[singlepic id=179 w=240 h=180 float=left]The tri bike is in for maintenance and re-fitting upgrades. The running shoes have moved to the back of the closet while I heal my IT Band. So now it is time to get out the old mountain bike which has not seen the light of day probably at least a year. My wife and I checked out some new trails(to us) that we had never ridden before too. It is a great time of year for mountain biking with the cooler temps and we have hit two gorgeous weekends in a row.
Last Saturday I decided to check out the condition of my bike and my MTB skills and run up the road to Bear Creek Ski Area’s mountain bike trails. Bear Creek has always been pretty technical, rocky and it seems like you are either climbing or descending. It is usually a very humbling experience for me. I was really surprised at some of the improvements they had made to the left side of the mountain. It was actually rideable for the majority of that side of the hill. The right side is a different story though. If you are not a hardcore mountain biker, I would not suggest venturing this way unless you stay on the lower part to the right of the lodge. It took me an hour to ride about 3 miles here if that is any indication of the terrain. Regardless, I was fairly happy with where I was and my bike seemed rideable too. I didn’t suffer any major trauma which is always a good thing.
On Sunday, the wife and I headed down to the mountain bike trails at Lake Nockamixon. Commonly referred to as “The NOX”. These trails are relatively new and a mountain biking friend of mine had highly recommended them.The Valley Mountain Bikers group and the park officials appear to have worked together on this effort and have done a standup job. Trails were well marked and maintained. They were very fun, with lots of singletrack, and also allow riders of different levels to enjoy them equally. I was really impressed how the trails had already been cleared of downed trees from Hurricane Sandy which was only a couple weeks before. There is around 10 miles of trails here, but we only ended up doing around 6 or so. I am saving the South Park section for another day.
This past Sunday we decided to check out the trails at Wissahickon Park since we were planning on making a trip to Whole Foods in Plymouth Meeting anyway. MountainBikeBill’s website seems to have the best information that I could find about the park. He does mention the Philly Mountain Biking Association’s website as being a good source of information, but all I could find there was a couple dead map links. When we reached the recommended starting point, we were a bit taken back by the amount of cars and people. It was apparent that we were in the city. We fortunately got a good parking spot, popped the bikes off the rack and headed to the trailhead. There were two possible directions to go. One was a very flat, wide rails to trails lane were most of the runners and walkers were. The other was a narrower doubletrack road to the right and up a hill. My intuition naturally directed me the right, but my intuition was wrong. This was a nature area that is closed to bikes. There was a bypass road that took you out of the park altogether. It was a good warm-up ride up the hill.
We headed down to the starting point again and made our way down the recreation superhighway. I then consulted the map from MountainBikeBill’s website and immediately realized our mistake. The MTB trail did not start until after the next crossroad down the main path. We immediately spotted the marked MTB trail which lead to another nice climb up. This one a little longer and more technical than our first. Once up on top we enjoyed some nice and winding singletrack. It eventually made its way down to the main trail again. It seemed to follow this pattern of up, across and down again most of the way down the west side of the river. The singletrack made the few climbs well worth the effort.
When we reached what we figured was the south end of the trails, we decided to make our way back the recreation superhighway. My wife was getting tired and had taken a pretty good spill up one of the more technical climbs. As we road back were were amazed at how far it was back to the car. We really really didn’t realize the terrain we had covered. The sweet singletrack had distracted us from the distance. As we road back we noticed some nice looking trails on the eastern side of the river too. You could really spend a good day here. Again we left something new for another time. This will definitely be a regular stop on our Whole Foods runs.
[nggtags gallery=wissahickon]
