Stick in the Mud

It actually felt like summer on Saturday and after I got done with the Honey-Do List I headed out on my mountain bike to Upper Paugussett State Forest.  It's been nearly 3 months since I last rode here and that was with a few inches of snow on the ground so it was going to be a whole different scene.

While all the logs that were being stored in the Echo Valley Parking Lot have been removed there were still quite a few at the Mud Hole, which as you can see is back in business.  Rather than ride through the mud, I prefer to ride the corduroy that someone built last year.  The last time I rode through it was ice so I stopped to make sure everything was good to go before attempting it.  It's kind of at a weird angle so I wanted to make sure it was still functional after the long, hard winter.

As you can see my first attempt was not terribly successful.  It seems that the armored portion sank further down so that when my front wheel went into the center it stopped causing me to endo and finding out the hard way that the water is cold and dirty!  I found a better, flatter rock to sit in the center and rode it again with no trouble.

Further up, the seasonably wet section of the Poly Brody Forest Road was wet.  The nice thing about this part is that it's a gravel road and never gets muddy despite the water.

The Upper Gussy Trail was really nice.  There are some new trees down here and there but nothing impeding the flow.  It appears that someone may have redone the rock armoring at the stream crossing in the picture above.  Further down the trail I came across a father and his sons riding up the trail.  It was their first time on the trail and they were riding it backwards.

Coming down the Gussy to Jeep Trail there were a lot of skid marks and they looked fresh, as in today!  I wish people wouldn't do this because it really ruins the trail.  I usually never ride down this part of the trail but I avoided the Reach-Around because I knew the Jeep Trail would be bogged out because of all the rain we got on Friday and spring melt.

Something needs to be done about this!