My wife and I went backpacking this weekend around Harper's Creek (near Wilson Creek area of Pisgah). The return loop took us down Yellow Buck trail which follows the ridgeline separating Wilson and Harper creeks. We joined this trail climbing up from the creek on Persimmon trail, but you can also hit it from a trailhead on Pineola road.

The trail includes some super smooth logging road, but also some crazy rough, rutted trail. The final drop down to the Harper Creek trailhead drops 800 feet in about a half mile. Some of these sections were very deeply eroded (like over your head deep) and difficult to manage on foot.

Around 1pm on Saturday, three guys came bombing down behind us in this section. When we met them at the bottom they said they had climbed the uphill sections too. It's hard to believe anyone could ride this trail, but it just goes to show how wide the range of rider skills are out there.

Here's the trail if anyone's interested, and by the way, it's not actually open to bikes.

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Yellow Buck is one of the best trails out there. Unfortunately it's not officially open to bikes but like most of the trails in the Wilson Creek area it's very under-utilized so you are unlikely to see anyone else on the trail, hiker or biker. That said Saturday was one of the busiest days I have seen out there, probably due to the good weather on Saturday and impending doom of Sunday. Hopefully one day the Forest service will see the light and open up a few of these trails to bikes as they are some of the best in NC.

As for climbing up Yellow Buck, LOL, I rode with those guys for a little while earlier and while they were good riders even Danny McAskill would have trouble getting up that!

Dirkdee wrote on 10/10/17 at 8:04pm:


Yeah, it really was the climbing that blew my mind.

As for riding the trails even though they are not officially sanctioned, these guys were doing a lot of whooping and hollering as they dropped down, so we heard them coming and had time to get off the trail... good for all involved.