Dan Casey

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Dozens of golfers - fit, tanned, khakied and polo-shirted - mill around, impatiently waiting for a chauffeured ride to the one of the resort's famed golf courses. A suntan lotion's coconut scent snakes through the air.

Suddenly a many-miled van pulls up, emblazoned with an Outdoor Adventures sign. Loaded on the back are knobby-tired mountain bikes. Sometimes, it's pulling a trailer piled with canoes and kayaks.

Out of the driver's seat hops a rugged-looking guy in a T-shirt, shorts and well-worn sandals. Guests of The Homestead line up.

Double take. Huh?

Mountain biking? The recreation of choice by landlocked surf bums and Generation X rockers? The grimy, gonzo means of transportation preferred by Unabomber suspect Ted Kaczynski? A sport whose participants prefer a thirst-quenching cold beer or Gatorade to single-malt scotch?

At the staid, grand dame Homestead? Where the tip on a roomy suite can set you back more than $100 a night, and the suite itself can cost almost a grand, including meals and tax? Where a jacket and tie are required for dinner?

Yes, the muddy sport of two-wheeled trail rebels who prefer rocky, rutted paths to smooth pavement has filtered its way into high society.

Not only at The Homestead, but also at the similarly famous (but separately owned) Greenbrier resort in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va.

Club Resorts, which assumed ownership of the ailing Homestead two years ago and has sunk $15 million into it since then, is branching out its recreational opportunities.

You can still play golf until you drop, shoot clay pigeons, indulge in a bit of croquet, take tea in the afternoon and top it off with a hot springs spa experience, a gourmet meal and one of 4,000 bottles of wine. Watercress sandwiches - with the crusts deftly removed - are still on the Homestead's lunch menu.

But for guests bored with the notion of smacking around a little pitted ball on grass greener than their lawns at home will ever be, for well-heeled folks hunkering for breath-taking views and a little heavy breathing at high altitudes, for those who don't mind getting their feet (and seat) wet in the Jackson River, Tracy Asbury is there.

An exercise physiologist by training and a veteran white-water rafting guide on the New River, Asbury opened shop at the Greenbrier in 1994 and at The Homestead in 1995. First came mountain biking. Canoeing and kayaking are new this year.

Friends and associates told Asbury he was crazy when he started Outdoor Adventures, which contracts exclusively with the two golf resorts. But almost since day one, he's had more business than he ever dreamed of.

Asbury started off with 18 21-speed Specialized mountain bikes at his Greenbrier location, but he's had to beef up the number to 30 over the past two years. His shop at The Homestead had 20 bikes when he opened last year. Now there are 24. This year, he's even had to import mountain biking talent - from Utah - to handle the trade.

Well-heeled folks, it seems, are eager to check out a bone-shaking run down one of The Homestead's 100 miles of trails for rates that range from $25 to $75 per person. Never mind the mud, the rocks, the ruts, the occasional tree across the dirt path.

Asbury smiles.

"I can tell if they had fun by how many bugs stick in their teeth," he chuckles.

Other organizations are involving kids in the act. Snowshoe Mountain Resort in West Virginia, probably the premier ski area within easy driving reach, has branched out into mountain biking as well.

The resort offers a five-day Junior Mountain Biking Camp - at $475 inclusive - for youths age 12 to 16. (This year's camp runs Aug. 4-9.) In its promotional literature, Snowshoe calls mountain biking "one of the fastest growing sports in Virginia."

The Homestead

The rich "are different from you and me," F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote. That is probably true. Take mountain biking at The Homestead.

Although Warm Springs Mountain looms ominously above Asbury's shop at The Homestead ski lodge, there is no thigh-burning, lung-bursting, tortoise-paced climb to the peak.

Outdoor Adventures drives there.

After that, it's mostly downhill.

Dan Casey | The Roanoke Times

The Homestead

"We tell them, this is your trip, you have fun," says Asbury, a sometime mountain bike racer and former trainer at an exclusive Duke University diet and health spa. "We try to take all the worry out of it for them. None of our rides are so vigorous that I'd worry about taking anyone who shows up." "It's not challenging in terms of terrain, but it's a real pretty ride," he explains at the onset of a 12-mile ride, the longest ride the company offers.

Mountain biking is definitely not Rhea Spratt's idea of a good time. She and her husband, Wesley Spratt, are at the Homestead to golf - another notch in the Milwaukee, Wis., couple's personal quest to play the links in all 50 states.

On a recent Friday, the self-described golf junkies decided to take a relaxing break on the Jackson River for one of Asbury's canoe trips. At late June river levels, the Jackson's waters are mostly calm, punctuated with some easy Class 1 and Class 2 rapids.

But on the drive back to The Homestead, the Spratts' ears perk up listening to some other canoers' account of a mountain biking jaunt.

"They take you to the top? That's the way to go," Rhea Spratt says. "Hell, if I can coast all the way, that's great."