Trexler Nature Preserve MTB 6/30/2016

Sometimes, you are motivated by curiosity and adventure, and sometimes, you are motivated by the aforementioned plus a deadline. Trexler has been a location on my radar for some time now, renown for its punchy singletrack and a particular roller coaster ride of a trail deemed "Kill Dozer". Kill Dozer was recently assigned to doom, by way of natural reassignment of the landscape, so I knew I needed to ride it before July.

I did. I rode it. Part of it. I couldn't get the links together to ride the entire thing, despite consulting GPS and trail maps. The way to the top of Kill Dozer was just obscured and obliterated except for those in the know. There was some new alternate route to reach the top of the celebrated trail.

Firstly, it was a beautiful drive to the trailhead through parts unknown to me through the greater Lehigh Valley area of Pennsylvania. We're talking rolling hills and farmlands with distant vistas of Appalachian mountain ranges. I rolled along through hilly rural roads and tiny-town intersections and almost got lost in some slightly decaying small town that nevertheless had a weird integral draw on my psyche.

Once that was all in my rearview mirror, I rumbled onto the access road to the trailhead. The trailhead itself unveiled itself as a hot, dusty, baking bit of parking lot. I got my shit together, oriented myself and hit the trail with my ever-so-luddite paper map and notes in my pocket.

It's not always super fun when you go your own way on a new trail system, but I had fun here. I could get into the swoopy and twisting singletrack for nice sections before having to halt and check my location. There are some great sections not far from the trailhead that have pump track-like elements as well as skinnies to ride. Certainly sessionable if you want to get some skills work in.

Killdozer, the part of it that I managed to ride, was as advertised. It was a toboggan ride that begged for balance and carving huge berms. Without knowing the course, I couldn't get all the lines right, but it was a blast. Big dips that lead into hearty smooth-packed banked turns were plentiful. We can only hope that this trail survives despite the park's decisions on foliage changes.

Trexler Preserve is a nice trail system, but we'll have to see what comes of the changes that are undergoing. Unfortunately, I made the trip there only after the trail system was irrevocably changed already. I'll post my wandering, discovering, halting GPS map below. I'll try to get back there sometime soon, after the literal dust settles after the park changes.

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Hump Day Kayak, June 29th

Sometimes, you just have to slam the door on work life and get the boats loaded up into the truck and do an evening paddle. Thwart all the "work night" warnings, and throw two boats on the truck and do a short float on the river to clear your mind.

We have this go-to trip, which is Eshback to Bushkill. Four miles. Float more than paddle. Drink a few beers. The river is glass at this time in the evening. The wildlife comes out to play. We saw two groups of deer playing and drinking at the water's edge, as well as a bald eagle coast across the river and roost in a tree on a high branch above the shore. There are ducks and beaver, doing their twilight thing, as we are. They are smart, in their own tiny brain reasoning.

We stare at computers, go to meetings, talk shop and then you float your boat on the river and you get dangerously close to figuring out that something here doesn't matter. I mean, just a little close, but you know it just brings you back to the mean. Some kind of math that's ingrained in our being. Something like how the animals of the forest plug their day away just surviving, but come to exalt at the evening light, and just enjoy that cool, calm evening.

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Camelback MTB Pushed a Few More Miles

There is a lot of stuff to ride at Camelback/SG38. You can put down some serious miles. I've been riding a fairly short loop of sorts, hitting the trails named Three Bridges and Secret. I was then meandering a bit through part of Birches and looping back to the trailhead. That was equating to something around six miles of rolling about the top of the mountain.

The best seat is at the bar

However, there are other "deer paths" that I haven't been hitting this year so far. You can rack up several miles on these sections as they wander from one jeep road to the next through varying terrain like blueberry bushes, pine tree groves and otherwise root-infested knee-blasters.

These sections are all cardio-intensive. You have to pump those legs. In the case of this ride, I rode about a mile of these singletrack sections before taking the jeep road back to the parking lot.

Lens flare is all the rage, but I really was trying to escape it

There is a bunch more trail than this, and one day maybe I'll post it. In lieu of that here, I'll just post some more trail-related photos and drop the trail map down below as well.

The trail less travelled will get eaten by nature 

Tailgating is where it ends

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Early June Paddle Roundup

The season of Summer has finally hung up its coat and taken a seat in our region of the Northeast. This means more playtime outside, and likely more roundup posts about outdoor adventures in lieu of entries for each trip. That would probably be excruciating to read, anyway.

We hit the Delaware again on two successive weekends at the beginning of this month. Two relatively short jaunts in fine weather on what you could call bourgeois-cruises. OK, just "booze-cruise" works. The definition of which is casually paddling while drinking a can of beer.

Somewhere on the Delaware

At the crack of 1:30 PM on Saturday, June 4th myself and four others (Tara, Scott, Jaime and Eric) set out to paddle the Smithfield to Kittatinny section of the Delaware. Armed with a few beers and subs, we made it our mission to relax. I'd go ahead and even say we had a license to chill, but the cornball levels are already much too high.

This particular segment is 6-7 miles long. The ambiguity exists because I thought it was 6 miles, but my GPS track on this read almost 7 miles. It took us nearly three hours, which isn't that bad considering we stopped for lunch and very casually paddled.

Yes, these boats are secure

In fact, I'd have to say the most strenuous part is jamming five boats onto my truck. I've got it down to a science now... maybe more like a pseudo-science. At this point, a trailer would be actually worth the trouble. I'm thinking of something like a utility trailer that I could fabricate boat cradles and thingamajigs upon.

I will take selfies now and again

Mixed among these photos are evidence from the June 12th trip, whereas we navigated the Delaware from the Eshback access point to the Bushkill disembark. This makes for a good four-mile float where you are implored to not paddle too hard, as you'll knock it out in less than an hour. We had a strong headwind, so there was an impetus to work those shoulder muscles, after all. We packed this one in with a sedan left at Bushkill and jamming five people in the extended cab of my Tacoma to put in at Eshback. And I'd really perfected the sardine arrangement of the kayaks in the truck bed, so the looming threat of a boat trailer was kept at bay for a little bit more for the weekend.

 I've got too many projects as it is, so I can table the trailer discussion for now. And since it's Friday and another weekend is upon us, I'll wrap this up, sneak out of work and go generate some more photos. I'll leave the GPS track below for the Smithfield to Kittatinny trip, for curiosity's sake only, it's not very interesting. And certainly not athletic.

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Big Pocono Hike

This 90-degree heat gets me thinking about getting high. No, not that kind of high. I'm speaking of the altitude kind of high where the temperature is ten degrees cooler and you've got more than a fair chance of a breeze. Big Pocono State Park near Tannsersville, Pennsylvania fills this role perfectly.

We're looking at Delaware Water Gap taking on water

Big Pocono is also just a little bit "around the mountain" from one of my prime mountain biking locations, which I have written about as well, this post being a recent example. There are several miles of hiking (and some biking) trails skirt the mountain top and interconnect here and there occasionally. The trail markings are pretty decent and feature some great views, with several sweet spots.

My wife and I decided to make it a Sunday picnic/hike a few weeks ago. There was a small threat of rain, as you can see in the photo above. A funny note about this photo is that we're actually watching from afar as our house in Delaware Water Gap is getting poured on. You can see the Gap in the center, and our house is a bit to the right. It remained dry in Big Pocono, despite the storm clouds threatening on the three sides of the peninsula.

Scenic vista on Indian Trail

We ended up hiking for about 3 1/4 miles on part of the South Trail and the entirety of Indian Trial, which included the viewpoint from the photo above. It's certainly an easy hike, with parts of Indian Trail being somewhat rocky, but with some great glacial boulder droppings to be seen. The South Trial also features some wonderful viewpoints, as seen below.

South Trail, featuring a view of Delaware Water Gap 

Me, with the 'Gap above my wonderful hairdo 

 Tara looks out over the South

I believe that's Mountain Spring Lake behind me

We did get a few raindrops, and we had a few meager wildlife sightings, whereas you can see an alert chipmunk below, who circled around this tree trunk while we observed him.

I'll post the hiking track below. It's a nice spot to hike and explore, and you're at the top of the Poconos, so it's the best vantage point in the vicinity.

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Camelback and the Gamelands

The trail system known commonly as"Camelback" at the state gamelands near Camelback Mountain certainly has its fair share of rocky sections. I mean, there is sandy jeep road, smooth singletrack, pine needle singletrack, rocky doubletrack and rooty and rocky singletrack as well. Rocky sections are a hallmark of areas like this Allegheny Plateau at 2,000 feet above sea level. It's glacier action, people!

A slice of singletrack at SG38

And here we are again, discussing trails that lie in the "gray area" of the legality spectrum. Bike riding isn't prohibited in the state gamelands, but the building of trails is, however. It's OK, the skinny paths are deer trails, we all know that. I will be straightforward here, and give credit to the relationship, albeit tenuous, that the riders, hunters, fishermen and gamelands personnel have organically come upon for the usage of the area.

I believe that there is a gentleman's agreement on the gameland usage when peak (read deer hunting season) arrives. I've had my own fair weather October or November encounter at the trailhead with a gameland official, and he was cordial, offering the advice that if I had just a fishing license on me, there would be no problem.

Honestly, deer hunting season corresponds with my offseason anyway, where I'm snowboarding or just drinking a lot of wine and watching Netflix. The hunters can gladly have the land unabated.

But we're back to the rocks. A good rum on the rocks or a glass of wine, I've passed the time through hunting season and I'm back onto the rocky and rooty gameland trails. There's a lot to ride up there, with punchy ups and downs, or the case where a riding buddy named Alan and myself dropped most of the 2,000 feet down into Reeders, Pennsylvania only to have to pedal all the way back up to the car.

You'll get your mix there of roots, rocks, sand and dirt, and you'll also get to spy some great views upon some vantage points. I certainly don't ride just for exercise, adventure and escape are key elements. Below I have a photo from a powerline break that divulges itself as you wheel the last few meters to the trailhead to your waiting vehicle. I almost always stop, or at least slow down here, to take a deep breath and gaze at the view.

I may post the map below, I'll think about it. Some of the trails are in a gray area of sorts, so I want to be cognizant of that. It's a shame, it's a pretty decent place to ride.

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MRT Monday Nine Miler

A different day, a different configuration of the close-and-convenient McDade trail. I pushed out nine miles by riding from Smithfield access to the park headquarters and back. The stretch between Smithfield and the River's Edge access point has a bit of cornfield boring-ness, but the warm weather is still fresh, so anything rocks right now.

North of Smithfield

I decided to spice up the ride by endangering my cell for a quick video of the parking lot cruise back to my truck at sunset.

Everything survived, I didn't crash broadside into my truck and destroy the phone. I'll embed the map below.

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