Hurricane Michael did a number on the Gulf Coast, that’s for sure. Remnants of the storm came to visit us late in the week but mercifully left quickly. What looked to be a morning on the fire roads miraculously turned into a singletrack day, mostly dry but with a bunch of trees down.
At 0800, it was shaping up to be a one man show. Roper’s still broken. Pullout was out: he’s a tree pro, so he was probably doing tree pro things, what with a bunch of trees down, and Profit had to break in a new mower. None of the other usual suspects replied to the group text, but BT made it for the first time in a long while. Forty-six degrees at roll-out time… maybe that had something to do with it?
So good to see BT on a mountain bike. Despite his limited saddle time so far, he’s got a lot of mountain biker in him and way base fitness than YHC, so the pace was conversational plus a little bit, despite there being a bunch of trees down.
The route: ALL of Sunsetter (one big tree down**) to Bell Return to Gateway 1 (one big tree down) to Gateway 2 (one brushy tree down) to Freight Line, ’cause why not? Then Blueberry down to Blueberry Return (three huge and some other smaller trees down) to Blue Jay to Corkscrew (one brushy tree down) to the gravel road out. Thirteen miles and change, with plenty of photo ops.
Where we could, we busted up the brushy stuff and peeled branches back ’til they snapped out of the way for the next guy. No reason not to: it’s not like we were in a hurry, and we were the first dudes on the trails, and you can never have enough trail karma. Where we couldn’t fix things, we sent pics and locations to the trail bosses (@RVATrailReport), so someone with a chainsaw could get those cleaned up more quickly.
Today’s Tuesday, and they’ll be cutting ’til tonite at least. Did I mention that there were a bunch of trees down?
** When I say “tree down”, I mean “tree down, across the trail, causing us to re-route into the woods”. Tromp, tromp, tromp.
1 Comment
Awesome day, No Tools. Cant beat being first on the trails, and thanks for the banter and leading the way. If you haven’t been, ol’ No Tools knows the trails like the back of his hand and is the perfect shepherd. And as with all things F3, the weather is perfect!