It was a BATTLE to get to the good stuff | Mountain Biking DuPont State Forest

Sarah and I are continuing our tour of Western North Carolina. And today we're in DuPont State Park. And we've got quite a crossing to do. Did you pack your extra socks? I was warned. But I read that there was like rocks that you could walk on. They've been swept away in the storm. It's pretty treacherous. Ah man. That's what I was worried about. It's a rental bike. Don't let it go. That is the toughest part right there. Shimmy, shimmy, shimmy. We made it. Your worst case if I fell in, we could just turn around. Yeah, and that would have been that. But we made it through part one of the adventure. Squeegee out the wetness from the feet. With all the new trails being built in Western North Carolina, DuPont is definitely not at the top of my list. I kind of forgot about it. So it's good to get back out and explore it once again. This is definitely the kind of place where you could ride for 5 miles or 55 miles. Yeah, this is actually really nice. No wind, a little bit of sun. It rained overnight. Quite a bit actually woke us up. We were able to pick up these fine rental bikes from Squatch Bikes in downtown Brevard. A great shop to come visit if you're going to go tour Western North Carolina. I'm on the Yeti SB140. Sarah's on the Ripmo AF. Hurricane Helene did some big damage. And then things were able to kind of get up and running. Not for everybody, but for Brevard. And now the businesses are just needing that business from the tourists to actually survive. Scott and Heather actually bought Squatch in April. So this is their first year round and got hit by a hurricane. All right, check the map at the top of this little hump here. As always, I'll have my Trailforks ride log in the description if you actually want to get out and ride this the same way we did. Man, I'm so surprised how I'm able to get this bike up in the air. Just at the beginning, there was a bunch of like downhill whoops and stuff that I was able to launch off of. It's like, what am I doing wrong with my bike setup? I guess maybe my problem is I start everything like in the middle of all the clicks. And then I never move it left or right to see like, okay, more or less go off jumps practice. But then this bike is also just feeling so weird when you go off like a bump and it kicks up the back so much when you're like on the tough terrain. So jump really good. So maybe that's just the rebound is a little too quick. All we have is right now. That's the lesson of the day. Just so easy to get in my head about everything. I'm sure everyone else does too. But you get out on a mountain bike ride and kind of forces you to just be right here right now. Man, it's nice to be able to see those little jumps and hit them. A lot of thought about the future of the channel. Just where I'm going to go next year and how I'm going to get things done. I think it's going to be a lot of Everstoke action, which I think will be great if I can make it work and make people like it and actually get people excited again about all this stuff. Oh, yikes. There's just so many exciting things I could do at Everstoke. I gotta make them come to life. Hopefully, we only have to cross that creek once. Actually, I think that's what we're going to do. Man, I came out here with Phil Metz. Skills with Phil. Probably at least seven years ago. This might have been one of the trails we did. Yeah, my favorite lesson from that day. I still remember. One, two, skip a few. Oh, okay. This is the one I read about. But the other one is what I was thinking. Yeah, the nicely placed rock hops. This was definitely a little bit more of an adventure than I had anticipated with all the creek crossings and the trail closures, but I was not worried one bit because I carry with me, almost on every single ride, three bottles of the best electrolyte drink mix in the business. It's Element, the fine sponsor of today's video. The Element mission is to restore health through hydration. If you don't have your electrolytes dialed in, you're going to get headaches and cramps. You're going to have that general tiredness that we all hate. Element checks all the boxes for me. Tastes fantastic. Doesn't have a pound of sugar. Keeps me fired up through a ride, but doesn't make me jittery like all that caffeine stuff, and it never messes with my stomach. The Element thesis is out with sugar and in with salt. They believe that most people, especially active people that get out and sweat a lot, need more salt in their diet to feel good and perform their best. One packet of Element in a water bottle is a perfect way to give your body the sodium, potassium, and magnesium that it needs, and an even better way, in my opinion, is through the Element sparkling water drinks. Have these before and after a ride as well. If you give Element a try, I really think you're going to like it, but anything's possible, and they have a fantastic refund policy. Just shoot them an email. If you don't like it, you don't have to send the product back. You are taking zero risk on your first taste of Element. So head on over to drinkelement.com slash BKXC, whether it's your first order or your 500th. Use my link and you're going to get a free eight-pack sample pack. You can try some different flavors. You can share them out with a friend. I hope you're still staying active through this winter, and if you are, you still got to get your electrolytes dialed in. Do it with Element. Head on over to drinkelment.com slash BKXC. I still haven't ridden Chestnut Mountain Berm Park. Man, what a shame. It's still closed. The road got washed out at the entrance. Dang. So hoping to be able to ride it this year. You know, I plan to come out here before the storm and everything. So maybe another year, maybe next year. I get asked so much about where would you live? You could choose to live anywhere. And I really like Everstoke, of course. But here, Western North Carolina, Hendersonville, where the wife's family lives, it's just like such a perfect spot. You're like 30 minutes Canuga, 30 minutes Rock Creek, 35 minutes Brevard or something like that. An hour up to Kitsuma. Just the radius is fantastic. There's nothing directly in Hendersonville that you can ride from your back door that I know of. But being like equidistance from a lot of stuff and Hendersonville is just a big city. It's like got everything. It's got Lowe's. It's got Chick-fil-A. A couple of Chick-fil-A's, I think. It does get pretty cold in the winter. I don't think it snows and accumulates. It snows, but I think it kind of burns off quickly. It's not like it's under snow for months at a time. But then there's that freeze-thaw where it kind of messes with the trails, where they freeze, they thaw, they freeze. Big muddy mess. And Sarah was saying there's just tons of great events and there's a great community, Pisgah Area Sorba, which is a great trail stewardship, a banner trail stewardship, really. A great example for everyone to follow. And just to mention, I'm going to donate $100 from the Trail One Treasury to Pisgah Area Sorba for this ride. I don't have the Trail One cockpit right now, but we set aside $1 for every product we sell and try to send the money back to the places that are named for those products. So we've got the Far Low Gap grips and we just did a big $1,500 donation a couple days ago. Yeah, there's non-stop flights from a bunch of the East Coast cities right to Asheville. Pretty amazing. Also, it's only like a 10 and a half hour drive from Chicago. It's like 11 hours from New York City. It's crazy. That's a day. It's like two easy days, but one kind of tough day in the car. And you're here. I'll tell you what, it's a great time of the year, the holidays, to try to figure out your food allergies and go on like a restrictive diet while you're traveling. You know, have everybody worried about you. Oh, what's Brian going to have? What's Brian going to eat? Oh, man, I got this throat thing that's been bothering me for like 10 years. Probably some acid reflux and some like allergic reaction. I just have not been able to get to the bottom of it. And most of the time it's totally manageable and fine, but you still know it's there. Then it gets so bad, I could barely swallow my food. It's like horrible. The good thing is meat and potatoes usually can't go wrong with that. Chicken and rice, all Chipotle all the time. White rice, black beans, steak in a bowl. That's like a 10 hour YouTube video with the sound effects in the background to help you go to sleep. Yikes, those wet roots. I think there's still hope. We've got a big rock trail, so might be able to get some redemption out here. We looked at one of Sarah's past rides out here. 25 miles, 4,000 feet of climbing. No, thank you. She still is, but she used to as well. Just a nice little seven granola bar ride day. I'm sure these have soy and dairy and everything trying to avoid. Whoa, yeah. Shout out to my folks on Patreon. Hope you're enjoying the early or extended cut. Definitely have the winter coming up and a lot of people love the Patreon extended cuts to watch on the trainer. I've got like four or five videos on YouTube that are long that would be good for a trainer session, but I've got like four or 500 on Patreon. Lots of 45 minute plus extended cuts, ad free. Patreon.com slash BKXC. Oh, do we have to do this again? This is our feet, we're getting dry. It's getting cold. There we go. Ah, it's so cold. Yeah, numbing this time around. That was a lot worse. Oh yeah, more rock climbing. Give you five bucks if you make it. Give me my five bucks. You done well. No, that's not, that was not closed on the map. This was, oh no, no. Okay, we're still going to keep going because we're going to go cedar. We're going to get on cedar rock, but maybe cedar rock will be open downstream. Who knows though, really? Come on trail, please be open. Please be open. They're going to be a long depressing ride back to the car if not. I don't want to go back. I'm just going to lay down here and die. Okay, we got a little bit of sun and we got a little bit of energy. We got no more snacks. Up big rock and back down looking for a payoff. This is very similar to an Everstoke run. 300 feet, 0.8 miles. Tough to climb, fun to descend. Oh, I'm glad we got more stuff because that was going to be a big disappointment. This is one of the most iconic signs in all of mountain biking, I would say. It really is. It's got some little rocks as well. Nice. How's the sun managed to be directly in my eyes on like the past couple trails we've done? It's that time of year. Wrong way. She doesn't give an inch. Oh no. Whatever she did was good. I was not ready. Too many options. Oh yeah. Too quick. Everybody's got a white F-150. It's our rental car. Those trail closures threw us for a little bit of a loop, but we persevered and got through it. And you know what? I was very grateful that of four different days riding, that was the only little hiccup that we had from all the Hurricane Helene damage. The trails were in tip-top shape. Everything was solid except for a couple of those little closures. That big rock trail at sunset was really, really nice. I hope everyone gets to experience that someday. If I was going to do it again, I'd probably just do like a short little loop on Big Rock, drive the car up, do another loop on Ridgeline, which is a different area of DuPont. Those are the two banner trails to get on and to jam out on. I got one more great ride coming at you from Western North Carolina very, very soon. But until then, do me a favor. Go ride something new. And maybe I'll see you on the trail.