Trace Ridge Mountain Biking Trail in Mills River

Hey guys, welcome back to the channel. Today, we're gonna do some riding. We're actually headed out to Trace Ridge in Mills River. Get some runs in with a friend, Caleb. I've actually never done this before. Stoked to hit another trail for the first time. It's just so exciting to go somewhere new, hit something new, be blind about it, and I just love riding blind. So who do we got over here? Nope, not this hand. We're gonna just sort of switch it up. What's up, man? I'm Kevin. I'm Brian. Little wild hog. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, that's awkward. Sorry, I didn't know what I was doing there. Not always great at handshakes. I think I should invent a handshake. Okay, so now we're at Trace Ridge. We're gonna ask Caleb if he has any real information about this trail. So do you know about the descent, the climb? What information do you have for us? So we're about a seven mile loop. We can go up all the way up Wash Creek Road. We got a little bit of single track climb, and then we got just like a gnarly ass descent that actually George told me about. He was the one who first recommended me to come over here. Oh, George, huh? Oh yeah, I think 40 miles per hour was what his top speed was on Strava. On this trail? Yeah. Oh, wow, okay. It's like nothing to check your speed at all. Just like straight away the entire time, tons of flow. Of course, we still got the Pisgah chunk that comes along with it. Okay, I'm excited to check it out. You know, this trail, I mean, I don't know, but I'm happy to ride it blind or full speed. I think this guy's going full speed. Okay, so this is going to be Lower Trace Ridge. We're actually doing it first to save on a little bit of climbing. Just got towed down Lower Trace Ridge, which was nice because we had a very sharp switchback. Probably would have blowed that out. We are now pedaling back out and headed up to do Upper Trace Ridge. Yeah, so we're at the halfway point. We've got about 1,000 feet. Stay tuned and we'll get back to you once we're at the top. Trace all the way down. How many feet of descent is it? 8.9, 8.8, 8.5. 8.56? What do you look for? How would you rate this trail as far as rider skill set needed? As long as you know how to use your brakes, you're fine. But the whole idea for us is to use our brakes as little as possible. How fast are we going to be going on this trail? Anywhere between 30 and 40 miles per hour. How long? Like peak? Or are you going to be cruising at that speed? It's like, it gets you comfortable for Bailey because you cruise at that speed. Because there's really nothing that needs to make you go slower than mock chicken. The ridge itself has just kind of like a narrow cut. So you're kind of in a ditch for most of it. All right, well, let's just geared up and check it out. Send it. Send it, bud. You know you're leading us, right, Steady? Yeah, we're just going to go for it. So just keep the speed. Just don't hit the brakes. Pedal a little harder. Don't touch the brakes. Let's send it. Woo! That was sketchy. That was a pretty big log drop there, actually. It's pretty flat. Petley section here. Pretty high on the cassette. Two miles. We're descending. All right, here's some more routing. Here we go. Got some speed. Hearing the wind rustling my ears. Having a shitty stop. Oh, oh, oh, sharp turn. Oh, drop. Drop in the gully another time. Woo! First riding video I've done in a while. This is definitely like a nasty gully run. Hopefully I'm on the right trail because I'm probably not slowing down. Rock garden gully. Oh, up on the wall run. More trails riding behind. Oh, that's pretty intense. That was pretty fast, though. I think we're extending a period of time. That was sketchy rock garden. They're not going to like that behind me. Oh, ----, off the pedals. Oh, oh, back on the pedals. Yeah, I was rowdy. Started to speed up. Got the elbows in, the close corners. And I'm riding all this blind. I have no idea what's coming next. So it is a really nice trail that's very trusting that nothing too big is going to come out and grab you as long as you're okay with. Probably two foot drops the biggest one we've hit so far, maybe. The log hop was definitely big. But here we go. Oh, here we go. Oh, oh, watch where we're stepping now. Oh, oh, there's a jump. That's fast. Oh, oh, oh, oh, there's a ditch. Oh, oh, can't see anything. Oh, oh, oh, into the gully. I think something just kicked up. Pretty rowdy little sections there. Get back in that big gear. It also brings your derailleur up when you do that. There is very little braking needed here, which is really nice. I'm sitting down pedaling now. Still a lot of fun. Yeah, you're still going to speed with the winds coming across your face. Oh, now we're going seat down. Always going to call out sketchy things if you're with your friends, if you're first on the trail. I'm going so fast, I can barely see what I'm looking at, to be honest. Oh, flap's stretching twice there. Oh, whoo, that's rowdy. That almost went bad. I don't know if you guys can hear that squelch noise, but I'm booking. I'm barely pulling up, but I'm jumping pretty far. I don't know if that's the end of the trail or what the beginning of this is. Oh, look. Pretty legit. So as we're over here sitting here chit-chatting, we decided that we want to go ahead and work on some more jump progression. So we're going to head over to the re-branch. We heard some jumps were over there. You ever been to the re-branch? No, man, first time. You ever been to the re-branch? No, sir. All right. So we're going to the re-branch and hit these jumps. I've been there. I actually went there yesterday. They've got some box jumps and they also have some doubles. We're going to go ahead and go check her out, huh? Just send her, bud, right? Let's go ahead and do it. I'll just crank her up, huh? Send her. So on the way, we decided to get some tacos at a place called El Chapala. And I've actually eaten here a lot. It's open late. It's one of the small things in like downtown. It's like the Pisgah Forest, but it's right near the Ranger District. It's right on the edge of Sycamore Bikes. Let's grab some food. Hey guys, thanks for watching. Big shout out to all my Patreons and subscribers. Anybody that isn't subscribed, go ahead and subscribe. If you felt that this video was helpful and you liked it, go ahead and give it a share so somebody else can find it. And don't forget, pedal a little harder, don't touch the brakes, and we'll see you on the next adventure. Spencer, what a pleasure, man. I feel like it's two different trails and you get two things different out of it. Because when you go down Spencer, you know, it's rough and rugged, rock garden's pretty gnarly, but you don't get anywhere near the speed you get from Trace. So the Trace gets you a lot of high speed time. You know what I mean? So I think it's give and take, you know what I mean? If you want it to be gnarly and work on your tech, you go take a right. And if you want to go for a higher speed, you just stay straight. Which I think is a great option, because I really enjoyed the climb as much as it did suck. And I might have got off the bike, I don't know, three or four times. It was rough. Yeah, at times. Three or four times I got off the bike, and that's okay though. You know, on a better day I might get a pin out of a little crash or whatever. Sure. But still, I think that's part of it now, is if you want to be better, you need the endurance of the legs. That's all part of it. So you really need the climbing. Especially on a trail like that, where it's not so steep, you can pedal down it too. Yeah.