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Prologue

Well, it's been nice having ten toes...

As I balanced myself on top of a giant tree trunk that had fallen across the trail, leaning on my bike for balance as I tried to roll it over, this was one of the thoughts that flashed through my mind. The bike tire started losing traction and sliding down the dirt with the teeth of the front chain ring aimed directly at my left toes. When it landed on my toes, I yelled in pain. Besides fearing for my left toes, I was afraid of an injury that would take me out of the race. But I soon realized that, while painful, a laden bicycle is still not heavy enough to cut off my toes. I eventually shuttled the bicycle and myself off the log and pressed on, kind of humiliated even though nobody else was around to see me struggling and yelling.

I’ve had the goal of completing the TNGA on my bucket list for several years now. The TNGA is the Trans-North Georgia Adventure bike route, a 350-mile patchwork of trails and forest service roads spanning east-west across the North Georgia mountains between Alabama and South Carolina. I had tried a few sections of it in the past, and it had defeated me each time. I alternated between thinking, “I never want to do that again,” and wanting to actually get back out and conquer it someday. Around the beginning of 2025, Katelyn and I decided this should be the year for me to plan on doing it. We don’t have a newborn currently (our youngest is two now), and there is no time like the present. Besides wanting a challenge, I also welcomed the opportunity to work on my prayer life. Being out in the elements for several days and not knowing where you’ll find the next food, water, and shelter, has a way of reinforcing a humble reliance on God—a good strategy in all aspects of life, but sometimes easier said than done in ordinary life.

Each year, there is a “Grand Depart” of riders who start the route together at the same time with the goal of either setting a record (course or personal) or just finishing. This year’s started on August 16 at 8am, and for the 15th anniversary, the route was being run “backwards” (from Alabama to South Carolina) instead of the traditional direction from South Carolina to Alabama. So this year’s was nicknamed the “AGNT” instead of the TNGA.

The TNGA route

The night before the Grand Depart, Katelyn and I spent the night at a motel in Cedar Town, GA. The next morning we parked at the Silver Comet trailhead and rode 1/4 mile down the trail to the start at the Georgia-Alabama state line where the Silver Comet Trail ends and the Chief Ladiga Trail starts. We met up with Liston and Brian who were planning to start the race and ride as far as we all could in three days, but they had a cut-off at three days and would have to bail after that.

The crew at the starting line

Day 1

The ride started out relatively flat and fast with a mix of paved roads, gravel roads, and some fairly quick single-track trails. We stopped briefly in Cave Spring for water and met Drew by the spring. He gave us some hot tips about the TNGA then peeled off to make a beer run while we proceeded along the route. After a stretch of highway riding, we made a resupply stop for tamales, french fries, and Gatorade at the gas station/taqueria on Highway 20. From there we rode several miles on the Sims Mountain Rail Trail, a gravel rail trail that gradually climbed up and down the edges of several of the ridges in the area. We missed the turn from the rail trail onto the Pinhoti Trail and had to backtrack a few hundred feet. We followed the Pinhoti briefly then came to an area where the GPS track seemed to lead us through an open area that looked like it had been timbered recently. Maybe this was where the Pinhoti trail used to go. We pushed and lifted our bikes over trees lying all over the ground then eventually came to a dead end of dense thickets. There was no shade, we had already drained a lot of our water, and we were feeling hot and demoralized. We gave up on trying to follow the GPS track through the thickets and instead bushwhacked back up to the Pinhoti Trail, where we figured the track intended for us to be. Back on the Pinhoti, we made it to the foot of Taylor’s Ridge where we climbed, mostly pushing our bikes, up a steep single-track trail to the top. The ridgeline followed a combination of single track and gravel roads. When we made it to the Highway 27 crossing, we were hot and low on water, so we did what several other riders were doing and left the route temporarily to bike down from the ridge to a gas station about a mile and a half downhill on Highway 27. We ate pizza and BBQ sandwiches and, most importantly, cooled off with cold water in the air conditioning. While we were there, we heard that the race leaders were already getting to Dalton. When we were ready to move on, we climbed back up Highway 27 to the trail crossing and got back on the trail to continue along Taylor's Ridge.

As we continued along the ridgeline, there were some slow going parts with steep climbs and temperatures in the 90s. As the afternoon went on and the sun started to go down, the temperature gradually went down, and things started getting a little easier. We even had some surprise stretches of smooth, paved roads which were a nice respite after some grueling stretches of slow gravel and singletrack. We joked about how it was kind of ironic that we hadn’t signed up for this race for the smooth, easy pavement riding, yet we were so glad for it whenever it showed up. After the sun set, we rode on in the dark until around 10:00 PM then camped near the edge of the trail along a single-track section past East Armuchee Road. We thought maybe the next day we might could make it to Snake Creek Gap around 10am, Dalton for a late lunch, then spend the night at Mulberry Gap.

Night riding on pavement (photo credit: Bryan Grumbach)

Day 2

The next morning, we continued on to the section of the Pinhoti known as The Snake, a winding section of trail that climbs up and down a series of meandering ridge lines composed primarily of rocks and poison ivy, winding between Armuchee Creek and Dalton. The trail between the campsite and Snake Creek Gap was fairly rideable a lot of the time, but it still took us a lot longer than we had guesstimated the night before. I also started having pain around my right IT band. The thought kept nagging at me that this pain might worsen into an injury that would take me out of the race. We refilled water at the Creek near Pocket Road, one of the last reliable water sources until Dalton. While refilling water, we met Chip, a first-time rider from Birmingham wearing real duck wings on his helmet who told us about some gnarly tire issues he had just worked through and his plans to complete the route staying indoors most nights. We were getting close to the last tough, 15-mile section of slow, rocky singletrack between Snake Creek Gap and Dalton, and it was already turning into another hot, sunny, 90-something degree afternoon. Liston and I had ridden this section before in June when we had set out with our friend Jack for a one-night scouting trip, then aiming to ride roughly 90 miles of the TNGA route in 2 days. We had kicked off the scouting trip with this part of the Snake section, and it felt like it had almost defeated us then, striking at us with several mechanical issues, continual unrideable areas, high heat, running out of water, and both of my bike shoes falling apart (and, as we would find out later, nasty poison ivy rashes). By the end of the scouting trip, we had only covered about 60 miles before bailing to head home.

Snake Creek Gap

This time around, we were happy to find some bottled water left behind at the Snake Creek Gap trailhead by a local trail user, and also to find that the creek a few miles in was still flowing (which we’ve heard is not always the case in August). It was still slow going, and the heat noticeably increased my fatigue, despite drinking plenty of water. I was able to ride more of the time than on the scouting trip, but there were still a lot of slow stretches pushing the bike up steep hills and over boulders. We were thankful when we finally made it through to Dalton without any mechanical issues, dehydration, or exploded shoes. We ate an early dinner at Panda Express, featuring air conditioning and vegetables—both of which are rare luxuries on the TNGA. The air conditioning was a big boon for my fatigue. I called Katelyn and the kids, and my 4-year-old daughter prayed for me over the phone that I would finish the race (even if I don’t win) and wouldn’t get bad poison ivy this time. We also saw Chip again. He didn’t stop long in Dalton and said he was planning to make it all the way to Mulberry Gap that night, even if he had to ride late into the night to get there. Mulberry Gap is a mountain bike resort surrounded by forest land just a quarter-mile off the TNGA route, and the staff and volunteers there go all-out supporting the TNGA riders, including running 24/7 services like food, bike repair, a store, shuttles, and various kinds of sleeping accommodations.

Yum yum yum yum yum

As the outside temperatures cooled down, we cruised through a long, gently rolling paved section between Dalton and Dennis Mill. The sun had set, and we forded Rock Creek in the dark (the bridge is in the process of being replaced) and found some trail magic on the other side—malted milk balls, only a little bit melted. I passed on them, but Bryan said they were great. Mulberry Gap was still several hours away, and at this point we weren’t really considering trying to make it there that night. Instead, we made camp a hundred feet or so into the Pinhoti trailhead on Dennis Mill Road.

Day 3

The next morning, we climbed the Pinhoti trail up into the mountains ¹. This is where the most challenging aspects of the route seem to shift from technical/slow rocky areas and blazing heat to long, steep, never-ending climbs—still with some challenging/slow technical areas thrown in. As we climbed, my right IT band pain from the day before, which had actually subsided somewhere along The Snake, started coming back stronger.

After lots of climbing, we topped out at the mansion-treehouse development and bombed down the Pinhoti trail toward Mulberry Gap. I only crashed twice—once while looking to see why Liston had flown off the trail then flying off the trail myself, and once because I’m not that good at those downhill hairpin turns.

We made it to Mulberry Gap in one piece and stopped for lunch, resupply, and recharging lights/electronics/etc. As we were arriving, we passed Chip as he was leaving to continue the route. He told us he had pedaled until 3:30am that morning to make it to Mulberry Gap. I took my bike to the mechanic while we were there to check on the brakes, because the rear one was acting a little weird right after one of my crashes. He checked it out and did some quick maintenance and said I was good to go. While the first rainstorm of the trip rolled in, I asked the staff for any intel on what the next sections of the route looked like. I wasn’t familiar with the sections east of Mulberry Gap, because our June scouting trip had ended here. They let me know that I was in for a lot more climbing on single track, then more steep climbing on gravel, then a section they referred to as “P-Zero” that was muddy and gross, then some nice descent from Watson Gap down into the valley with the Mountainside Market. Unfortunately, word was that the Mountainside Market, normally open 24/7 during the TNGA, was closed due to the owner being ill. This meant a broken link in the sparse chain of resupply options between Mulberry Gap and Cooper’s Creek Store. They also said that as of that morning, more than half of the riders who started had already scratched (i.e., dropped out of the race).

I left Mulberry Gap together with Liston and Bryan and rode down the last stretch of gravel road we would ride together before they would peel off to ride back to their cars and head home while I continued. We said goodbyes, said a prayer, and parted ways. I turned onto the next Pinhoti section and started climbing. It was muddy from the rainstorm that rolled through while we were at Mulberry. I started to feel apprehensive about being on my own now, camping alone, and having fewer and fewer riders nearby as so many had now scratched, and there were fewer than 10 still behind me now. I prayed that I would still get to interact with other riders and not be totally alone out there on the route. This section was slow going for me, with a good bit of hiking and lifting the bike over obstacles (including the giant tree trunk referenced in the beginning). I passed Scott, a multi-sport athlete in his 60’s training for the Tour Divide (a 2700+ mile race along the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route). He was one of the few riders whose bike looked like it was carrying more than mine, which was part of his Tour Divide training. His gear even included the essentials for making hot coffee in the morning. He was getting to the giant log right after I had finished crossing it. I asked him if he was good, and he said yes, so I headed on. Apparently it was no problem for him. I didn’t see any bears on the bear creek trails, but several others did. The bear creek trail itself was a bear. I got to the last part where it comes out by a gated road, went through the gate, and realized I was slightly off the GPS route. I retraced my steps to a steep, narrow track going up into the woods. I started pushing my bike and lifting it over huge vertical ledges, turned the corner, saw another huge vertical ledge, and thought, “This is not a bike trail. This must be wrong.” I went back to the smooth gravel road, started riding further along it, and started deviating further from the GPS route again. A part of me must have been trying to hold on to the thought that the people responsible for this route were probably not sadistic maniacs, despite all the evidence so far that might cause one to doubt. But as my dot drifted further off that GPS track, reality began to settle in. I went back to the woods and started lifting my bike over the vertical ledges again.

I eventually made it to the top of the Bear Creek Trail (which puts you out just a short ways up that same gravel road that was not the route). The reward was another steep climb, this time on a gravel road with a perfectly consistent grade, just one or two percent too steep to keep a strong cadence pedaling in my lowest gear.

Mountaintown Overlook near Potato Patch Mountain

Only 1.3 horizontal miles and 700 vertical feet later, I was getting to the top of Potato Patch Mountain, and who did I see up ahead? Chip! He was in a haze after pulling an all-nighter pedaling to Mulberry the night before. We had been leap-frogging each other and apparently traveling at a similar pace for the whole ride so far, so I suggested we ride near each other for a while. Chip welcomed the idea, and we pressed on to find some water and a place to camp for the night. According to the map, the next water source was a stream at the bottom of P-0. Around sunset, we turned from the gravel road onto P-0 and bombed down the trail into the deep, dark valley. The last daylight vanished in minutes as we plunged deeper into the valley. As we got closer to the bottom of the valley, the trail passed through mud pit after mud pit, until eventually we crossed the Jacks River. We filtered water and started looking for a place to camp. Everything was wet and mushy, and there was no telling what camping options lay ahead or what the climb out of the valley looked like. We were both tired. We found the junction with the Benton McKaye Trail, which diverged away from the Jacks River to higher ground. We pushed our bikes a short distance up the trail, found some dry ground, and camped by the side of the trail. Despite my tiredness, I was enchanted by the Jacks River valley. Everywhere I shined my headlamp seemed to be covered with life—all sorts of species of moths, spiders, salamanders, and insects that I didn't recognize seeing before outside of that valley ².

Salamander on P-0

Day 4

We both woke up at 4am when the rain started. Chip adjusted his emergency bivy to try to keep the rain off his face, while I tried to sleep in my tent despite feverish dreams of trying to climb out of the wet valley the next morning along a trail transformed into a river of mud. It was still raining at 6am, and I was still tired, so I kept sleeping until 7. At 7, it was still raining, but we got up anyway and packed up. The rain slowed to a drizzle, and the trail out of the valley turned out to be somehow less wet after the rain than the trail into the valley had been the night before with no rain. We quickly climbed out of the valley back onto the gravel road and cruised through Dyer Gap, Long Gap, Rich Cove Gap, then down to Watson Gap. On the way, we passed an old cemetery by the side of the road with a big wooden pavilion and church pews. Chip was mad about finding a covered pavilion just a couple miles from where we had slept in the rain. We shot down from Watson Gap out of the forest and found the Mountainside Market. The store was indeed closed, but the owner had left some snacks and water bottles on the back porch for riders. We also found Clint, Mark, and George washing their bikes and recharging electronics on the front patio. Moments after we arrived, the owner rolled up in his pickup truck and offered to open up the store for us. What a godsend! We restocked on snacks and ate microwaveable meals that the owner heated up for us, and the owner even gave us some sausage and egg biscuits from his fridge. We washed the P-0 mud off the bikes. Little did we know, P-0 was only the beginning of wetter and muddier riding to come.

Chip and I left after the others and got caught in a huge thunderstorm on Goose Island Road, where we found a little gazebo and stopped to wait out the heaviest parts of the lighting and downpour. When the rain started to slow down, we kept going and found George resting at the Cherry Log Community Center, where we stopped for free hose water. We continued through the rain up to Stanley Gap and found Clint and Mark, who had waited out the storm on the porch of the WMA check-in station. We all hiked our bikes together through the rain up the Stanley Gap trail. It was a long hike with not a lot of rideable parts. Chip and I made it to the top ahead of the others and shot down to Aska Road. I walked several of the giant drop-offs that Chip road down on his full-suspension bike. We conquered the next big climb up Green Mountain which turned out to be pretty rideable most of the way. We cruised down to the bottom through the Aska Trail system. Suddenly, we were no longer inside of a wet rain cloud, and we rode out into the sunshine to the trailhead. Chip said I had a huge smile on my face as we made it out of the Aska trails. I felt victorious after having conquered another section that had defeated me in the past ³.

We made it to the Toccoa Riverside Restaurant and found Cory, who was waiting there while stranded with disintegrated tires. He was staying in the area for the night while the local bike shop owner found him a new set of tires. Chip and I were wondering if we should stop in for a bite to eat, not knowing if the Cooper’s Creek Store several miles ahead was still running longer hours for the riders in the back of the pack. It turned out we had cell service, and Chip had the bright idea to use my phone to make a real phone call. I called the Cooper’s Creek Store, and what do you know... they said come on over. They were still open 24 hours serving up food, showers, and beds for riders. The idea of sleeping indoors and taking my first shower of the trip sounded great. We pressed on across the old “iron bridge,” which was now closed to vehicular traffic, with a brand-spanking-new iron-inspired bridge now sitting next to it, brought to you through the GDOT bridge replacement program ⁴. After surviving the giant mud pits on the 4x4 road, we rolled into the Cooper’s Creek Store around 8:45pm. Eddie and Peter were there finishing up their meals and getting ready to try and make Vogel State Park by midnight. We were firmly committed to staying at Cooper’s. George, Clint, and Mark ended up staying the night there, too. I gave my bike its second bath of the day, ate a brisket sandwich, slaw dog, baked beans, and hash brown casserole, and took a shower. I asked for some old newspaper to stuff inside my shoes to dry them out overnight. The newspaper was the Woody Gap Dispatch, where the front page celebrated the single graduating high school senior at the Woody Gap School—the smallest public school in the state with about 60 students in elementary through high school combined. The store owner’s kids went to school there, and he was telling me about how much the community loves their little school and how he had grown up just south of Atlanta not far from where I live and recently took over the store and moved his family up to Suches.

Day 5

The Cooper’s Creek Store was a highlight of the trip—hands-down the best county store/restaurant/bigfoot souvenir gift shop I’ve ever slept in, not to mention the first one to open up a tab for me on arrival and close it out the next day. The next morning, Chip and I rolled out around 6:30am, just a little after Clint, Mark, and George. The breakfast biscuits were just as good as I remembered from stopping here 9 years ago on my TNGA overnight trip with Katelyn.

Left: Katelyn at Cooper's Creek Store, November 2016 | Right: Jonathan at Cooper’s Creek Store, August 2025

The climb up to the sunrise on Duncan Ridge Road was rewarding. We only missed one turn, but thankfully noticed before we ended up in Blairsville. Around half-way up or so, my stomach started complaining. Was it something I ate? Was it the complimentary coffee I had polished off right before climbing? Did I drink a few drops of untreated stream water on the mouth of a water bottle, or worse, accidentally drink a whole bottle of untreated water by some delirious mistake while pushing through the blazing heat earlier in the trip? I kept going, hoping it wouldn’t get any worse. And weirdly, it didn’t. It was just there. The gravel descent down to Wolfpen Gap then the screaming pavement descent from Wolfpen to Vogel was fun. Chip was imagining he was in the Tour de France and made it down in about half the time it took me.

Duncan Ridge Road

We stopped at Vogel and saw George, Mark, Clint, Eddie, and Peter. They headed on, and I stopped at the camp store and bought tiny packs of Tums and Pepto-Bismol. I wasn’t sure if they made a difference or not. As I was getting ready to move on from Vogel, my shoulder devil was making the case for staying put, since my stomach ache would probably only get worse, and Vogel would be a nice, comfortable place to quit and wait for a pickup. Besides, stomach issues would be a very understandable excuse for quitting, right? Meanwhile, my shoulder angel argued that a mild stomach ache was a dumb reason to quit—and besides, I told all those people back home I was going to try to finish, and some of them even donated to Propel ATL on my behalf to show their support. Chip and I packed up and left Vogel together.

As we climbed up Highway 19, a bear ran across the road a hundred feet or so in front of us! It was on its way somewhere, and so were we. We cruised down Helton Creek Road and started the relentless climb up the Richard B. Russell Scenic Byway to Hogpen Gap, featuring a 2-mile section with a perfectly constant 10% grade. I made up my mind to pedal the whole way up but was definitely paperboying on some of it. We got passed by about a million motorcycles. They looked like they were having fun using gasoline. When we crested Hogpen, we saw George on the phone taking advantage of the cell service. The ride down to Helen was mostly huge downhills (no, Chip, it wasn’t technically “all” downhill… cut me some slack!)

We veered a short ways off the route to get lunch on the outskirts of Helen with Clint and Mark. My stomach had not gotten worse but was not feeling great, so I didn’t eat that much. George caught up and joined us. Clint called ahead to the hiker hostel about 40 miles ahead, which was where all of us were thinking we might spend the night. They said no check-ins after 8pm, no exceptions. It was getting to be mid-afternoon, and there was no way any of us were going to make it there by 8. With no more resupply options for potentially the next 40 miles or more, everyone started stocking up on snacks at the gas station. I called Moccasin Creek State Park, which is just a few miles before the hostel, and they said they close the gate at 10pm and don’t open for new arrivals, whether you have a reservation or not. I wanted to target Moccasin Creek since they have a store, and 10pm sounded doable.

Now with a deadline, I shot out “like a bat” out of Helen. I passed Chip, Clint, and Mark on the climb up Tray Mountain, the biggest climb to the highest point on the course ⁵, with the goal of checking in before 10pm and getting a gate code I could share with any of the other guys who wanted to join at Moccasin. The climb started out really hot, almost like some of the earlier days on the route. I kept pushing it, riding most of the way and pushing a few times at some of the steeper areas. Suddenly, while dismounting to push up one of the steeper parts, my right IT band pain came back in a way sharper way than before. I guzzled some more water and ate some more food and kept going, adding this to the list running in the back of my mind of “will this get worse and eventually take me out?”. On the plus side, my stomach seemed to be feeling better. I may have started compensating for the pain in my right IT band by pushing harder with my left leg, though, and a different pain started to develop in my left leg near the back of my knee.

About 90% of the way up, the sky started getting darker, and the wind picked up. This was nice at first. Then the thunder started getting closer. I was riding on a ridgeline getting near the top of Tray Mountain and decided to keep going and try to get over the top and start descending before the rain and lightning caught up. It didn’t work out that way, though. The skies released a downpour of frigid rain, and the lightning flashed closer and closer. A big tree limb dropped onto the road a hundred feet or so in front of me. I started feeling really cold and wanted to keep going to keep my body heat up. I caught up to George as he was hunkering down beside the road under a tarp. I said let’s get off this mountain, and we both crested Tray Mountain and started our descent down the other side in a river of mud rushing down the gravel road ⁶. Even though I was shivering on the way down, I was thankful my rain jacket helped retain my body heat even though I didn’t put it on until after I got drenched.

Disclaimer: The pictures I took are biased toward the moments when I was feeling generally positive, safe, and dry enough to want to stop and take a picture. Tray Mountain did not get a photo. But here’s one from the first day of the trip instead. Kittens!

By the time we got to the bottom, the rain had stopped. George took a break, and I pressed on toward Addis Gap, the fourth and final big climb of the day. On the way up Addis, the sun was starting to set. I caught up to Scott, and we hiked our bikes together for a while and chatted. Addis Gap was a spooky, beautiful wonderland of ancient trees and fog in the twilight. I went on ahead of Scott and descended from Addis alone, down the abandoned forest road along the roaring Wildcat Creek. It turned pitch dark, and I was zipping around corners along a creek in bear country, so I started singing hymns and shouting Psalms I had memorized as a kid, both to give fair warning to any bears, and to reassure myself. Suddenly, around a curve, there was a black shape in the road in front of me. Before I could slow down or process what was going on, it rushed toward me at an impossible speed, growing larger then towering over me. Then, right as everything went black, it disappeared. A leaf hanging out into the road brushed past my headlight, and the trail was fully illuminated again. My heart started beating again. I continued down the abandoned road past the abandoned campgrounds and was relieved when I passed the barricade and started seeing houses and knew I was almost out of the woods, just as the last rain of the day rolled in. My spirits were lifted even more when my tires rolled onto pavement, and I was so thankful when I rolled up on Moccasin Creek State Park in the rain at only 9:30pm. The campground host was so kind and hospitable. He even loaned me some clean, dry rags from the bathhouse janitor’s closet to help my shoes dry overnight. I saw Eddie and Peter doing laundry at the bathhouse, but they were just planning to nap and continue riding. George got there before 10pm, too, then Clint and Mark. I texted Chip the gate code, and he made it in and set up his bivy at my site. I set up my tent after the rain stopped and tried to charge my almost-dead phone on the power bank, but it wouldn’t charge. I thought I had kept it dry during all the rainstorms, but maybe not. The whole world was wet and humid. I would need a phone to communicate a pickup time at end of the ride, and trying to schedule one now seemed pointless with no idea what kind of terrain lay ahead and whether finishing would take 8 hours or 18 hours.

While everyone was in the bathhouse drying things off and getting ready for the night, I polled everyone on their plans for the next day. Clint, who was working toward his 5th TNGA finish, said he expected the remainder of the route to be slow going with a steep, muddy, single-track climb near the end. The idea of climbing that in the dark, probably in the rain, and then likely finishing too late at night to get picked up and camping out to wait on a pickup the next day with nowhere to buy food in between did not sound appealing. I started to reconsider if I really wanted to finish the ride after all. Clint pitched another idea: cut tomorrow short, stay indoors in Dillard, then roll out early the next morning and finish early on Friday. The idea of splitting it up, riding with other people, and staying in civilization with working phones sounded appealing. I seconded the idea, and the others jumped in, too, except Mark, who had plans for a pickup Thursday night that he wanted to keep.

Lake Burton from Moccasin Creek State Park

Day 6

I slept in past 7 the next morning, and it seemed like most of the other guys did, too, except for Mark, who rolled out ahead of us to meet his deadline. We re-stocked on food at the camp store, and several of us split a loaf of bread and jars of peanut butter and jelly to make sandwiches for the road. I rolled out of Moccasin Creek with Clint, George, and Chip, and as soon as we started riding, the pain behind my left knee came back even stronger than the day before. As I was assessing whether it was getting worse or not, my stomach started letting me know that it wasn’t happy, either. Was it a continuation of whatever was bothering me all day yesterday, or did I just eat too much ice cream, pop tarts, and doritos for breakfast right before riding? Which ailment would be the first to get so bad I would scratch? We turned down the unmaintained gravel road and approached the first of many creek crossings between Lake Burton and Highway 76. But wait, who was that down by Dick’s Creek? Cory! The bike shop near Aska had hooked him up with new tires, and he had ridden through the night and caught up with us! It was five of us again pushing each other toward the finish. As I went on, my stomach calmed down, but my left leg continued to ail me while thankfully not getting much worse. I did start to fantasize about getting a hotel in Clayton and making an ice bath for my leg. We cruised by the hiker hostel down 76, climbed up and over Blue Ridge Gap (eating a PBJ on Blue Ridge was a highlight), down across the Tallulah River, then up again toward Patterson Gap. Right on schedule, as we were getting to the highest point of the day, the thunderstorm rolled in. Lighting started striking on all sides of us followed almost immediately with loud thunder. We pushed ahead through the downpour to get to lower ground. I put on my rain jacket before getting drenched this time, so didn’t get nearly as cold.

The rain had slowed to a drizzle by the time we were rolling into Dillard. It was only 5:30pm, and we were already done for the day. What luxury. We all checked in at the Mountain Valley Inn. I split a room with Chip. We all took showers and ate a big dinner at the Cupboard Café together then restocked one last time at the Dollar General. I got ice from the hotel ice machine and made an ice bath in the bathtub (Chip taught me a trick—using the hotel room trash can instead of the ice bucket to carry more ice at once). The ice bath felt marvelous. I gave all my wet, muddy gear a good cleaning and air dried everything all over the room. I got my best night of sleep on the whole ride.

Ah, civilization

Day 7

The next morning, I woke up refreshed. My gear was dry. My leg was feeling somewhat better after the ice bath. At 7am, all five of us rolled out of Dillard to ride to the end. As we passed the post office, we saw Chris, who I had seen way back at Mulberry Gap. He had ridden straight through the night at least once and caught up to us ⁷, but he couldn’t be convinced to ride with us. He had to go off the route to get a few cups of coffee first. When we hit the infamous Darnell Creek Horse Trails, we definitely had to hike a lot of sections and lift our bikes over some fallen trees, but it turned out not to live up to the mental image I had developed of an impossibly sloppy, muddy, steep, impassible trail. I’m sure it helped that we hit it in daytime and not during a thunderstorm, unlike some of the people who had traversed it before us.

Pushing bikes up a muddy rhododendron tunnel on the infamous horse trails

All our spirits were high when we made it to the top and checked off the last single-track section of the trip. We logged some more climbing and got our daily rainstorm around the high point of the day as usual, but it wasn’t a dramatic thunderstorm like the other ones over the past few days. Before we knew it, the waterfalls and abandoned forest roads were behind us, and our wheels hit pavement—the home stretch. We drifted down Highway 28, and without any spectators or fanfare, crossed the bridge over the Chattooga River, all five of us side by side, into South Carolina. We were all TNGA finishers—or in some of the other guys’ cases, multi-time finishers. I had thought I might feel a great sense of victory when I made it to the finish line, or maybe relief; but in the moment, it didn’t feel especially like either. Mainly just a sense of conclusion. This was the conclusion of the question—would I finish ⁸? The conclusion of the last few days of travel with these new companions. The conclusion of months of planning and training, and the conclusion of days and days spent away from my wife and three young kids.

The finish line

Thinking about how to describe the experience that was the TNGA, I might jump to words like long, grueling, steep, slow… But if I had to choose one word to sum up the experience, I think it would choose “intimate”. Besides setting the stage for the challenges, victories, solitude, and camaraderie of the TNGA, the route turned out to be a rare, intimate view of North Georgia in every sense of the word. It’s a tour of the secret, private tracts of forest behind miles of abandoned, barricaded roads, and barely-used trails. You spend hours on end studying each landscape, ecosystem, and gravel texture, feeling every contour, becoming so acquainted you start anticipating what is around the next corner—until it surprises you with yet another undiscovered landscape. It casually leads you in and out through the back doors of the sparse towns and mountain communities through which it passes. You rarely get big views, and it doesn’t bring you to any of the major destinations people drive to from Metro Atlanta. Instead, you’re a rare visitor to the ancient stones, mountains, streams, and all the millions and billions of trees, critters, and other organisms living out their callings all day, all month, all year regardless of whether anybody comes by and notices them or not. You pass by the relics of old communities and civilizations among the mountains as you pass by more millipeds crawling along the road than cars. By modern standards, this is a slow way to travel across the state. But in a way, it feels almost hurried. Even at my pace of 6 days, 4 hours and some change, it feels sort of like I dropped in and glimpsed these intimate spaces—the isolated mountain valley communities around the Mountainside Market and the Cooper’s Creek Store; the lush valley of P-0; the mountain laurel thickets along Bear Creek; the tiny streams and waterfalls in every valley—then jetted on into the next one, over and over, for more than 6 days. Fast or slow, I’m thankful to have experienced this part of my state and of this corner of God’s world in a new way in August 2025.

I’m thankful for those who are responsible for this route, even if I called you names earlier in my writeup. Thanks for your contributions to biking, adventure, and cartography in Georgia. A big thank you to the awesome Mulberry staff and volunteers and all the others who showed amazing hospitality along the route. Big shout out to Yusuf and Alyssa for loaning me lots of gear, and to Chris for expertly mending some of it (Yusuf—I’ll fill you in on that later; your bikepacking bags are in good shape). Also to Liston for training with me and for the pickup at the end. And thank you to Katelyn, my kids, and my in-laws for being wonderful and for all they did to make space for me to be out there.

TL;DR, I still have 10 toes, and it was a hard but rewarding bike adventure.

The elaborate endnotes section:

¹ I learned from my kids’ Georgia geography curriculum this year (or re-learned? maybe I learned this as a kid, too...) that when we left the Dalton/Chatsworth area, we were crossing out of Georgia’s Ridge-and-Valley Region, characterized by—you guessed it—ridges like Taylor Ridge and valleys like Dalton and Chatsworth, and crossing into Georgia’s Blue Ridge Mountain Region.

² My 6-year-old son is really into insects, and I’ve been learning a lot about insects with him—in addition to Georgia geography as mentioned before. We learned together that scientists have described about a million insect species but estimate there are another 4-10 million that have yet to be discovered and described. I couldn’t help but wonder if I saw any of those undescribed ones down on P-0, and I wished my son could have seen all the cool insects I was seeing. Reading more about this area, it turns out the Jacks River valley along P-0 is one lush corner of Georgia’s Appalachian temperate rainforest, where individual valleys can have their own unique microclimate caused by high humidity, frequent rainfall, and cooler temperatures. This north-facing orientation of the Jacks River valley along P-0 means that it receives less direct sunlight and so stays more moist and maintains lower temperatures throughout the day. These conditions support great biodiversity, including a wide range plant and animal species not commonly found elsewhere in the southeast.

³ About 9 years earlier, when Katelyn and I were thinking of trying to tour the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route, we decided to do a pilot trip to try out unpaved touring. Somehow I heard about this nice route called the TNGA that was right in our backyard in North Georgia, and we decided we would do an overnight trip on it. We had a great time riding from Coopers Creek to the Iron Bridge Cafe in the morning, then got hugely demoralized hiking our heavily laden touring bikes over root after root up Green Mountain for an entire afternoon, until the sun set on us and we sat down and camped by the trail somewhere on Green Mountain. We went home and wondered if we were cut out for unpaved bikepacking. Hiking bikes over roots all day didn’t sound like a fun way to spend a vacation (Yet, 9 years later, for some reason, I signed up for a whole week of just that. At least I traveled a little lighter this time.). Thankfully, somebody let us know that the GDMBR was not as hard as the TNGA and was mostly rideable.

⁴ This was the second bridge replacement job on the route with which I had some tangential interaction in my professional life as a civil engineer doing work for GDOT. The first was the Rock Creek bridge at Dennis Mill, where we forded the river while the bridge was being replaced. It was cool seeing these project sites in real life.

⁵ Tray Mountain is the 7th highest mountain in Georgia, but the 2nd “tallest” in prominence compared to the land around it. The climb up from Helen was about 8 miles long and 2,400 feet high.

⁶ It turns out we dodged the hail, though. The other guys just a half-mile or so behind us weren’t so lucky.

⁷ The trackleaders website had a cool live map for keeping tabs on where the racers were. Friends and family used this to track their loved ones, and racers used it when they found cell signal to keep tabs on each other.The graph below is a feature that displays riders’ distance vs. time over the course of the race. What I found most fascinating about this graph is the ability to see which riders slept when, and which ones didn’t.

(Source: Trackleaders.com)

⁸ Here is a less official graph that I made showing a sampling of some of the things that I thought might take me out of the race over time. The title of the graph sounds like something an engineer would write, which is exactly the case. A more normal-sounding title might be something like “fear of scratching.” Then again, graphing your fears over time in Excel may not be considered normal anyway. As each of these circumstances developed, I would mentally extrapolate them over time, wondering when they would reach the point when I could no longer push through it. However, none of those extrapolated trends every materialized in the way I had feared.

The theme of fear on the TNGA could be its own essay. There's a saying I heard several riders use: “Are you packing your fears?” This highlights the fine line between bringing what is needed vs. overpacking to be prepared for every possible disaster or discomfort, i.e., being prepared vs. being over-prepared. This distinction matters on a route with somewhere between 40,000 and 50,000 feet of climbing, where every ounce of extra weight translates to noticeably more effort. Even though this may have been the lightest I had ever traveled on a bikepacking trip, I was still traveling heavier than many of the other riders out there. Some of the “fears” I packed included luxuries like a tent and sleeping bag, which not all riders carried—some opting to bring an emergency blanket/emergency bivy instead. I may have been jealous of them on the giant climbs, but I also enjoyed not having rain and spiders on my face overnight. Tradeoffs.