12/31/07

Biking with allot of Hiking @ MuttonTop





I was doing New Years this year up at MuttonTop near Standardsville VA. The Cabin had no plumbing, or electric, but a great view. The last day of the year Kev wanted to do a ride, I had planned to do a ride the following day on the cross bike, but said I would go out with him too. I road my cross bike with 42mm in front and 40mm in the rear, with a 34x34 low gear. We started the ride and were expecting to follow this fire road over the ridge to a dirt road. Well we ended up going on this hiking trail that had us (shocker) hiking more then biking. Kev is a beginner mt. biker but is a good runner, so he is working on getting those biking muscles. It was also a good equalizer with me on the cross bike and him on a mt. bike I was not able to go too fast on the downhills. Finally we get to an intersection and realize we are only 100yds from where we started! We then took the left turn which was the correct way to go. The fire road was totally ridable besides all the blow-downs on the trail. We get to the dirt road, and we descended like 1000ft real quick was a fast desent with alot of turns you really couldn't let it ride. We looked at the map and saw that this Mutton Hollow road went near to where the cabins were, so there might be a trail that we could do to get there. Well the road goes for a awhile, and then turns to dirt, then a gate where state matience ended. We were at a crossroads here do we turn around and go on the road back or adventure forward and hope to find something. We went around the gate and went up this gravel road, and then we saw that it deadended into someone's cabin:-( But right when we saw that we saw a trail going to our right that was the direction towards the cabins. The trail was freshly blazed, but It was a total hiking trail, he had to push the bikes most of the way. We finally arrived below the Morris Cabin and made our way back up to MuttonTop for Pho Soup for Lunch. We started the ride with the idea to be gone for 2 hours that turned to closer to 4. I think if I did this again I would just take out the first hiking loop, and revese what we did but add the longer dirt ride. The hiking trail back up to the cabin had some more ridable stuff if you were going down hill. Kev did good maybe I will do some more rides with him in the future.


3 comments:

Jan Louis said...

you forgot to put in the part about you falling off the bike with the hiking pack!

Alexandra said...

Wow, lucky Kevin made the blog! I'm so jealous.

Darren said...

AB if you want you can make the blog, I can take you out on a Tandem Ride!