Harwood Mills Park

The last couple of days I have been hitting up Harwood Mills Parks in Newport News.   This is another fun area with a little over six miles of single track that flows really well and makes the most use of the natural terrain.  

trail

This place is pretty much flat, with the picture above being pretty much the most elevation change you will see at one time.

 trail

 This is the toughest obstacle in the trail system.  On the other side of this ramp there are two chunks of this log used as steps.

 

So while the trail is not tough at all, it was of little concern to me as it was just fun to get out and go on this trail.  The trails really scream at you to see how fast you can go.  The three loops out here are all one-way trails with the novice trail being closest to the trailhead and the expert the furthest away from the trailhead.   I have to say that the grading criteria for the “advanced” and “expert” are not what I am accustomed to seeing.   I’m guessing that the rating system is based how much skill it takes to maintain a fast pace on the trail.   The expert trail has much tighter turns than the novice trail.   None of the trails has much in the way technical drops, really large roots or challenges beyond the log roll pictured above.   Going fast seems to be the primary challenge.   I’m pretty sure a novice can get through all of these trails if they take thier time.

creek

When not trying to rip through this place, it is a cool woods just to take a look see around.  These woods here are good deer habitat and I saw about 20-25 deer over the course of two rides here.   I even got to see about half a dozen fawns will thier spots still.   It was a real treat, just like this trail system for a post-workday quick escape into the woods.

More Ipswich Fun

I managed to catch some more late afternoon riding fun out at Indian River Park AKA “Ipswich” late last week.   I managed to find a few more trails that I had missed in the other excursions out here.  

Through the trees 

I also ran into some fellow Mountain Bikers (Dave, Kevin and Doug) and chased them around the trail network.  It is amazing how by this point I had ridden pretty much all the trails here, but by following someone else the same trails take on a different feel.   There are lots of permutations to the way you stitch the trails together.  Once again this place may be small but you get more fun out of it than the mileage states.

A frame in the trees
Scoping things out

Doug
Doug showing how it is done.

Kevin
Kevin giving it a roll as well.

It is pretty darn cool to have this trail so close to my hotel.   Even with just an hour or so of daylight left I can zip over here and get in a bit of dirt time.   Last time time here, I used pretty much all of the daylight and I was glad there were plenty of streetlights on my way back to the hotel.

Indian River Park – Chesapeake VA

I was not expecting much of Indian River Park AKA “Ipswich”.  That name comes form the home development that boards about half of the park.  It is a rather small plot of land and the topography is pretty much flat.  Okay I must say that I was surprised with what was out here.  The trail builders have made some exceptional good use of what they have.   Just about every small contour is used and the place has been spiced up with some bridges and stunts to keep thing interesting.    Once again I am digging the greenery of the east coast trees.   All together there is a somewhere in the neighborhood of 4-5 miles of singletrack here.   

Ipswich       

This trail system is just a 2 mile street ride from my hotel so I have been here two days this week after work and riding right from the hotel.  The first time out here was getting to know the place by sticking to the  main trails.    It did not take long to feel like I could be hamster-wheeling out here.  This was a wrong assessment, because there is a maze of secondary trails that can be combined for quite a bit of fun.   I found myself trying to see just how fast I could get around this place.   The more forks you take the more you find and before long I found pretty technical to downright insane type stuff.

log ramp
A nice over a log feature 

Stunt 

This monster is crazy.  The raised platform is about seven or so feet off the ground.   The teeter-tooter is also pretty short so you will have to wait for the drop.  Props to the folks who built this thing as it is rock-solid.  

Ditch crossing

I’ll be hitting this place up at least a couple time a week after work when I don’t have time to explore some of the other trails further away.  Including the mileage to and from the hotel I can get in about 11-14 miles out here but doing a couple of loops through various maze options.¦lt;/p>

San Clemente Singletracks

Well after a really long time in the works I finally published the San Clemente Singletracks Page.   It is not my best trail review, but I have found it so difficult to describe a route well that it has languished in the draft stage for nearly a year.  So I basically gave up on my normal style and just went with a general description of the area as well as a few of the major trails.  After that just go ride, get blissfully disoriented and have one heck of a time out there.   I have to give a special thanks to John Early who provided me with a few GPX routes (to share with you) that were continuous from start to finish.    Every time I have every been to this trail system, I’m always exploring and do stuff like doubling back, go the wrong way just cause and basically make a mess of my GPS track.   I will probably clean up the trail review here in the coming months but I got tired of holding on to this one.  So enjoy and maybe go for a ride!

Wallstreet �

Good Mountain, Good Beer, Good Meeting

Yesterday I planned on attending the San Diego Mountain Bike Associations advocacy meeting at it’s usual location at the Mission Trails Regional Park’s Visitors Center.  The meeting was not until 7pm.  Just enough time to get in an after work ride, get a bit to eat and get to the meeting.   I had not been up on Cowles Mountain in a long time so I was excited about hitting it.   I started from Mesa Road and caught the Mesa Trail.  The chaparral had been growing nicely since my last visit and in many spots you are in a vegetation tunnel.   This was really nice as it was quite toasty when I started so shade and a bit of a breeze kept the bake factor down a little.

Waterbars, Waterbars, Waterbars…There were just as many as I remembered.   I like them as it is the uphill ledge action is a good skillset to hone.  Since my last visit there has been a lot more go-arounds and widening created.   Plenty of evidence of both shoes and tires as the culprit.   Once up on the fireroad the state of my “slackerness” became apparent of the climb up to the top.   No cleaning this mountain today as twice I had a total cardio redlining followed by a meltdown. 

View from Cowles

While it was not as clear as I have seen it in the past it was still a great viewpoint.  The out-and-back to Pyles Peak was great.  I basically owned that entire section of trail as I was the only one on it.   The “in-town” solitude you can usually find on this trail combined with more waterbar action is one of the reasons I like it so much.  The returns trip back up to Cowles had plenty of technical climbing challenges.  The worst of them come when you are nearly back to the top which means most people (including myself) are nearly spent.  There is one set of waterbar switchbacks that I have still yet to clean.

Cowles from Pyles

 The ride back down the Big Rock trail was a cool as ever.  Condition-wise the trail could use some work, but at the same time I like it as morning challenging with the ruts and such.

Post-ride, I cleanup and head while heading to a nearby store to grab some Gatorade, I spied a treasure that I could not let slip away.   A bomber of the Stone’s 12 Aniversary Ale, A Bitter Chocolate Oatmeal Stout.   To say it was yummy would be a grand understatement.   Did I desire so a beer after just a rather small mid-week ride?  Well no I did not.   I owe the beer and bike gods an epic ride at a later date.  

Yummy Stone Brew

 The SDMBA meeting was a good one, lots of stuff discussed  There were some fresh new faces that are energetic and already taking action to further legal mountain biking access in the county.  There were plenty of words like jumps, downhill and freeride talked about.    Lots of things in the works and you can expect there will be plenty of oppurtunities for people to help.    The meeting went long and I was pretty darn pooped by the time I hit the sack.  Another good day to be a mountain biker.

iTards on the Trail

I’m generally okay if folks want to rock out on the trail with an iPod.  It is when they do both ears and have the tunes up high enough that they can not hear the world around them.    There is a whole list of mini-rants that I could go into about missing turns on group rides and not being able to interact with other trail users and coming across as jerks.    Blah Blah Blah….

 Here is a case from a ride a couple of days ago that involved a hiking “iTard”.   I’m riding along and spot a rattlesnake on the side of the trail.  I stop and check him out.   He is a good sized snake but has not reacted to me yet.   I like to get this critters away from the trail as some boneheads will kill them if they encounter them.  After getting a couple of shots I’m about to get the snake’s attention so it will go away when I hear a couple of hikers coming.    The snake and I are near a curve, with the snake being between me and the approaching hiker.    From the sound, I could tell they were trail runners.   I yell for them to hold up.   Nothing.    The first runner in all of his iTardness rounds the corner in all of his white-corded bud wearing glory.   I yeah “snake” really loud now and his girlfriend (just rounding the corner) stops and joins in the yelling fest.   The dude is on a collision course with this snake.  I wave my arms frantically and yell one more time and iDumbAss finally stops and looks at me with a bewildered look like “What”?   I simply pointed at the snake that was about two strides away from being in striking distance.    iTard freaks out at bit in full reverse.   After that I snake gets a little concerned and makes some noise and goes away.   

 Rattler

Shortly after the hikers pass me, I hear iTard’s girlfriend running him through the ringer about not being able to hear what is going on.  I snickered as I got rolling again to complete some North County trail goodness. 

Trail Goodies

Bye Bye Westside!

Oh  not forever, just for the week.     After a nice long siesta from work, I’m back to working for “The Man” as a Defense Contractor.   I’m involved with some fancy smancy integrated navigation systems for use on Navy ships.  I’m spending the week in Philadephia to meet all the players back on the east coast and getting in some training for the job.    So I had a O-damn early commuter flight out of Carlsbad this morning and I got to see sunrise over SoCal from the air.  The cool thing about this flight was that it was low enough that I was able to make out a bunch of trail systems that I enjoy.   La Costa, San Clemente Singletracks, El Moro, LCWP, Aliso, The Santa Anas, and the San Gabs.   Really Cool!

Sunrise in Socal

So just a few days ago the most recent issue of Bike Magazine showed up in my mailbox and I just threw it in my laptop bag for some reading material on the trip.   It was a really killer surprise to find a bit on Philly Mountainbiking featured in the mag.  I had even did some digging on this trail system last week.    I’m still not sure if I’m gonna get in some riding this week, but I did bring the gear minus a bike.   Hopefully I get my hands on a bit of time and a bike this week to check out the Wissahickon trails.

More Bonita Goodness

While Wednesdays are my normal weekday MTB day, I could not make it, but guess what?   The Bonita Bikers also have Tuesday and Thursday afternoon rides so I decided to head over there.   Know on Sunday they guys showed me about 20 miles of coolness.   Today we rode a long 15 miles or so and only overlapped about a mile from the weekend.  This place is freaking amazing.   I was cameraless on this day so no pictures, but if you like the looks of the stuff from Sunday that I posted, you can get idea of the trail goodness I had today.   In addition to see a good chunk of the Sunday crew, I meet a few knew folks as well as some folks I had not ridden with in quite sometime.  The old pal in question was Don with whom I had last ridden with in Palm Canyon about a year and a half ago.   I knew I knew him from somewhere until the conversation jogged my memory.  You see Don, had gotten a new bike since then.  I know I’m not the only one who does this but, helmet, bike, face and voice are my primary memory recall mechanisms for remembering my riders from the trail.    Swap out one of those and I have a tough time putting the pieces together.  Lame I know.   Anyway great freaking time once again out on the South Bay trails and I am told there is still much to see.

I have been emailed by at least half a dozen folks on trail directions…. I’m not BSing when I say I could not tell you it is a big maze.  I follow, I grind and I grin.    Stay behind Hoserr when hook up with this group.  That all you need to know.

Bonita “Locals” Tour

Today I had the pleasure of riding with the Sunday regulars down in Bonita in the south bay area of San Diego.   Boy what a great time I had.   I would be hard pressed to try and describe any kind of route.  It was one of those just follow along and enjoy yourself kind of day.   The trail network is pretty extensive with stuff everywhere.    I could easily take a aerial shot of the area, hang it on a wall and then throw a saucy plate of spagetti  on it and be pretty close to the actual trail layout.  

There were some pretty interesting descents here and there over the course of the day

bowl

We got in a little bowl action as well.  I was told the record is seven bikers in the bowl at once.  This is pretty tricky when you are zipping around and another rider gets into the bowl.  It is even more fun when one person goes opposite direction!    I have to get back here with the video camera. 

Bridge Action

A little bridge action.   I forget how many of these things we crossed.

Bushy

There were some bushy spots on most of the trails.  The branches are a lot stronger than they look.   I tried to moose my way through one of them and it stopped me dead in my tracks and pushed me backwards.  (I could hear it laughing at me)

Into the G

There were a few G-Outs to contend with.   This was the most interesting one.

Gout

This was not an uncommon exit of the G-Out (Myself included)

Smiles

Nobody got hurt and snickers and laughs all-around was the result of any G-Out flubs.

2nd time

Of course second time around was usually the charm.

Karen

There was some double teeter-tooter action to be had as well.   The guys sure seemed eager to help when Karen wanted a spotter. 🙂

single teeter

Pete on Single teeter

There was some single teeter action as well. 

Diving Board

Even got to play around on a diving board (some creative trail-building material)

Da Group

This was a hell of a fun group of folks to ride.  I guess we did around 20 miles or so, but it sure feels like more.    There is some nice as well as challenging trails in the area.  I stopped counting my dabs early on and I even managed to take a soil sample or two to add to my collection.   It had been at least a couple of years since I last caught the 8AM Sunday morning group ride out of the Bonita Performance Bike parking lot.  I don’t think I will be waiting that long again. 

Here are the rest of the pictures from the day.