Best Rides in WNC

Choose a ride from the list below!

1. Boyd Branch Loop

2. Single Track Sampler

3. Flat Laurel Creek

4. Bent Creek-The Top

5. Picklesimer Fields

6. Fletcher Creek

7. Tsali's Left and Right Loops

8. Laurel Mountain

9. Black Mountain

Best Rides in WNC

Flat Laurel Creek

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Click here to see a topographic map of this ride

• More Difficult (about a 1000' climb total)

• Length: 7 miles.

• Trails/Roads: Flat Laurel Creek, NC 215, Blue Ridge Parkway, FR 816.

• Loop, singletrack/doubletrack, paved roads.

• Start at Black Balsam parking area. How to get there: From Asheville, get on the Blue Ridge parkway at one of several access points and head South toward Mt. Pisgah. Just past the Graveyard Fields overlook, turn right onto FR 816 and park at the parking lot at the end of this road.

For an illustrated navigation of this ride, links in the description below will take you to an image of that part of the trail.  Use your browser's back button to return to this page after viewing the image.

Ride out of the back of the parking lot onto the Flat Laurel Creek trail; stay on this until intersection with NC 215. Starting in a scenic, high elevation, relatively flat area, the trail is wide, extremely rocky, and quite wet, with a few sizable creek crossings. There are no real hills, but the trail travels slightly downhill the whole way. The trail meets and follows the gently winding stream, which will flow out of the flat area and begin to drop into the deep valley below.  Here, the trail narrows and there are several waterfalls, one being on a tributary just to the left of an old concrete bridge you will cross.

One of the things that makes this ride interesting is that it is entirely above 5000 feet. Starting out, you will see a spruce-fir forest to your left.  Notice that most of the trees are Red Spruce. This is because the Fraser firs have been attacked by a nonnative bug called the Balsam Wolly Adelgid, which has wiped out most of the mature firs. Several healthy firs are growing here, however, dead or dying ones can be found also. To your right are open meadows with scattered trees and shrubs, caused by forest fires that comsumed the area years ago. The surrounding mountaintops are typical of balds found in the area. Later on, the trail will pass through more of a mixed forest, with northern hardwoods, and scattered spruces and firs.

At intersection with paved NC 251, turn left, uphill. Turn right at intersection with the Blue Ridge Parkway access ramp and then left (north) onto the parkway itself. Riding through more spuce-fir forests on the parkway, you will pass by Devils Courthouse mountain and tunnel.  The side hike up Devil's Courthouse will take you through a spruce-fir environment to the spectacular summit, which is a huge rock outcropping. Past the Devil's Courthouse tunnel, the parkway levels out and begins downhill, passing through the rugged high elevation environment. In the middle of a good downhill, you will want to turn left at the road to Black Balsam and ride back up, and then down, to the starting point.