Dan Casey

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I'd wanted to conquer that sucker on a bicycle ever since hearing about a dirt road that winds up it on the west side, south of Salem. One friend had described those four to five unpaved miles as hellishly rocky, impossibly steep in some sections, barely driveable in a Jeep. Another ominously warned about a 1,000-foot cliff at a certain point along the dirt road. If you peer closely down it, you can make out the rusting hulk of a truck that had crashed down there many years ago, he said. Nobody died in that wreck, he added, but the truck is stuck there forever.

Sounded like perfect mountain bike terrain to me.

Alas, the weather gods worked against the small cadre of fearless two-wheelers I'd rounded up for the venture. For the first date we'd set, late in 1999, it was pouring rain. We decided to stay dry. Another day in mid-March was cold and foggy down in the valley, and even colder, more icy and foggier up on top. Chickens that we are, we took another pass. It was too damn hot when a couple more opportunities arose over last summer. Who wants to set off on a 2,600-foot vertical climb in 90 degrees and 95 percent humidity, knowing that chances are they'll run out of water two-thirds of the way up?

Finally, a suitable day came, late in October, the Sunday before Halloween. The temperature was a crisp 59 degrees and there was nary a cloud in the clear, blue sky.

I'm happy to report Dick Howard and I made it back in one piece a few hours later, after a speedy descent along a little-known dirt road that snakes down Bent Mountain.

Views from the peak inspired our awe, and we had some naughty fun on the base of one giant antenna, climbing it like monkey bars on a school playground. But the truth is, the ride wasn't that hard.

The dirt road up Poor Mountain is a long, slow haul that's worth it for the considerable scenery and the bragging rights. But if you want single-track thrills and challenges, go elsewhere. You'll be happier at Mountain Lake, Carvins Cove or Douthat State Park.

Why 'Poor?'

It's not easy to piece together information about Poor Mountain. It doesn't appear that any Civil War generals hid their troops there, or crossed it to mount a surprise raid on opposing forces. It was not named for any hero of the American Revolution (unlike nearby Fort Lewis Mountain, which took its name from an Indian-fighter and Revolutionary War general). Poor Mountain sports only a couple homes tucked far off the dirt road near the very top, those ungodly antennas, and a broken down old fire-spotting tower that was used until the 1950s.

The name comes from the mountain's infertile dirt, which long-ago farmers deemed too poor to bother cultivating. Derived mostly from metamorphic bedrock, this pale, dry and acidic ground will support a few species of plants, such as Table Mountain pine, pitch pine, chestnut oak, scarlet oak and bear oak.

There's one plant that has made Poor Mountain famous among botanists around the globe: the piratebush. Poor Mountain has the world's largest population of this globally rare parasitic shrub. Waist-high and pale green, the piratebush (Buckleya distichophylla) lacks enough sunlight-converting chlorophyll to thrive on its own. Instead, it taps into root systems of neighboring plants and steals their food.

Although no one seems to understand exactly why, Poor Mountain has more of these plants than the rest of the world combined. Most of the piratebushes, which turn bright yellow in autumn, can be found in a 1,200-acre section off Twelve O'Clock Knob Road that's been set aside as the Poor Mountain Natural Area Preserve.

The ride

Our object was to ride up Poor Mountain on one side, descend to Bent Mountain on paved roads, then descend from Bent Mountain along the twisty and unpaved Sugar Camp Hollow Road, which snakes down to U.S. 221.

This 17-mile route is not a loop, and as we saw it, that was one of the main advantages. Making it a loop would require riding up Twelve O'Clock Knob (four miles) then through Salem back to the beginning of Poor Mountain Road.

The chief disadvantage is you need a car at each end, which is rather cumbersome because after we finished the ride we had to drive over to Poor Mountain Road to pick up the car we'd left there.

Dan Casey | The Roanoke Times

Dick Howard, the granddaddy of mountain biking in Western Virginia, on Poor Mountain Road before the pavement ends.

Related

Map

• Map of Poor Mountain

We used Back Creek Elementary School on U.S. 221 in Roanoke County as our meeting point. Leaving my car there, we loaded my bike onto Howard's car and drove over Twelve O'Clock Knob to Salem, then down West Main Street to Poor Mountain Road, about five miles south of downtown. We parked Howard's car in a gravel lot along Poor Mountain Road just before the Norfolk Southern Railroad tracks. It's only a couple hundred feet off West Main.

About the first four miles of the road is paved, and much of it follows the Roanoke River. Where is turns away from the river, it begins to climb very gradually. Then we hit a switchback, and the real climbing began.

The pavement ends at the second switchback, and for the next three miles or so the road is rocky, but easily passable on a mountain bike (I strongly recommend front suspension).

This is a long and slow haul that's traffic-free but punctuated with signs folks visit it frequently. At one turn, brass bullet shells littered the ground; on another we found some dumped appliances that someone had pushed down a wooded bank. Here and there are metal gates at the entrance to private roads. At one point high up we found a crane and evidence of some recent logging.

Three to four miles up, you'll spot a house on the right. Just past it, Poor Mountain Road turns into pavement. Here, you want to hang a right onto Honeysuckle Road. It's gravel, about as smooth as a washboard, and climbs very steeply for a little more than a half-mile up to the antennas on Poor Mountain's peak. There, the elevation is about 3,900 feet, depending on whose topo map you're looking at.

Words can't adequately describe the views you can see here on a clear day My pictures here will have to do. The trees at the top are scrubby, stunted by winter ice that frequently covers the peak. To the east and below are the fertile farm fields and orchards of Bent Mountain. Look west and down and you'll get a perfect bird's-eye view of Roanoke County's Spring Hollow Reservoir, about 2,600 feet below. If the day is clear, you can look down on all the other mountains that ring the Roanoke Valley.

After we left the antennas, Dick and I sped back down Honeysuckle, then hung a right on paved road and headed down toward Bent Mountain. We stayed on this road nearly four miles, hung a left on Tinsley Road, and followed that back to U.S. 221.

We hung a right (south) on 221 for a short distance, then took a left on Sling Gap Road. About one mile down it at a small church, we took another left on the unpaved Sugar Camp Hollow Road.

This part of the ride is really fun. Hard-packed and windy, Sugar Camp drops under the Blue Ridge Parkway, then climbs above it before going under it again. Three miles down, it turns to pavement. Shortly after the pavement begins, hang a left on Poage Valley Road, which takes you back to 221. Take another left and go about two miles and you'll be back to Back Creek Elementary.

Notes

Bring plenty of water on this ride, as there's nowhere to get any until you get to the top of Bent Mountain on U.S. 221. Once you're there, there also are some convenience stores and produce stands where you can get a snack. Until then, you're on your own.