Certified Rollers

The cabin fever started to set in around six or seven week mark. Working from home, running from home, and spending entire weekends either stuck inside the house or at the very least tethered to it by only doing runs from the front door.

I needed a jailbreak.

I needed to get away from the same three or four neighborhood loops, but I also needed to be as responsible as possible given the current conditions. This run had to be relatively close to home (within an hour), it had to be self-contained, meaning I could do the run without needing to make any stops. I had to pack in and pack out anything I needed, like post-run food. Finally, and this was going to be the trickiest part, it needed to be somewhere that wasn’t going to be crowed.

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 related shutdowns virtually all of our local parks have been jam packed. Even the greenway near our house that I’ve run on approximately 9,000 times has seen heavier than normal traffic. Remembering the last run we did at Kennesaw Mountain the weekend before this all started, I knew this was going to be a tall order but one that was absolutely vital.

I started scouring all the familiar places for run intel. I hemmed and hawed about a couple of different options but ended up finding a seemingly perfect spot thanks to REI’s Mountain Bike Project. When I was planning out places to do some of my marathon training long runs I’d starred a route in the app called the ‘Upper Hooch Loop’ outside of Helen.

The run checked in at 16 miles on dirt and gravel roads that meandered alongside the Chattahoochee river, climbing up towards Unicoi Gap before descending back down to the river. The loop route featured a little over 2,000 feet of climbing, with the majority of it coming over the first 10 miles or so.

Figuring that this would be a pretty sparsely populated route, I was joined by Adam Aldridge, Sean Kunis, and Jonathan Newton for the run. Prior to the lockdowns, I’d really been enjoying training with this group, so it was nice to get a chance to catch back up with them and not only not run from the house but not spend the entire time talking to myself. Fortunately, with the run being entirely on gravel roads, we were able to space out and properly social distance.

We met at the game check station on Chattahoochee River Road (FS 44) and used that as our start and finish spot. The route follows FS 44 for roughly 10 miles, climbing past Low Gap and Jasus Creek campgrounds. You climb pretty steadily for the first five miles or so before coming to a very welcome descent down to the Upper Chattahoochee River Campground. When topped out after the initial climb, Sean turned around and headed back to the cars where he was going to get on his bike and go up the opposite side of the run to – hopefully – meet up with us on our way down.

Amanda and I had been to this campground a few years ago to visit Horse Trough Fall, but despite my prior knowledge of the area, I thought we had one more campground to go before reaching the falls and we ended up missing the chance to stop and check it out. In retrospect, that was probably for the best since it would have added on another mile (give or take) to the run.

After passing this campground we had to negotiate a giant dirt mound that the forest service had put in to prevent cars from driving down this part of FS 44. That was pretty wild since it was the way Amanda and I had come in before, but there was a gate in place back then and somebody had ripped it out of the ground and left a tangled mess of metal on the side of the road, so I guess the mound of dirt worked better as a deterrent.

We continued climbing until we reached our next intersection where I almost made the mistake of leading us all the way up to Unicoi Gap. Thankfully, I double checked the map while we took a break to have some water and fuel up. There is very little signage in this area, so I definitely recommend familiarizing yourself with the route and utilizing the Mountain Bike Project app if you’re going to try it. The app tracked our progress so we were able to see exactly where we needed to turn.

After our short break we began our descent on Martin Branch Road (FS 178). This road is closed to cars and is a little bit rougher than FS 44. It’s more of a double track trail with chunky gravel in the tire ruts where FS 44 is a true dirt road. We cruised down this trail letting gravity do the majority of the work as we passed through a couple of mountain meadows and came across a group of mountain bikers.

FS 178 seemed to be quite a bit steeper than FS 44, so I didn’t envy this crew or Sean, who we would catch up with roughly three miles from the cars. The first group of mountain bikers warned us to be on the lookout for bears as they’d seen one off the trail a few minutes earlier.

Thankfully, we avoided any encounters with bears, but that warning definitely made me feel better about going with a group. Despite feeling a little bit apprehensive at the start, I felt much better knowing that there were other around if something bad had happened.

Once we caught up with Sean, he and Jonathan took off, ripping the descent. I feel back quite a bit and had to do a some work to catch up to Adam, but once I connected with him we settled in and took a more relaxed approach to the final miles. FS 178 rejoins FS 44 about a mile from the game check station at a small bridge over the river. This was a really popular fishing spot, but all I could think about was coming back in the summer and finishing the run with a refreshing dip.

According to my watch (and Adam’s) the run ended up being 15 miles with 2,276 feet of elevation gain. It took us 2:05, which ended up being perfect. We were moving pretty good but not running hard enough to be dead at the end. I was temped to jump in the river when we finished up it was 39 degrees when we started and had only warmed up to about 55 by the time we finished. Next time though. Definitely.

If you are looking for a run with some solitude and a good amount of climbing, I’d highly recommend this one. Despite being only a handful of miles from Helen and Unicoi State Park, it felt like we were the only ones in the woods for most of the run. The only downside to this trip was that with the current state of things, I didn’t feel comfortable stopping at Betty’s the local general store or Yonah Coffee, an awesome looking coffee shop that’s new since the last time I was up that way.

Stopping in those local haunts is one of my favorite parts about venturing out to new places to run, but for the time being that’s on hold. Hopefully, we’ll get to a point during the summer where that’s okay, but for now my pledge to be self-contained on any of these trips means the post-run snack is whatever I toss in the car before I leave the house.

Regardless, this was a much needed jailbreak for me. I was absolutely feeling beat down from the isolation and cabin fever had set in. I’m glad that I’ve got access to places like this and while Georgia has eased its COVID-19 restrictions my plan is to continue to practice social distancing and excercise precaution when it comes to getting out to run. I hope everyone out there is staying safe and finding ways to keep cabin fever from getting them down.