Todays group met up around 8:30 at Boyette Scrub park. This jewel is about 10 minutes closer to most of us than Alafia, and would be even more popular if there was not a 2 mile ride (some of which is full of wonderful florida sugar sand) to get out to the beginning of the trails.
We started out by taking the fire road thorough the creek crossing and up towards Vista Ridge. This area must have had a ton of rain drop at once - most of the creek crossing was washed out, and the bike path on the fire road was pretty washed out as well. We headed up the hill to Vista Ridge - which was a pretty good description of this trail. One misguided slip to the right was likely to send you rolling for a long while - but the view spectacular. At the end of Vista Ridge we kept going on down West Meadow, a meandering trail that winds through the upper western end of the park. When we got to Randy's Trail (Randy is a member of the SWAMP club) we road it over to spider Berm. I am not sure if Randy likes super easy trails, but, this is one of the easier and shorter trails out here.
Spider Berm...
I am not really sure why they call it this (I see very few spiders here) but it does indeed ride along a berm. The lower section has some really nice drops and relatively easy climbs (as long as you keep pace). It was nice to ride this trail and not end up on my ass this time (the first time I rode this was the day I got my bike, and I caught some loose leaves at the edge and ended up sliding off the bike). When you hit the end of lower spider berm, you take a quick u turn and head back down the actual berm. The funny thing about this part of the trail is that it is more like a rock garden than Rock Garden on the alafia trail system. What we weren't expecting was a tree that had fallen in the way of the trail, its a good 8-10" in diameter, or in other words, too tall for me to hop! A quick hop off the bike, lifting it over and we are out of the trail and on towards Gator Pit and Golf Cart.
Gator Bait is pretty rough to start down - the trail is hollowed out of the ground and catches a pretty nasty tree and roots about 6 feet down the drop, followed by some roots a few feet further. The real fun is the sugar sand at the bottom and the huge climb back out the other side. We finished this portion of the trail and headed back out to where we could pick up Golf Cart, at which point we decided to take a break. It was about this time our nameless friend and his lady friend came ripping past us on his high $$ Ellsworth (which is apparantly the cats meow of bikes).
While we are on break, my latest take on nutrition on the ride...Today I really felt energized. I started the day with a Muscle Milk, 2 eggs, 1 Bagel Thin (with a touch of butter) and just before we headed out, a cup of blueberry coffee with cream and splenda. By the time we took this break, we were riding close to an hour, and had climbed and rode nearly 4 miles already. I wasn't the least bit hungry and my energy levels were still good. At this point I had drank about 1.5 bottles of water from the Camelbak, 1/2 of a 32oz Powerade, and it was time for some food energy, which I satisfied by eating about 7 dried apricot pieces. Shawn had mentioned these things on our ride last weekend - great for energy (29g of Carbs) and loads of potassium. This keeps down cramping, and the carbs keep the energy levels up. Anyway, back to the ride...
Golf Cart...
This is arguably now my most favorite trail of all the local trails. Its a good long ride, has enough technical parts to keep you busy, changes in elevation, some small rock garden sections, and just a few roots. Good fun! When we reached the end of Golf Cart, we stopped and talked to another rider about Mt. Boyette and Canyon (we noticed the sign for these trails when we stopped here). He said that Mt. Boyette was one of the steepest climbs, and the canyon trail was just a simple intermediate trail. We took off down the trail and found the climb, the other rider wasn't kidding, most of us rode up the climb as far as possible, then walked the rest of the way up. Knowing how hot it was, we all had also previously agreed that we weren't going to be going out of our way to pedal hard up these trails and waste our energy. From Mount Boyette (which did offer some pretty nice views of the park) we headed down the canyon trail. This trail was a more difficult intermediate trail, in that there are a few sections that if you dont make the turn, you're gonna fall a long way. The next part of the challenge was a couple of the climbs that really penalized you if you fail to gain enough speed down the previous drop. The only really mentally tought section was a tough climb that had a hard left at the very top that then dropped and at the end of that drop forced a hard right between trees and a dirt wall. Let me say that I rode side ways on a small section of that dirt wall (the 29er is a slowwww turner!).
If you want to see what Gator Pit, Golf Cart, and Canyon look like, check out the video below, courtesy of Proedgebiker.com
From Canyon we decided it was time to head over to Pandemonium, Sidewinder and Swamp Thing. I rode the Pandemonium bypass today (didn't feel like doing the bigger drops) while the others rode the easier (but still hard) drops. When we finished here we took the nice drop out of Pandemonium and hit the hard right back towards Sidewinder. Sidewinder is another more advanced intermediate trail, with lots of small drops and switchbacks, along with terrace rides that remind you NOT to look over the edge. Swamp Thing is a lot of the same thing, albeit some of the drops are a little less forgiving (more like those found on Alafia). We rode over to where Ridgeline was just so those of us who had never ridden it could see what it looks like (the trail was closed due to recent rains). Definitely some major drops here!
On our way back from our on foot sight seeing trip:
After looking at Ridgeline we rode the rest of Swamp Thing till we hit the fire trail, then headed back up the fire trail. The majority of the crew wanted to ride Pandemonium one more time, while that occured Alex and I pedaled down to the end and waited for them to run through. After everyone had finished, we had all pretty much agreed we were done, I had the brilliant idea to take the guys over to the spur jump...yeah we rode it the wrong way and didnt get to jump and we were too tired to attempt it again.
At this point we had about a 3 mile ride to get back (the last 3 miles doesn't show as the battery on the phone had died). We all rode hard back to the parking area, total mileage was probably about 13 miles for the day.
Ride stats for the time the phone was still powered up:
Started: Jun 27, 2010 8:34:13 AM
Ride Time: 2:48:56
Stopped Time: 0:00
Distance: 9.49 miles
Average: 3.37 miles/hr
Fastest Speed: 13.78 miles/hr
Climb: 292 feet
Calories: 436
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I think my favorites today were Sidewinder, Swamp thing and Golf Cart
ReplyDeleteYeah, I concur with Sidewinder - a very fun trail. Swamp thing would have been up there if it weren't for the fact that last drop took me off the seat and onto the cross bar...
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