Tsali....A Little Glimpse of Heaven?

As many of you know, this past weekend James and I traveled to Tsali, NC on a mountain biking adventure. I realize that many of you may not be familiar with Tsali. Tsali, simply put, is mountain biking heaven. It is consistently ranked as one of the best two or three trail systems east of the Mississippi river, and one of the top ten in the USA.

Now I know what you are thinking: "hey Trey, what makes Tsali so great?"......well, I'm glad you asked. Tsali is made up of 4 separate loop trails that all begin and end at a common trailhead. There are over 40 miles of blazing fast singletrack (meaning there is just enough space for one mt biker- usually 2-3 feet wide) and fireroads. The climbing is fair and the descending is amazing. Hardpacked trails and banked curves (as seen in the pic) add to the speed of these trails. In addition to all this, most of the trails are cut into the side of a hill, so on one side you have a "wall" of dirt and brush, and on the other you have a dropoff (also seen in the pic). This adds a whole new level of adrenaline rush to the trail because the temptation to go "all out" is high, but the consequences of losing control could be very significant. To put it simply, Tsali the Six Flags of mountain biking.

The trip was flawless. Perfect weather, great food (gotta love Chef Boyardee at night and pancakes every morning!), and good facilities, accompanied by all the riding we could handle kept us both feeling like a couple kids riding a 4 day adrenaline rush! All said, I logged 60 miles in 3 days of riding and James racked up a personal best 50 miles in 2 days! We even got to do some night-riding thanks to my buddy Kyle who loaned us his trail lights, which we strapped to our helmets to light the pitch-black trail! Every single ride produced a sprint-type section of trail that produced speeds easily in excess of 20 MPH with a max trail speed of almost 28 MPH (to give you some reference, our average speed was about 9 MPH)! Whew! I get a rush just thinking about it!

I got some decent pics from the trip- they will be posted on my flickr account soon.....I will let you know!