We got a pretty good crew together for a Ditch ride on May 22nd. Although the ride was at Chris’ instigation, he called the morning before the ride to say that he had gone up to his folks’ place, and discovered a big wet spot on the side of the house where a little pinhole leak in the water main had been spraying. He would be spending the rest of the day waiting for the plumber to come and splice in a new section of copper pipe. The rest of the crew met out at the Ditch, and we did the normal climb, side loop, rode out along the Ditch, doubled back on the inner loop, then repeated the outbound leg to the end. Jeff, Sara, JT, and Danny took the trail out to the street, but Root and I took advantage of the good weather and blasted back along the trail for some additional dirt time. The weather was warm and sunny, but a fairly constant breeze kept it cool, even under the tree cover.
There was a bunch of Boy Scouts at the trailhead when we arrived, and we saw more of them along Government Road on the climb up. Apparently, they were doing the Demon trail, and were going to camp out somewhere in ‘Nalo, since they all had piles of gear. Other than them, we didn’t encounter anyone on the trails that day. When we finished the ride, they were gone from the trailhead.
Amusingly on this ride, we happened across some wooden features along the uphill section of the inner loop that someone had recently built. From where the climb levels out, a new line that slaloms back and forth across the original line has been cleared, and narrow wooden bridge features just above ground level, or set into trenches dug into the ground have been built. It appears to still be a work in progress, since there are still a lot of knee-high stumps all over the place, and a lot of the lead-ins are too tight or oddly angled to actually allow for smooth transitioning onto the bridges. I’m not really sure what the builder is thinking, since none of the wooden features actually “bridge” anything (unlike the bridge in the boulder garden), and are set into the earth or are at ground level. I guess he or she really likes riding on wood…
Pictures here
D = 12.87 km (8.00-miles ), Vavr = 11.7 km/h (7.3-mph), Vmax = 34.6 km/h (21.5-mph), T = 1-hour, 5-minutes (actual trail time <2-hours)
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