Earl's trails, South Amherst MA - 4/12/09

[MR. evil]

Rode at Earl's for the first time this afternoon with my friends Red and Chris, & what a ball buster of a ride it turned out to be. Earl's is located on the other side of Rt 116 from B-Street and is a much different ride. While B-Street is very rocky and technical, Earl's is very tight and flowy. And Earl's also has a $hit load of climbing. I did more climbing this ride then I have EVER done on any ride I can remember. There were 3 or 4 hills that just seemed to go on for ever. Two of them were narrow jeep roads that were very long. But it was the two tight switch back climbs that really killed me. One of those climbs was almost a mile long. However, for all the suffering we were rewarded with an mile plus long DH to end the ride that was really fun.

In all we did just under 11 miles in 2 hours 15 minutes. We also climbed 2100 feet. To add insult to injury I was informed by the ride leader (Red) that he shortened up the ride a bit and took some of the easier climbs.

http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/activity/7986974

 

[Grassi21]

Damn. You guys covered some serious distance in that amount of time. Good work.

 

[MR. evil]

Damn. You guys covered some serious distance in that amount of time. Good work.

Red and Chris are very fast! They could have done it even faster if they didn't have to wait for my slow but on every climb. Today was the closet I have ever come to hurling on a ride.

 

[bvibert]

Nice! We gotta get Red back down to Nass again.

 

[MR. evil]

Nice! We gotta get Red back down to Nass again.

I have a feeling that yesterday was payback for the ride at Nass where he broke his ribs. The trails were pretty smooth, the challenging part of it all was just the insane length of the climbs. Two of the climbs had to be roughtly 3 to 4 times longer than the big climb at Nass, but they were not nearly as rocky as Nass.

 

[bvibert]

I have a feeling that yesterday was payback for the ride at Nass where he broke his ribs. The trails were pretty smooth, the challenging part of it all was just the insane length of the climbs. Two of the climbs had to be roughtly 3 to 4 times longer than the big climb at Nass, but they were not nearly as rocky as Nass.

I'm having trouble breathing right now just thinking about the climb at Nass, let alone longer. I know the climb at Nass isn't actually all that long, but that stupid demoralizing tech section at the end really makes it suck. I'm always about ready to pass out by that point.

 

[MR. evil]

I'm having trouble breathing right now just thinking about the climb at Nass, let alone longer. I know the climb at Nass isn't actually all that long, but that stupid demoralizing tech section at the end really makes it suck. I'm always about ready to pass out by that point.

Let me put it this way, after yesterday I am looking forward to that climb at Nass.

 

[Greg]

That's a lot of mileage in a short time, especially giving the climbs. You guys must've been hauling on the DHs.

That Nass climb really isn't that bad. I never thought it was. There are enough flat areas in it to recover. I found some of the DT climbs at the WH Rez more grueling.

 

[MR. evil]

That's a lot of mileage in a short time, especially giving the climbs. You guys must've been hauling on the DHs.

That Nass climb really isn't that bad. I never thought it was. There are enough flat areas in it to recover. I found some of the DT climbs at the WH Rez more grueling.

It appears that Red's GPS clock was a little off. Chris had his GPS running and while his distance and elevation numbers were the same, his ride time was 2.5 hours instead of 2.25 hours. Regardless we did make good time and the DH's certainly helped alot. The last DH went from the highest point right back down to the cars and was over a mile long. It couldn't have taken us more than 6 or 7 minutes to do that DH, we were hauling.