After having to DNF Mohican, I was looking to take my frustrations out on some steep climby goodness (yeah, I just made that up. You can use it if you want). I loaded up the car with my sweet new tent and my beanpole buddy for a quick trip out to Lake Sylvia for some Ouachita gravel grinding.

Some random camp photos:

We prettymuch followed this route, though at about mile 27.5, we stayed on the main forest road and went a little further north up that ridge that runs parallel to the route marked here. We also took another side trip up North Fork Pinnacle (the steepest, rockiest climb of the day- as far as I can tell from my Garmin data, it was 270 feet of elevation gain at an average grade of 12.1%), which is the high point directly north of the 30 mile marker on this screenshot:

Matt showing off over the Rocky creek crossing on the southeast corner of Lake Winona:

…and a few from on top of North Fork Pinnacle (temps were getting hot at that point):

The Garmin says 4600 feet of ascent for the loop. It usually overestimates those things, but I don’t see any glaring elevation jumps when looking at the profile, so I’d guess it was somewhere upwards of 3500 feet of gain. Not a bad training ride for a couple of flatlanders…

After we arrived back at camp, we cleaned up, had a snack, then headed back to Little Rock for a side trip to Pinnacle Mountain. I’d hiked it once before during the Ouachita 50k trail run, and I wanted to show Matt how “awesome” it was. He’s got the photos on his camera, so I’ll load them as soon as they’re in my possesion.