Laborious at P-Valley

Met up with the head of the Trumbull Trails Coalition, Rich Coffey, on Labor Day at 8 AM for a little tour of Pequonnock River Valley and to assess a few spots for upcoming work projects.  Rich showed me this new trail that starts at the Whitney Ave lot and follows the ridge along side the rail trail.  I missed a turn and started climbing up towards one of the neighborhoods so I had to back track a bit to get back on the trail that leads to the Coyote Crossing.  Great trail with some nice flow in it and it beats using the rail trail.

Rich showed me the work the TTC did at their last Trail Maintenance work day and the work done to the connector trail was really great.  Now, even that trail, protected from the usual runoff, has some good flow to it now.  We headed over to the Rusty River crossing only to find the skinny bridge crossing that I found a few weeks ago was knocked into the stream.  If that was done by the land manager that's one thing but if it's being by done some other group, then it's just plain childish.  You got little teeny bopper free riders tearing up legitimate reroutes, and now this non-sense, pretty soon all the features are going to get taken out if this crap doesn't stop.

Rich and I rock armored this stream crossing.  Of course with all the shenanigans going on I wonder how long it will last.  There were so many flat rocks to choose from it was quite easy to put together.  It rides really nice as seen in this little video clip below.

Later, coming out of Bastone we happened upon two riders taking a break at the intersection with the yellow trail.  Rich took the opportunity to hand out TTC cards and talk about what he and the TTC are trying to do at Trumbull.

Further down the trail we ran into Bob and his レッドモンキー (Reddomonki).  He's loving every minute of riding it and I thinking I need to get back onto an all steel frame.

This was one of my shorter rides at the Pequonnock, largerly because of the stream armoring and scoping out another reroute but I was able to in a good 5 mile ride with lots of climbing.  What was interesting was that we rode everything that I normally ride backwards and it was really good.  I have to try that again!

Looks may be deceiving:  this looks like you can ford it
but as I found out a couple of weeks ago it's still really deep!