CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
The recorded total and the leg detail need reconciliation. Inspect the leg notes before using this record for timing or navigation. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
Deals Gap is famous for a reason and infamous for another: 318 curves packed into eleven miles, heavily policed, and photographed by professionals at the bends. Ride it once for the story, then take the Cherohala Skyway back - longer, higher, emptier and arguably the better road.
For 14 km this is US 129 Deals Gap, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it. Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast.
A steady rhythm suits this better than bursts. The height arrives whether you hurry or not. The ground tilts up and stays tilted for 27 km. 930 m of it, taken steadily rather than in one wall.
33 km that neither climbs nor drops much. The road settles into the ground rather than fighting it — this is where a day makes up time without anyone trying. Third and fourth, and very little else.
Deals Gap is a place where a road made a reputation. US 129, which crosses the state line between North Carolina and Tennessee here, packs three hundred and eighteen curves into eleven miles, and riders from across the world come to try them. The road is known as US 129 at Deals Gap, and the nickname comes from the way it twists along the mountainside, with no junctions and hardly a straight section.
Read the complete Deals Gap write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Deals Gap is where the day begins. Reckon on about 2 °C colder than the valley, and more in the wind. Next is US 129 Deals Gap summit.
US 129 at Deals Gap is eleven miles of US 129 that has made a small place called Deals Gap famous around the world. On this short road, on the border between Tennessee and North Carolina, there are some three hundred curves, with no junctions and no driveways, squeezed between the Great Smoky Mountains and the Cheoah River gorge. For many motorcyclists, it is a pilgrimage, and the summit area is the place where riders gather to compare notes, buy a souvenir, and look at the wreckage of bikes that did not make it.
Read the complete US 129 Deals Gap summit write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
You top out at 610 m here. Next is Tapoco / Cheoah Dam, mostly downhill.
Cheoah Dam is a curved wall of concrete at the bottom of one of the most famous motorcycle roads in the world, and it is also, rather improbably, a film location. In the 1996 movie The Fugitive, Harrison Ford's character leaps from the top of a dam into the water below, and that dam is this one, high above the Cheoah River in the mountains of western North Carolina, close to the Tennessee line. You can see it from the road, and a surprising number of riders stop just to stand where the film crew stood.
Read the complete Tapoco / Cheoah Dam write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
51 km in you reach Tapoco / Cheoah Dam. You lose 270 m on the way down to it, steadily. Next is Robbinsville, climbing 280 m.
Robbinsville is a quiet mountain county seat of fewer than six hundred people, and for a lot of riders it is the stop where a very good day gets summed up. It lies at about 620 metres in western North Carolina, in Graham County, one of the least populated corners of the state, and it makes a convenient place to finish or to start because it has fuel and a few places to eat, which the mountains around it do not.
Read the complete Near Robbinsville write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
A pump at 77 km in. The road climbs 280 m on the way up to it, steadily. Next is High point near Robbinsville, climbing 930 m.
Robbinsville is a quiet mountain county seat of fewer than six hundred people, and for a lot of riders it is the stop where a very good day gets summed up. It lies at about 620 metres in western North Carolina, in Graham County, one of the least populated corners of the state, and it makes a convenient place to finish or to start because it has fuel and a few places to eat, which the mountains around it do not.
Read the complete Near Robbinsville write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
High point near Robbinsville tops the climb at 1550 m. The road climbs 930 m on the way up to it, steadily. Reckon on about 8 °C colder than the valley, and more in the wind. Nothing on this route is higher. High enough to hold ice in the shaded corners early and late in the year. Next is Tellico Plains, mostly downhill.
Tellico Plains sits where the Tellico River comes out of the Unaka Mountains into the broad valley of eastern Tennessee, at about two hundred and seventy metres, and it is the gateway to the Cherohala Skyway. The town is small, with a main street, a few cafes and a general air of being at the end of the road, which in a sense it is. Behind it the mountains of the Cherokee National Forest rise in wave after wave, and in front the valley opens toward Madisonville and the Tennessee River.
Read the complete Tellico Plains write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Tellico Plains comes up 128 km in. You lose 1280 m on the way down to it, hard. Next is back to Deals Gap, climbing 310 m.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Deals Gap write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back to Deals Gap closes the day. The road climbs 310 m over at least 37 km before it, steadily.