A Taste of the Loch Raven

Everyone that I spoke to online about riding in this area told me that you had to ride Loch Raven.  Even some of the guys at work said Loch Raven was legit, however, there appeared to be a lot of controversy at Loch Raven in that you were only allowed to ride the perimeter fire road.  I found a GPS track online that I loaded onto my Endura but I figured I had to see it for myself.  I wish I could have found the map below online because that would have helped me figure out where to ride.

Apparently, the best riding is off of Dulaney Valley Road, which in the map above is there the red and white trails are.  I didn't figure that out till later so I ended up riding the upper trails and they were just meh, to say the least.  The first section was basically buff singletrack ontop of an old fire road.  When I figured out that it was just leading out to a point I kind of figured that it was going to suck.  Still, I figured, I would at least get some sort of work out.

Along the way there were numerous blow downs that really interrupted the flow of the trail.  Once out on the point I snapped a few pix and then headed back finding a huge hike-a-bike that I followed instead of going the way I came.  I rode that all the way back to the other parking lot and then turned around and rode out of there.  I think all told it was maybe 2 miles at the most.

Following the track I downloaded from the internet I rode along Merriman's Road till I came to another trail head and rode in there.  

Rules and Regs

At least the first section I rode was primarily singletrack, albeit short, this second part was pure, unadulterated double track.  The whole time I was saying to myself that this would be perfect riding for my Monster Crosser and thought if I ever get the opportunity to come down on business I am going to bring the Qball to ride the NCR trail one day and here the next with fatter tires! 

As you can see, I didn't get very far because I had to get back to car by 7 and back to the hotel for the remainder of the conference.

Gunpowder Falls State Park - Sweet Air

I was told that Sweet Air is not a must hit destination to ride in this part of Maryland but it's something that I have read about a bit and it's proximity to my company's Baltimore office made sense to me to give it a shot.  Last time I was down in Baltimore for business in which I was able to bring a bike, I brought the Qball and rode the NCR Rail Trail.  This time I brought the diSSent, mainly because I wanted to get some miles on it before the Root66 Domnarski Farm Race and to try once again riding the FUBars, since Brown Santa had yet to deliver my warranty replacement Ergon GX3s.

The Sweet Air is a section of Gunpowder Falls State Park that has 1250 acres of shared use trails for Mountain Biking, Hiking, and Horses.  While I didn't see any horses Tuesday, I did see plenty of signs that horses had been through there.  Talk about a failure to curb one's horse, looks like the Equine community has no clue what it means.

It took awhile to find a decent map of the park but after googling a bit I found this map below but unfortunately I couldn't bring a copy of it with me on my ride because I couldn't get it to print out at the office.  If I had it, though, I think I would have had a much better ride.  The trails are a mixture of single and dual track.  The single track is actually fun to ride as opposed to the dual track, which ran through the fields, and of course the ever present Equine Treats. 

The layout of the trails is a bit confusing and at time was hard to follow as you can see on my ride map below.  I was trying to follow the white trail but the sign posts were confusing and wound up on the blue trail that I ended up taking down to the Little Gunpowder Falls River.  I ended up coming back on the white trail until I found the river trail that I missed the first time because of the stoopid trail kiosks.

The park is permeated with signs with deep and ponderous expressions and signs.  Before starting out, I took a picture of the sign at the Trail Head but due to the heat, it was 94 degrees, I didn't bother stop and read any of the others.  I was too busy sweating.  This place is wasn't very challenging and there were a lot hike a bikes.  Still it was worth giving it a try.

Lots of open fields up top

Plenty of dual track on the boundaries

Looking down the Blue Trail at a deer

Little Gunpowder Falls

Which way do I go?

I guess I was supposed to go the horse route

Eastern Box Turtle

Nice rolling grade dip

White Trail heading back up to the fields