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skid Jackson -> RE: The winter ride thread (3/7/2010 9:09:50 PM)
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I went out for a hike on saturday afternoon. I walked the stark pond loop with a buds to check wind storm damage. I parked just off the road where you come in from the gas station. The yellow gate was open, the road was not passable as it was still covered with a good foot of groomed snow from sled use and there are two big trees blocking the road. One near the end I parked at and the other down near the now closed bridge. Other than a fair amount of blown down branches which were removed, there is only one maybe two trees jutting into the trail a bit that require a chain saw. The trail is passable all the way round, on abike anyway. While I did not venture into the parking lot to see if there were any trail closed signs every thing looked very ridable. I checked the dam pool before getting to clough it did not look backed up at all. There were two trucks parked where I parked. It looked like some riders on quads as you could see their tracks in the snow. the stark pond trail look freakin' awesome!! for the most part it still had a good layer of ice and frozen snow over the top. What wasn't ice was a 1/2 of greasy mud/earth on top of frozen ground. It looked like it would be a total gas to ride. There were a few areas where the fozen puddles between the whoops had some good size puddles. The only danger I saw was the possiblity of your front tire maybe breaking through a few of the ice puddles and the front tire getting hung up on the ice and you going over the bars. Of course I did not get out there till about 2:30 in the afternoon when temps were up in the 40's.
In short if you were thinking of a little preseason trail checking/cleaning hike don't waste your time on the stark pond loop .... its done. (unless you want to hoof it in with a chainsaw and get that tree). Did I mention how freakin' awesome the stark pond loop looked!! I can almost assure you i will have a bike with studs on it next year!!! If they say it is closed than I guess it is closed but I did not see anything that would indicate that was the case coming in the way I did. I gotta think with the warm temps this coming week that its done till may 23. but if it isn't closed yet i would think if it gets below freezing at night it would be good for some very early morning rides.
btw even if it is closed i do believe you can still walk/hike in there as long as it is not flooded. The river loop is right below the yellow gate on sugar hill rd (I think thats what its called). would be easy enough to drive to the gate bring along a machete or lopper and go for a nice hike and clear blow downs and face slappers along the way .... guess we should check if on being in there on foot is ok though.
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