NCR's Terror-Ride

[glwilson]

I, and others, mentioned our experience on Wednesday afternoon and evening on a ride we took in the MV area. So here are the details.

The "Terror-Ride":

Rayski, Stretch, James, Dmac, Bluekaw1600, and I left Wednesday for a long ride to include the "Dragon" and Cherohala Skyway. (We had our wives with us also.)

It was a great ride to the Dragon. We also went on “The Hellbender” to get there. Riding the Dragon up and then back down again was great. We saw one bike crashed along the way. The Dragon was cool to say we rode it.

From there, on to the Cherohala Skyway to Tellico Plains. A great ride along the ridge-top of the mountains, with endless twists and turns.

About halfway to Tellico Plains the clouds kept rolling-in over the high-roads making visibility a small challenge. We contemplated turning around, but didn’t and made it to Tellico Plains.

While in Tellico Plains we met a local that told us of severe weather to the north of us. Large hail damaged his car… we could see the dents. That motivated us to get moving back to MV.

About halfway back on the skyway we encountered the strangest sight any of us have seen. At around 6,000 feet the clouds rolled-in upon us with high winds. I cannot describe the sight, but it was very strange looking -- especially being on a bike riding through it.

It wasn’t a few minutes after when the storm began. Rain, hail, and high winds forced us to immediately stop at the first turn-out.

Visibility was zero, and the rain and hail hurt – even at 20MPH. All of us were immediately soaked to the bone and the 40 degree temp was chilling to say the least. We still had 40 miles to go on the skyway, and another 100+ miles to MV yet. We were not looking forward to the thought of the ride by then.

Saddling back-up after a 45 stop, we continued when the rain let up a little -- although it was still raining-buckets. It was now around 4PM.

We continued at a slow-pace on the skyway… the roads were slick; we couldn’t see well. Leaves and tree branches were covering the road by then… making it precarious to say the least – and daylight was burning away.

Near the end of the 50 mile-long skyway we came upon a huge tree that was downed across the road. A couple cars were blocked and couldn’t go further. A bunch of bikes made it around the tree by going down into the ditch. They suggested we do the same.

After a bit, we determined we would attempt it despite our bikes being considerably bigger and heavier than their bikes were. We couldn’t take pics of this maneuver because the rain was hammering us at the time. We took each bike one at a time through the ditch with several of us holding onto it while someone rode it. We made it after about 45 minutes or so. The cars were trapped there until about 8PM according to what OnStar told them it would take.

Moving on, more and more trees were downed partially across the road; big branches, leaves, and gravel from water wash-outs covered the road. Riding now became a very slow process, and dangerous on the endless tight and twisting-curves.

Meanwhile the rain and hail continued… and the temp remained in the 40’s. Without a doubt, all of us were beyond soaked and frozen by now with the wind-chill.

At this point we didn’t realize we had hours more to go in this weather. Occasional stops were required periodically just to re-group, and to try to take some of the wind-chill off. It didn’t work.

Moving on… we were blocked by the police at one point from taking our most direct route, so an additional “unmarked” detour was required while the storm, wind, and hail continued.

By now, my GPS was shot from the rain so guessing our location and route in near zero-visibility with pelting-rain and occasional hail was a huge challenge… not to mention we still had to negotiate a lot of tight twisting mountain roads that were covered with anything that could have been blown onto them by now. Our speed was at the minimum at this point.

It is late by now… and the sun has gone-down. Now we are in the complete dark of night in freezing-rain and hail on mountain-roads covered with trees, leaves, water streams, and gravel wash-outs. We still had another 2 hours of riding to go by now before getting to MV.

At night, the car headlights were blinding, and distorted our vision through rain-soaked glasses. We mostly had to look over our glasses and windshields to see what was ahead of us.

The last two-hours of the ride were shear-terror… to say the least.

I am serious when I say that; and believe everyone on the ride would back me up on that statement. None of us were sure we would make it back safely by then. Certainly, everyone thought one of us would not make it back safely. All we could do is pray we could while we kept moving-on.

We finally made it back to the hotel at 9:30PM... soaked and frozen to the point everyone was in uncontrollable shivers… so much so that attempting to hold something was difficult to do.

This ride would normally have had us back by 5PM if we had not had the weather.

Once back, the news said it was the worst storm anyone in the area had ever seen.

Just so you know how bad it was… there were “straight-line-winds” exceeding 100+ MPH that pulled 30 foot mature blue-spruce out of the ground by their roots and tossed them a long distance from their location. Roofs of houses were ripped-off in some areas. Large mature trees were taken-out all over the place, and any loose or dead branches were blown-off. Power-lines were knocked-out in several areas. The hail piled-up in some areas around MV, looking like snow covering the ground. (We saw piles still there the next morning on the Blue Ridge Parkway ride we took.)

We are all glad to have survived that experience and hope none of us have to ever be caught in such a bad storm. The ride was a testament to this group of riders in that everyone remained extremely disciplined, calm, and persistent in making it back as safely as possible.

A couple of us are having a special patch made for those who experienced it to commemorate the safe completion of that ride.

Personally, I hope never to go through anything like that again. I am still pulling leaves, gravel, and branches out from underneath my bike!!