Richie Daigle and Cody Wallis ascend High Voltage. The sporadic 20-percent grades don’t help much either. All in, we’re only talking about 800 feet of climbing in a couple of miles, but the chunky nature of the route and the momentum-killing switchbacks make you earn every foot of the ascent.
Then the switchbacks begin–21 of them, steep and tight, winding up to the rim of the gorge until finally, thankfully, there’s no more mountain to climb. There’s solid rock to the left of me, and the dark green Tennessee River 500 feet below to the right. It carves around sandstone boulders and giant, mushroom-shaped rocks that increase in size the higher we move up the gorge, until eventually we’re riding along a perfect bench cut that hugs a 30-foot-tall cliff band. The trail works its way up the slope of the gorge to a small plateau, then climbs again to another plateau, then climbs again, like it’s building to some sort of diabolical crescendo. We’re talking half-exposed, cooler-sized boulders garnished with gray baby heads as far as the eye can see. The trail is machine-cut, but you wouldn’t know it, given its scant width and the endless barrage of rocks under your tires.
We start climbing Raccoon Mountain immediately, trading the placid shores of the Tennessee River for a narrow route up the side of a lush river gorge, thick with leafy hardwoods.
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