Cyclesnack

Monday, June 25, 2012

NEMBAFest: Camping at the Cutler Inn

Saturday morning at the Cutler Inn on Pinkham Road
Camping out with the NEMBAFest Volunteers

Harold Green cooking breakfast

Chris is seen here working on Tim's bike

Six links were removed from behind the cassette
but the spokes were trashed, which mean Tim's Kona He-He 29er
was down for the duration

Philip Keys

Paula Burton

Chris delivering the bad news to Tim

On the Spot in Burke Hollow

Alex, Chris and I headed over to Burke Hollow and rode Nose Dive to White School

and the Pond Trails

It seemed if the trail was flat and rooty, it was classified intermediate
and add some steep, then it was a black diamond

Riding through the fields was really cool

Chris took turns on what appeared to be the only skinny in the park

Moose Alley appears to be a favorite trail for all those riders who keep coming back here again and again and I would most definitely agree with them. There is everything on this trail from technical sections, berms, rollers and hucks.

A full suspension bike would have been sweet but I was on my beloved Spot and it handled everything really nicely. The steel frame soaked up a lot of the vibration I would have been experiencing on my aluminum hardtails.

There were still some climbs on this trail though and it took it's toll. I hit my max heart rate a few times on these climbs and took a few brakes but what a fast trail, and people like to ride this other way, too? Insane!

There was one casualty, however, Tim's deraileur must have hit something on the way down and was toast. Chris rigged him up singlespeed but the slack chain caused major chain suck.

This led to leaving the links between the cassette and spokes, setting it up as singlespeed, only the links that couldn't be taken out locked the hub in place and Tim got the pleasure of riding perhaps the first, full suspension fixed gear mountain bike.

Crossing over VT 114 we saw this banner that the locals wanted decorated.

So we obliged!

Up next, the conclusion of Friday's Ride, the trails in Burke Hollow.

On the Spot at the Kingdom Trails

I have never been to the Northeast Kingdom before so when NEMBA decided they were going to have this year's NEMBAFest at Burke Mountain and the Kingdom Trails, there was no way I was going to miss this! I took Friday off from work and got to Burke Mountain by noon, registered and set up camp at the Cutler Inn where all the NEMBA Volunteers were based. I offered to volunteer but at the last second was told I wasn't needed but I was allowed to camp there anyway.

For my first taste of the Kingdom Trails, I hooked up with Tim Post of Greater Boston NEMBA, his two sons Alex and Chris, and Chris O'Toole(?) from Central Maine NEMBA.

Our ride started with setting up a shuttle by leaving my car down in East Burke and then Tim wanted to recon the route on Pinkham Road.

Tim wanted to ride Pinkham to the Magil Fields trail but I thought it would be better if we started out on Trillium off of Dishmail Road. Afterall, it meant more singletrack and that was what I was here for, having never ridden the Kingdom Trails.

And talk about singletrack! Holy Cow! These trails are AWESOME! As we came out of Trillium and crossed over Pinkham Road there was a VW parked at the trail head with two Kingdom Trail Maintainers smoking cigarettes and I said to myself, what could two dudes in Vermont be doing in the middle of the woods except smoking a dube! Sure enough, as I rode past there was the tell tale odor of cannabis in the air.

We rode through some really nice meadows where the singletrack was but a foot wide. I found the trail marking system to be interesting. It seemed that all the green trails were just double track. Then were were blue trails both single and doubletrack. If the doubletrack had a lot of climbing it was labeled blue and the blue singletrack had climbing but nothing very steep. The black diamond trails were very rooty and steep but all in all, these trails are really great and easy to find your way around!