Thursday Night Rides

We had some crazy weather in Northern VT yesterday afternoon. Tornado warnings, black skies, howling winds, hail etc etc. Perfect weather for our planned Thursday night trail head camp out. It rained super hard for about 15 minutes, at which point, most folks opted to bail.

We persevered. The heaviest weather was far off to the north, and we just had a small but intense cell roll through, dumping over an inch of rain very quickly. But just as soon as it came, it passed, and the sun was out.

We went for a short ride in the lower or "yellow" loops, which drain very well due to the sandy soil.
We had two small groups, the guys, led by yours truly, and the gals led by Mandy. The roots were very slick, which ups the ante when riding some of the more technical sections. Frequent wheel slippage makes things interesting. I thought to myself just how lucky we have been with a dry spring and summer this year. We (or at least I) haven't had to ride in poor conditions this year. No one died, everyone was muddy and only one member of each group crashed.

Once we all regrouped at the bottom, we fired up the grill, and had some dogs and recovery drinks. A good time was had by all.

This little nugget of info came into my inbox this morning. I will say I am not surprised.

Sunday Bonus Post

We had 9 people that showed up to today's trail day, and we got a lot done.

There was an old section of trail that was built maybe 10 years ago, that had eroded into an almost unridable mass of roots. We bypassed this section with about 200ft of benched in, sustainable singletrack, featuring bermed turns.

Our crew was a good one.
Thanks everyone!

Trails are OPEN

With the current stretch of fantastic weather stretching on and on, the ground has quickly become dry enough to ride bikes on. This is such great news. Most of the trail work we did last fall paid off, there is just a few fallen branches to clear up. Ponte, DA and Patrick Kell from VMBA have done a lion's share of cleaning up the big stuff. There were a lot of fallen trees over knocked down over the winter, we'd had some serious wind storms. Their work with the chainsaw is most appreciated.

Not to be out done by DA, here I am rolling down he Wall on 6 Flags. The picture I took last year, found its way to all sorts of websites and articles, most recently the NEMBA Singletrack Magazine article on 29ers. Ironically, I took this picture of DA exactly 1 year ago yesterday.


The Perry Hill trail system now features 3 well marked loops, all of which are open. There is a trail day scheduled for this Sunday at 10am, so anyone local that would like to chip in some time, please show up at the parking lot by the tunnel. Bring work gloves, food and plenty of water.