Thursday, September 3, 2009

WV dreamy tour Day 2

Day two from Seneca rocks was sure to be solid. Any day you have the gnarly north fork on your platter, it's gonna be rad. Started the day with a little road ride up through Germany Valley to Smoke Hole cavern and then on up to the top of north mountain.
We came up on this limestone plant and quarry and had to play in it for a bit.

Rolling, green pastures were all around us on the pedal through Germany Valley.

Mike and Andy showing off their chest hair to see who was the hairiest of them all. Mike won, but only because Joey was not entered in the contest.Once on top of north mountain is where the gnarly north fork begins. You roll ridge top for almost 25 miles, with views like this along the whole route. This is one of my favorite rides of all time. Techie, flowy, fast, slow and beautiful. It has a bit of everything.
Mike ripping through the goodies.
Yet another panoramic view from the trail. So sweet.
The top of that mountain in the distance is where our campsite for the night is gonna be. The plan is to make it there before dark.
Fall is in the air, and the leaves up in the high country have already started changing colors. We don't get these crazy reds in CO, absolutely gorgeous.
We dropped off Andy and Joey at the bottom of the North fork, reloaded our bikes, refueled and headed for Dolly Sods. Here is part of the ridge that we were on, the rock outcropping looks oh' so nice from the bottom.
About 4 miles from the top of Dolly Sods the sweat was pouring and I was curious if we were going to make it to the top before dark. There was some pushing involved on this section. It wasn't crazy steep, but we were over 50 miles in and had just reloaded our bags for the next few days.
Watching the moon rise over the mountains was spectacular.
Finally got to the top in the dark and poked through the dark to find a camp spot. We got everything set up and was ready for dinner. Only to be followed by a night of sleeplessness. The unknown was about to begin.

The stats of our last climb of the day were something like 10 miles with just under 3000' of climbing, solid!

Here is another view of the happenings of the day and week.

No comments:

Post a Comment