CURVESCOUTThursday Ride #3 · 26 November 2026
Blue Ridge · Asheville to Linn Cove Viaduct
A loop from Mount Mitchell · United States
- 229 km
- 4 h 24 min riding
- 5 stops
- loop
This Thursday: Blue Ridge · Asheville to Linn Cove Viaduct. 229 km as a loop from Mount Mitchell in United States, about 4 h 24 min in the saddle. A November ride for the south: it never climbs above about 950 m, well away from the high passes that close for the winter.
Keep this if you want an engineering landmark on one of America's great scenic roads. The Linn Cove Viaduct was the last piece of the Blue Ridge Parkway, finished in 1987 after the 7.7-mile section around Grandfather Mountain held the road up for two decades. It is a ride to savour rather than hurry. Stopping or walking on the viaduct is not allowed, so pass on it if you hoped to park on the bridge; keep it and take your picture from the pull-outs before it, or from the trail underneath.
- Elise, CurveScout scout
The map loads with the stops and the ride's road.
The ride, stop by stop
1Mount Mitchell
Mount Mitchell has a simple claim to fame: at 2,037 metres, or 6,684 feet, it is the highest point in the United States east of the Mississippi River. It stands in the Black Mountains of western North Carolina, part of the southern Appalachians, and a spur road climbs to the summit from the Blue Ridge Parkway at around milepost 355. The last stretch of the road ends at a car park a short walk below the summit, where an observation platform gives views across rows of blue ridges.
The mountain is named for Elisha Mitchell, a professor from the University of North Carolina who measured the peak in the 1830s and argued about its height with a rival. In 1857 he fell from a cliff near a waterfall while returning to confirm his measurements, and was buried at the summit, where his grave still lies. The area became North Carolina's first state park in 1915, after logging companies had stripped much of the forest, a loss that prompted early conservation efforts in the state.
2Linville Fallskm 61
Linville Falls is the most dramatic waterfall on the Blue Ridge Parkway, where the Linville River drops through a rock gorge before plunging into the wilderness below. The falls are reached by a short walk from a car park off the Parkway at about milepost 316, and several viewpoints give different angles, from the upper falls to the thundering lower cascade. Below them, the river runs into Linville Gorge, a deep canyon sometimes called the Grand Canyon of the East, which is a wilderness area with some of the wildest country in the southern Appalachians.
The Parkway itself is a masterpiece of landscape design. Built over fifty years, from the 1930s until the 1980s, it follows the crest of the mountains for almost 470 miles from Virginia to North Carolina, and was designed to give drivers a slow, scenic journey away from commercial traffic. The speed limit is low, usually 45 miles per hour, and there are no trucks, no traffic lights and no billboards, just curves, tunnels and views. The pavement is generally good, though it can be damp and covered with leaves in autumn, and you should watch for fog, which is frequent.
3Linn Cove Viaductkm 92
The Linn Cove Viaduct is one of the great pieces of road engineering in the United States, and it exists because of a change of heart. The Blue Ridge Parkway, begun in the 1930s as a scenic road along the crest of the Appalachians, was nearly finished when it reached Grandfather Mountain, and the owner of the mountain refused to allow a conventional road blasted across its slopes. The solution, completed in 1983, was a curving concrete bridge that hugs the mountainside, almost four hundred metres long, built from the top down so that no heavy machinery had to cross the fragile terrain. The segments were precast and lowered into place one by one. It closed the last gap in the Parkway, which opened fully in 1987.
Riding it is a pleasure. The viaduct is an S-shape, rising and curving around the side of the mountain, with the forest falling away below, and you feel the road flowing beneath you more than you see it. Its surface is smooth concrete, with a low speed limit that is enforced and sensible, because the beauty of the place calls for slow riding. A visitor centre and a short trail let you walk beneath the bridge and see how the structure was built.
4Blowing Rock foodkm 116
Blowing Rock is a small mountain resort on the crest of the Blue Ridge, at about 1,100 metres, and has been welcoming summer visitors since the nineteenth century, when people from the lowlands came to escape the heat. The village has a neat main street lined with shops, galleries and restaurants, with flower boxes in summer and a good deal of charm. The town takes its name from a rock formation on the edge of the gorge, where the wind blows up the cliff so strongly that, according to local legend, light objects thrown over the edge are blown back. The story that goes with it is a love story, involving a Chickasaw maiden and a chief, and is told with a straight face to children.
The Blue Ridge Parkway runs close by, and Moses H. Cone Memorial Park, with its large white manor house, carriage roads and craft centre, is only a few kilometres away. Flat Top Manor was built by a textile baron early in the twentieth century, and the carriage roads and apple orchards around it are open for walking. Nearby, the Tweetsie Railroad is a theme park built around a historic steam locomotive, a living piece of Appalachian railway history.
5Mountkm 229
The Blue Ridge Parkway reaches its highest point on this stretch, and the mountain at its heart is Mount Mitchell, at two thousand and thirty-seven metres, the highest summit east of the Mississippi River. A narrow spur road leaves the Parkway and climbs to a state park at the top, where a short path leads to an observation platform, and on a clear day the view runs over rank after rank of ridges, fading into blue. The summit is covered in dense spruce and fir forest of a kind more at home in Canada, a remnant of the ice age that survives on the highest peaks of the southern Appalachians, and the air smells of resin and damp.
The mountain is named after Elisha Mitchell, a professor from the University of North Carolina who measured its height in the 1830s and died in a fall near a waterfall on its flanks in 1857, which is a strange sort of fame. He is buried at the summit. The climate at the top is harsh, with cold fog, frost in most months and ice in winter, and the road is closed in bad weather.
Before you go
229 km loop, about 4 h 24 min of riding. Check the weather and any road closures before you leave; mountain and coast roads change with the season.