Woody Hill is Great!

I had a great time checking out a bit of Woody Hill in Rhode Island today - there are some great trails here - I only scratched the surface.

It was cold and windy in the morning and I made the mistake (in retrospect) of wearing long jeans AND my road biking softshell jacket - by 11 AM I was broiling!

Here are the trails I took: XC up > Driving Miss Hazy > Hansel & Gretel > West Main Street > Lake Spur > Leaning Chimney > XC Down

Driving Miss Hazy

Hansel & Gretel

West Main Street

Lake Spur

I love seeing old ruins in the woods

What - no water in the lake and I needed a swim!

Leaning Chimney

There were some tough spots on this trail

Great (but exhausting) ride - I gotta come back and ride some more!

After 8 Years - Big River Revisited

It was 8 years ago that I rode this park - my.. my... time has flown! I had fond memories of this place -  lots of trails, abandoned structures and damsmhere and there and no serious climbs!

Its an enormous park (over 8,600 acres!) and I was psyched and thought I would enter in a new way - starting from the western lot and hitting the easy greens until I got down to the Tarbox Pond area.Well everywhere it was overgrown and buggy - as a matter fact long stretches of the trail were just flowing rivulets and huge puddles.

To make matters worse, I unexpectedly hit a rock and got scraped.

Overgrown and the wet branches slapped you in the face!

But there were spots of amazing beauty as well!

After bushwhacking thru a swampy trail not on TrailForks...

 ...I rode back to the access road and tried riding Logs. It looks nice here but further on, it was one continuous puddle.

Bummer!!!

 

Double Header Plus!

I did a double header today (well almost a triple header if you count my hike at Smith School).

Smith School Trails

In the morning I hiked Parcel 3 at the Smith School Trails and widened a couple of tight turns with the rake and GPSd the Maze area, The GPS--as expected--didn't turn out so great.  Due to the tightness of the loops, there were quite a few crossover errors. I fudged it the best I could for the graphic map.

R3 - start of the mini-Sidewinder

Dividend Pond

I drove over to Dividend Pond for a quickie which of course included both the mini Sidewinder ravines as well as the Pit Viper and Back to the Future trails.

River Highlands 

Next,  over at River Highlands for a change I rode Upper PowerGlide in the opposite direction and ventured the amazing rim trails along the ravines. They were freakin' awesome!