Red Clay Rally "Practice"

My family and 5 other friends signed up for the Red Clay Rally this year as a team. I have been riding with 3 of them for 20 years, but Nick and his wife have only been riding with us twice now. Heck... they have only had their Jeep for a few months. We have been working out details for weeks, but we want to take a few long distance trail rides with camping to all get comfortable with each other and refine our supplies and equipment, as to not carry too many redundant heavy items.

Yesterday was our first of those trips. We started early and met in Ocoee TN. Our destination was Tellico, and the Skyway in North Carolina. The plan was to run FR81, which is a long rough forest road that parallels the Skyway. After a gas stop in Tellico Plains, we headed up River Road. We stopped for some pictures at Bald River Falls, then turned up N.River Road to a side trail that comes out on the skyway.



Bald River Falls

The trail that cuts through is a fun climb through the woods from 1500ft to about 3000ft where it comes out on the Skyway. It was the most challenging part of the day with some steep climbs, twisty rutted hills, and some mud. This was my Tacoma's first trip on the Bilstien Lift with a full load of camping and wheeling gear, plus two passengers and 4 bundles of firewood. The rear AALs did show the load, but happily, it kept some rake and never bottomed out.







Once we hit the Skyway, we turned toward Robbinsville and increased speed... ever so slightly. We had 2 TJs with 4 bangers in the group, and those squirrels were working hard. We took a couple of stops at some of the overlooks along the way.



When we finally reached the trail head at Joyce Kilmer, we ran into a locked gate. I've been here several times in my life, and this was the first time I've seen it locked. Unfortunately there isn't another good dirt route back toward Tellico, so to find more dirt, we had to reverse direction on the Skyway all the way back to North River Road.



Lunch at the locked gate @ Joyce Kilmer.

Once back in Tellico, we rode out to the old ORV area. If your old enough, you may remember that the Tellico ORV Area used to be the mecca of wheeling in the east. Since it's been closed, all of the old trails were disappeared by the Forest Service. The only one left you can ride is old Upper 2. You can take it up the mountain as far as where the extreme challenge used to be. It is closed at that point, but it makes a nice little ride.





Diversion up Upper 2

By then, it was about 4PM, so we took after what ever dirt roads we could find. We found some really cool bridges, cemeteries, and ran across a brood of wild boar.







We counted about 8 piglets with the 2 adult boars.

As it got dark, we chose to camp at a spot along River Road. It's not back country camping, but I think it is similar to what the camping situation will be like at the rally.



Dinner, Fire, Stories and Sleep!

Our total mileage was 126. On the trip, we climbed from 600ft to 5000ft. It was a pretty good test run for a 1 day trip, and we were able to determine a lot about what we still need, and what we don't.

The next practice run is in 3 weeks. We plan on taking the optional "challenge" section of the rally, so the next run will be mostly for the sake of running the group together over some difficult trails.

 

Looks like fun times.

 

Good stuff...my team will be there too. It'll be my Tacoma and 4, 5th Gen 4Runners.

 

Cool. Are you planning on doing the alternate hard section. I may regret it but we are. Going to have some 285s on there by then.

 

not sure!! game time decision...lol