Not every ride is deserving of the term “Epic ride” and depending on your favorite flavor, I suppose certain criteria have to be met to satisfy your taste for what you would consider a memorable ride. If you prefer generic vanilla, maybe riding fire roads may satisfy your appetite, if rocky road chocolate chunk is more your desire. You may need more of a challenge such as tight speedy single track, ledges, drops, Log rides, rock gardens, long sketchy climbs, and lots of miles. You might need the kind of ride that leaves you pretty much motionless iIn the lazy boy the rest of the afternoon, your legs are tingling from the adrenaline, lactic acid, and endorphin stew. There’s a big bowl of pasta on the table and some chocolate chunk left in the freezer, life is good.
Change Gears:
Although Pachaug had some of the elements mentioned above, for me it was a good ride but fell short compared to other rides in our rotation. I have a map of New England pinned up at work, and every new ride is marked with yellow highlighter. This Monday morning the first thing I did when I got to work is ask myself… How did I get here? This is not my beautiful house (talking heads)…never mind. Today I get to put a yellow dot on Pachaug. I had been looking forward to riding there because the square acreage dwarfs most other areas we ride and I assumed the local bikers in that area would have carved some killer trails in all that space, but what I saw were pretty average.
The Ride:
Today the mountain bikers version of Newton’s law of Physics h20x moss/rock-:- negative/ equilibrium = pain applies. The trails here are very rocky, full of roots and loose fire road climbs, which is all good, but pretty sketchy with all the rain we have had and it warranted riding with as much finesse as you could muster. Some of the climbs here are extremely challenging and one in particular I would estimate to be 40 yards of dense rock of which I could not see a clean line. I would compare it to devils kitchen at Burlington but raise the difficulty factor 3x. That’s not to say that someone out there hasn’t cleaned it on a dry day. There were sections that just one more rock placed would have made that stream crossing or deep rock gardens ride able keeping the ride flowing better. A good portion of the single track had a lot of debris down that caused a few close calls with derailleurs, there were trees down and some sections were almost over grown. Don’t get me wrong, Pachaug is a good ride, and with some trail maintenance and a little exploring it has great potential. I’m sure this vast forest has many a hidden treasure just waiting to be discovered and with the right flow it could be an Arcadia 2. Being that Arcadia is only a few miles away may contribute to Pachaug being a bit
neglected. So until someone takes the initiative to work on Pachaug, my vote is to drive a few more miles to Arcadia hands down. –Arch
Familiar riders: Andy, Glen, the infamous Mike Coleman, Rose City’s Mickey, John Scarford, Shelby Sunshine
New Riders: Dude with 50lb Specialized, 2 single speeders (hats off !!), Sir talksalot on Black Blur (kidding)
All good guys and good riders.
Nerac Earth Cycling 