come across Spencer where the landslide is? Yeah, we did. That's wild. Yeah, you just got to push over it. It'd be a sick downhill from the parkway. It's hard not to think that, you know? I feel like Big Mountain riding out west. We've got it here now. Cool. All right, thank y'all. Thank you guys so much. They're not paid. It's Sunday, and they're out here early in the morning doing trail work just because. And that's what it's going to take. But they've gone through certifications and done it through all the proper channels, and it just makes it all the more impressive. You know, they would donate their time. And honestly, if you want to network and make friends in a new area, that's a great way to do it is join a crew like that. Look for your local ORBA. But the work they're doing out here is great. This single track looks prime. So all clear from here, huh? Oh, man, they're out here crushing it. It's been weeks since I've mountain biked here. The last time I mountain biked was in Crested Butte, Colorado. And as soon as I came home was Helene. We were literally on a layover when we were talking about it. Like, oh, there's a big rainstorm coming. Wow. You can tell they did a lot of work over here. Plenty of people out here. I'm sure a lot of them are working on the trails. So how many trails are in Pisgah National Forest or how many miles? In all of Pisgah, there's several hundred miles of trail. Several hundred miles of trail. And we just rode three or four. Three or four miles. Yeah. So it was encouraging. This stuff was either completely destroyed or perfect. And they're going to clear a whole bunch of that. The landslide. Yeah, that's going to take some time. And there's a whole bunch of that around Pisgah National Forest. But it looks like in the next few weeks, most of this stuff is going to be passable and most of it's going to be rideable. And again, we're just talking about the Pisgah Ranger District. Similar recovery efforts are happening all over western North Carolina. Canooga Bike Park is running already. There's a lot of private places that have been up and running. But if you had plans to come out here this winter, or if you had plans to come out here next week, I wouldn't cancel your trip. We have to get the economy going here. As long as you know what to expect and you know to be cautious and you look at the list of places that are open, then you're going to be OK and you can come here. That's what they want. So if you want to physically help, I'm going to leave a link where you can see scheduled workdays that you can actually come out here and participate. And then there's going to have to be contractors for some of it. So your dollars are always helpful. That and just, you know, understand that a ton of people out here are just volunteering their time and energy and money to come out here and fix trails. And so when you run up on someone doing trail work, don't just ride past them. Stop and talk and say thank you. Say thank you and then get the heck out of their way. So that's an update on the trails out here. And honestly, it's pretty encouraging. I'd say in the next few weeks, 80% of everything in the Pisgah Ranger District should be passable. And then that last 20%, that's big stuff. Those are trails that you might as well not enter because they're going to be impassable or there's going to be so many people working on them. They're going to have to close it. Thank you, volunteers. Thank you, everybody that's donated. And I'm just so happy that I have an audience that actually cares about this region and the people in it and what's been happening. You guys are the greatest. Thanks for riding me today. I'll see you next time.