Smokey Mountain 500

Did you have to do anything to the suspension?

It is lifted 1.5-2” with a strut spacer. Other than that stock.

Hey man, you're in my spot! My son and I arrived one Friday evening and parked in that same spot, soon as the tents and pop ups were up it started raining. A thundercloud developed straight overhead and it started raining. Radar showed one little thunderstorm that was directly overhead and it never moved for over an hour! Not another cell within 100 miles and this one was very small, but solid red. Have fun.

You jinxed us man! Haha. The rain is pouring this morning. My buddy Jeff said he’s never seen TWoS not in rain.

Your right, the sm500 in spring will always be raining. I hope it clears and you will have a great time.

Well how did your day go?

The ride was excellent.

Here are a couple highlights.

Only thing left to say after such a great trip is "War Eagle"!

I ran the loop June 9-11, 2020 before riding the Hooch over the following weekend. There were lot of trees down and washouts; nothing ultimately impassable, though. Here's a short clip on a big washout out of Suches to watch for on the clockwise route.

Our group ended up jumping that coming the opposite way. I came up on it pretty fast because we came through quite a few road closed signs so I was pretty numb to it by then. We all made it but sketchy for sure. Thanks for posting I haven’t gone back through the GoPro to see.

Good info, thanks. What's the "Hooch"

The Hooch is a super nice annual Dual Sport Ride in the North Georgia Chatta--HOOCH--ee Mountains. It was last weekend (June 13-14). AMA sponsored, organized by GARTRA (Georgia Area Regional Trail Rider Association) and hosted by Two Wheels of Suches. Putting the Hooch and SM500 together is a great way to turn a 2 day or a 3 day ride into a 5 day ride. I had the oldest registered dual sport this year (a 1985 model). The second oldest was a 1994 Honda 250L.

^ That was my first "successful" attempt at the SM500. When we tried it last year, the linked vid shows what happened to one of our riders on that same track section as the wash and he needed some medical help so we just beelined up to Telico. In his case, he caught thick layer of gravel on one of the very typical off camber turns and slid off the road.



There are two other video "parts" in my Youtube Channel of a bunch of us "old guys" having great difficulty getting all of that 325 pounds of WR250 out of there. Started right up, though!

wish i had a GPX file for that WHOLE thing.

You can get it here under files
https://www.facebook.com/groups/698628080200070/files

Any dispersed campsites along the route itself? I don’t mind campgrounds but prefer solitude

On the SM500? Tons of sites and places to camp. Especially in the yellow section, middle section, there are sites along the river that are very nice. As far as camping with no one around, difficult to say since people are now desperate to get out

Yes, on the SM500 route.
Thanks, I figured that there might be opportunities along the way.
I’m pretty desperate to get out myself

Saw a bunch of riders this week. I camped at the Tallulah River Campground for some Trout fishing and pedal biking.

I just finished the Smokey 500 on Thursday riding clockwise from CMTCG
My third SM 500 trip but the first on the CRF450L.
Another great trip however I did have 2 issues:
The first was a tree down on W Cow Pen road between the Conasuga Lake campground road and Mill Creek Road

I was able to clear some of the lower, smaller limbs with a folding saw and push the bike through. It may be cleared by now.

The other place was just past waypoint 216 on Peavine Sneeds Creak Road
There were FS guys working there and had me go back to Ladd Springs road. From there I was able to get back to Hwy 64
Took about 45 minutes.


Other wise another awesome trip