: Wayne’s Virgina extravaganza

By: g | No Comments » |

I’ve been lucky to spend the last 12 days in the good ‘ol US of A, in Richmond Virginia, Capital of the Confederacy. Richmond is about 90mins south of Washington DC along the I-95 freeway.

I took the Crack’n'fail along for journey (don’t let the airlines charge you US$75 per sector, argue and they’ll waive it!) packed up in a nice Qantas cardboard bike box. It seems to have survived the travel ok, the trashing I gave it was much worse….

My friend and colleague Greg Guinther, who rides a Lightspeed Unicoi with XT disks, SID Race: http://www.litespeed.com was my tour guide – some of you will recall him from his 24hrs of Snowshoe effort in 2000/2001 – and arranged an itinerary of great Fall riding for me. Fall in Virginia is supposed to be cold, around 15C max and down to 0 at night, and I’d bought every kind of cold weather clothing imaginable.

Luckily however, Virginia is having an “Indian Summer” with no rain for over a month and temperatures 5-10C above normal. The Autumn leaves about the place are a real highlight for an Aussie used to the monochrome colours of the gum trees. I was to learn that leaves are slippery bastards on the trail though, and can make the singletrack near invisible in places.

I kicked off Sunday 11th on Gwynn’s Island, in Matthews county on the Chesapeake bay, about an hour east of Richmond. This was just an hour or so of cruisy riding along the coastal roads and double track with another colleague on his Schwinn beach cruisers (I stayed at his beach house there), and was a great way to get over jetlag in the sun, and see some of the beautiful shoreline. Its a very historic area – the British occupation forces made a stand here during the war of independance, and the French fleet was anchored off shore there. The real life Pocohantas, immortalised in fairy tale, was also from Matthews, and her famous rescue took place off Gwynn’s island. www.mathewsva.org

Work interupted over the next few days, but I was able to get the ‘fail unpacked and go for a ride around the King William area on the Pomunkey river, a little closer towards Richmond on Thursday 8th. www.co.king-william.va.us/aboutkwc.html

We were at a company owned ranch there for 3 a day meeting and there were tracks all around the esturine lake near the lodge where we were staying. I got out at 630am – with lots of warm clothes – and rode around the lake to watch the sun rise. There were about a million Canada Geese coming into land on the lake, an incredible sight and noise. Being the dumb aussie that I am didn’t think about the hunters, until I was way around the other side of the lake from the lodge, and then realised I looked like a big Polartec covered deer. So made sure I tried to look as MTB’er as possible on the way back home and stayed in the open so easy to identify. Virginia is real “bubba” country, with guns and hunters everywhere when you get out in the country. We found this even more so on the latter rides. I can see now why hikers and MTBers wear those flouro orange vests.

Rest of Thursday and Friday was work and anticipation of the great MTB weekend to come. Saturday morning we got a start at 630am with Gregs 24-hr partner John Beck (Dale F900 with Disks), loaded the car with bikes and headed west for Douthat State Park. Greg seems to thrive on a unique pre-ride diet of Donut Holes (fried doughballs covered in cinnamon -sugar) and Oreos, what a guy. The day was about 20F warmer than expected. We headed out past Charlotsville, home of the University of Virginia and former president Thomas Jefferson, which would be a good base for a visitor to tackle the rides we did. There is also a lot of riding close around Charlotsville and its an interesting town with a lot of history and groovy Newtown-like student life: www.virginia.edu/

www.bikeracing.com

Douthat is a state owned area with PARK MAINTAINED AND SANCTIONED MTB ONLY TRAILS!!! Wow, maybe Susan from NPWS should look at this: www1.roanoke.com and www.douthatspeed.org

The area is basically a big bowl rising up on all sides from a large lake: www.bikeva.com

There are 2 main loops, Middle mountain, with about 1,700 ft of climbing, and Stony Run track with about 1,200ft of climbing. ALL of the riding is on well formed singletracks, winding up and down the mountainside with a number of great panoramic vistas back to the lake and to the other side of the ranges. We tackled Middle mountain first, and I almost expired from the climbing and having too many clothes on. A stop to dump the polartec and felt a lot better, but boy it was good to see get to the overlook at the top for food and a break. A week of travel and boozing is not conducive to great climbing. Greg and Jon are both super fit whippets and made me feel totally inadequate on the uphills. The climbs are a combination of grinding ST with a loose, steep rocky pinch thrown in every now and again along with some killer switchbacks. The downhill back from the lookout was superb, one of the best I’ve ever done. The track is well groomed from use, and there weren’t too many leaves. Flat out backwards and forwards down the side of the mountain, with the switchbacks coming fast and in some cases blind. I managed to get the hang of getting around them fast after the first few. Lower down the mountain was similar to the forest walk in the Nasho, more rainforesty, with log steps. I hit a loose rock here and pinchflatted, which gave the whippets a chance to catch up and us all to have a breather. Back to the car for some lunch. There are dozens of trails in the area, and a myriad of ways to link them. Camping here in spring or summer you could spend 2 or 3 solid days riding singletrack.

After lunch it was back onto the bikes and another killer climb to the top of Stony run. This was really hard going for the first 5kms, a grinder up a loose technical ST with lots of switchbacks. Thankfully it tapered off towards the top and then it was fast undulating ST along the saddles of the ridge. From the top is was another ST run back down the otherside of the ridge on the switchbacks. There were many more fallen leaves here, and we all enjoyed various endos and washouts. The switchbacks here are very tight, very loose and very steep, I had a lot less success with them. The track was very narrowly cut into the side in a few places, and an off over the side would have dire consequences. The lower third is flat out through undulating ST’s with a number of creek crossings, log jumps and berms. It really was superlative. Eventually it spits you back out on the road for a cool down spin back to the cars.

Douthat stats:
36kms
about 5hrs of riding (yep, the climbs were that steep)
spills – lots, no serious
flats – 1
mechs – nil

Greg’s triathlon and MTB buddies were having a party Sat nite near his house, and we managed to suck down a few microbrews and food before we crashed at about 10pm. Greg and his kids rose at 4am to watch the northern hemisphere rendition of the Leonids meteor shower (of MTBOZ fame in 2000) – needless to say I stayed in bed!

Another 630 start saw us back past Charlotsville on the way to the Southern Traverse: www.imba.com

After a 2hr drive we arrived in the foothills of the Shenandoah mountains, which were obscured by a thick blanket of fog and mist. Greg and the guys had mentioned the “warm-up climb” – this ended up being about a 8km fireroad grind in granny, then another 3km of singletrack grind to the saddle of the range, total elevation gain ~2,300 feet! I was about 85% knackered by then. Thankfully the remainder of the ride was fast undulating up and down the saddle. The mountains are really spectacular, with valleys on either side and more mountain ranges in turn rising beyond them. The leaves were mostly fallen here, with a thick carpet obscuring the trail. Fortunately the faster members of the party went ahead (they were doing out and back on the top of the range, we were looping with the road), so there were some clues on where to point the wheel. All of the riding on the top of the range is singletrack. I had a couple of good endos – a log and then in the rockgardens.

The singletrack on the north western side follows along very steep sides of the range from saddle to saddle, with about 200-500 metres of rock gardens in between. These comprise large bits of a grey rock with angular edges, that are scattered all over the track, and covered in leaves so you can’t see them. They reminded me of oversize railway ballast. You need to hit them pretty fast and keep momentum, easier said than done, but great fun nonetheless. The other side of the ridge has smoother, leaf covered ST, which was very fast and flowing, but with more logs. After about 20km of repeating this pattern (& the spectacular views), you start to drop off the range onto a south eastern ST. This goes on for about 7km, and is pretty well groomed and very fast, looping down from the range into the valley, again with little room for error in most places unless you want a quick trip off the side to the bottom. This is a superb descent, and would be worth a climb back up again to do in itself. It spits you out onto a fireroad once you’ve lost all that hard gained elevation. Its then about a 20km ride back on the main roads to the cars, quite pleasant meandering past farms and a couple of little communities, trying not to become the hood ornament on a large RV. This is a great ride, and again you could camp or stay locally for a few days and repeat or extend it.

Southern Traverse Stats:
61km
about 5hr 40min riding
spills – Wayne – endos on the ST and a log; Jon endo on the ST; Greg endo in
the leaves
flats – 1 Wayne, a thorn
mechs, nil

Then it was back to the office in Richmond again & I found out why Greg is so fit. The office is next to the James River, which runs through the middle of town. So Greg has this 10 mile loop of ST that he does on an island (Bell Island) in the river and on the park on the other side (Buttermilk trail), most lunchtimes. He usually rides it on his Unicoi, but had just bought a new bike the week I arrived: www.singletrackworld.com + www.geocities.com. It seems a number of his mates are into the SS thing, and he was hooked. So we skivved off work early tuesday afternoon, for a ride: www.bikeracing.com

This reminded me a little of Lane Cove National park, fast undulating ST with some techo bits, flowing alongside a river. Except of course it was covered in leaves and only about 8 deg C by the time we started at 330pm!. There are ruins from the Civil war, and the island was used by the Confederates as a prison for Yankees. I was starting to get a cold by this stage of the trip (still hasn’t turned into Anthrax yet) and Greg really nailed me. The ride itself was really good fun, about an hour and a half with all the variety you could want 5 minutes from the office. Tight twisting ST, drop offs, log piles, rocks, gut busting pinch climbs, the whole 9 yards. I will definitely be doing this one again next business trip.

 

Tags:America,Richmond,Virginia


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