The New and Improved NC Climbs

 
The winter project was to clean up the Climbs sections. Many of the pages had grown uncontrollably, had become unwieldy, and made the information disorganized. The NC Climbs page was the worst culprit, as it was just a long, scrolling page with climb after climb.

My first goal was to chop up that page and make it easier to read. To be honest, I finished NC a couple months ago, and simply forgot to tell everyone. So I am telling you about it now.

The new and improved North Carolina Climbs section is up and running. Several geographic areas have been given their own page, with detailed descriptions of the climbs, with Strava and content links. Since this is an autobiographical project, some areas are more comprehensive than others.

You can view the new section here, or explore the specific areas below, ranked from the sections that I think are the best:

1. Tryon/Saluda – this is the closest thing to my backyard in NC, and measures up against anywhere when it comes to cycling climbs. While I don’t have all of the ones in the area, the signature climbs and some hidden gems are all included.

2. Boone Climbs – I’ve encountered quite a few of the climbs in the area due to the sheer amount of organized rides in which I’ve participated. There are a quite a few I’ve missed, notably Beech Mountain, Reynolds Parkway and others, all of which will be crossed off the list someday.

3. Brevard Climbs – Nestled between North Greenville and Asheville, Brevard has some terrific climbing, either at higher elevations as you approach the Blue Ridge Parkway, or lower elevations near the SC border.

4. Asheville Climbs – It feels like I haven’t been to Asheville much, so I was surprised to find so many great climbs in the area that I’d conquered. Since that’s where my coach lives, I expect to get back there plenty more as I begin training again.

5. Sylva Climbs – If the climbs were measured based on epicness (epicity?), then this area could go head to head with anywhere. Down here I’ve found there are a lot of long, not quite as steep climbs, although I still have a lot of ground to explore in the area.

6. Cashiers Climbs – This area overlaps some with Sylva, but I know there are so many unexplored climbs in the Franklin and Highlands area that at some point it’ll be a more comprehensive list.

I’m currently working on the South Carolina Climbs area, which I hope to have finished soon. The other, smaller pages, will be finished shortly after that. I’ll keep all of these sections updated as I discover new playgrounds.