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8/31/9 Hubbard RAW

Trev

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So, I hit Hubbard again on Monday. I decided that I wanted to try and avoid the hike a bike section and throw a route together for 100% riding.. mainly because it is so local to my place.

Wheels down about 6pm, I knew time was short for exploring so I had decided to ride the pavement to the castle and then take the blue down, on the reservoir side... as an exploratory. The goal being, to put together a route that would include that blue going up to the castle, road to the towers, and blue on Southington side down(Steveos favorite route).

Anyhow, the climb to the tower was great, no stops but wow, what a climb challenge at least for my level of biking..

So I then messed around at the top by the castle, there are some spider webs of trails up there that are kind of neat to play around in..

Then I headed downwards on the blue.. the start is rough, quickly pans out to a nice slow paced downhill. Some techy spots with easy go arounds as the trail is very narrow but the landscape is fairly open. About halfway down the hill.. I lost the trail. This sounds crazy, but living in Meriden all my life I used to rock climb these faces in my teenage years. I immediately recalled old memories of the trail being a bit easy to lose in a couple spots.

Needless to say, I ended up hiking the bike freaking down hill for a solid 20 minutes. Eventually crossing the trail again near the base. The exit for the blue is right where the concrete slabs are as the tower road clears the reservoir.

I may do an exploritory from the metacomet trail behind the Meriden Mall and try and link up with Hubbard from there.. there are a few riding spots that look as though they could be linked up in a nice chain - berlin, ragged, hubbard.

Either way, the workout was nice and the climb was long but I enjoyed it. A roadie would probably chuckle at it.. but for us Mountain Bikers.. it's a nice leg warmer upper.

When I do the Southington side downhills next, I'll be taking the tower road up and not hiking the bike. I am riding to ride and not carry the damn bike :)

Oh and the blue downhill on the reservoir side, blah. I was hoping to make it an uphill but it really didn't appeal at all. I'll hike it one day in the next few weeks and give it a good look over.. hell I missed half of it.. lol
 
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