liv2day
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A month hiatus finally came to an end last weekend and I was able to get out with a couple buddies for a rip out of Lyda Camp. I owe a shout out to Bill'sin Salem for being awesome to work with, I needed bearings swapped in my linkage and they did a great job and were completely fair on the price.
The forecast was perfect and ended up being perfecter (lol) once in the coast range - temperature inversion had it nice and warm with sunny skies. The loosely organized plan was to start off on Tomans Knob and make our way to Benny Hill and Payne as my buddy had talked about 'em plenty of times, but I'd never had the pleasure of riding either trail.
Side note to heading up Tomans; after a bunch of deliberation, I decided to purchase a set of the Fasst Flexx bars to help with some wrist/elbow/shoulder/general arm issues that have crept up since jumping back into this sport. It was tough to get past the initial acquisition hump, but holy cats what a great investment. I had my first outing with the bars during a Mill ride at the end of December and ran the stock setup (hard compression/rebound). They felt great then and definitely helped with arm pump, fatigue, and overall comfort during the ride. For this ride, I swapped to soft compression and left the hard rebound. That combination was fantastic and the bars do an outstanding job of relieving stress on the wrists, etc. Climbing up the rocky section of Tomans had always given me fits; it was much easier. The bars absorb enough to make riding that rough stuff much more pleasurable and they definitely help extend the length I'm able to ride before growing fatigued.
After heading up Tomans and making our way along Hogsback, we bombed the upper section of Morrel's and what a blast, can't believe I'd only been down the lower section previously.
We hit the bottom of that and then traversed the various sections of Archers with the intent of trying to hit the Benny Hill / Payne "loop". After some navigational issues (LOL), we eventually found our way to Benny Hill. Along the way, we enjoyed Buckup, one or two sections of Chain Breaker, and another trail that didn't have a sign, but made me really glad we were going down instead of up given how rutted it was
Benny Hill was awesome, great piece of single track that wound its way through the woods, over a couple small bridges, with enough challenge to keep it entertaining. Just up the road from Benny's exit, we hit Payne. My first suggestion for the next time is to tackle this sooner than 32 miles into the ride...lol. My second suggestion is to rename it Pain...lol. I should have known what I was in for at the first switch-back, which essentially did a 180 on the 30 foot leg. It actually wasn't too bad, but it definitely kicked my arse. I didn't help myself by taking a decent header off a root step and then simply falling over a couple times when trying to navigate a couple of the switch backs.
We eventually made it to the top and made the executive decision to backtrack on Archers with the goal of hitting the last segment to connect on a spur and take Elk Bellow (or Lyda Bypass...not really sure which) back to staging. Knowing that the "A" section of Archers was a boulder infested, snotty clay nightmare would have been good intel prior to attempting that climb...LOL. As we were struggling to make it to the top, a 4WD quad came rumbling by without issue - about the only time I'd wished for 4 wheels and 4WD...lol. We turned tail after a good attempt to ascend and just headed back to staging...have to catch Elk Bellow next time.
All in all, we covered 41ish miles and enjoyed an outstanding day in the woods. Tough to complain when we're riding at the end of January in sunshine and temps in the 50s. Can't wait to do it again
As usual, lot of video to waste time. The header I took has a good slow-mo in Payne I
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avVM7X3Ljck
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KhX0Q1tVNI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WS4k_I0BdU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxYzUdVbb1Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyMRt0IaC18
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cD5fTCCe6Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiEJl3XP6so
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iimWmHBSGg0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZ617Nsz1dU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqPhFC8uw2I
The forecast was perfect and ended up being perfecter (lol) once in the coast range - temperature inversion had it nice and warm with sunny skies. The loosely organized plan was to start off on Tomans Knob and make our way to Benny Hill and Payne as my buddy had talked about 'em plenty of times, but I'd never had the pleasure of riding either trail.
Side note to heading up Tomans; after a bunch of deliberation, I decided to purchase a set of the Fasst Flexx bars to help with some wrist/elbow/shoulder/general arm issues that have crept up since jumping back into this sport. It was tough to get past the initial acquisition hump, but holy cats what a great investment. I had my first outing with the bars during a Mill ride at the end of December and ran the stock setup (hard compression/rebound). They felt great then and definitely helped with arm pump, fatigue, and overall comfort during the ride. For this ride, I swapped to soft compression and left the hard rebound. That combination was fantastic and the bars do an outstanding job of relieving stress on the wrists, etc. Climbing up the rocky section of Tomans had always given me fits; it was much easier. The bars absorb enough to make riding that rough stuff much more pleasurable and they definitely help extend the length I'm able to ride before growing fatigued.
After heading up Tomans and making our way along Hogsback, we bombed the upper section of Morrel's and what a blast, can't believe I'd only been down the lower section previously.
We hit the bottom of that and then traversed the various sections of Archers with the intent of trying to hit the Benny Hill / Payne "loop". After some navigational issues (LOL), we eventually found our way to Benny Hill. Along the way, we enjoyed Buckup, one or two sections of Chain Breaker, and another trail that didn't have a sign, but made me really glad we were going down instead of up given how rutted it was
Benny Hill was awesome, great piece of single track that wound its way through the woods, over a couple small bridges, with enough challenge to keep it entertaining. Just up the road from Benny's exit, we hit Payne. My first suggestion for the next time is to tackle this sooner than 32 miles into the ride...lol. My second suggestion is to rename it Pain...lol. I should have known what I was in for at the first switch-back, which essentially did a 180 on the 30 foot leg. It actually wasn't too bad, but it definitely kicked my arse. I didn't help myself by taking a decent header off a root step and then simply falling over a couple times when trying to navigate a couple of the switch backs.
We eventually made it to the top and made the executive decision to backtrack on Archers with the goal of hitting the last segment to connect on a spur and take Elk Bellow (or Lyda Bypass...not really sure which) back to staging. Knowing that the "A" section of Archers was a boulder infested, snotty clay nightmare would have been good intel prior to attempting that climb...LOL. As we were struggling to make it to the top, a 4WD quad came rumbling by without issue - about the only time I'd wished for 4 wheels and 4WD...lol. We turned tail after a good attempt to ascend and just headed back to staging...have to catch Elk Bellow next time.
All in all, we covered 41ish miles and enjoyed an outstanding day in the woods. Tough to complain when we're riding at the end of January in sunshine and temps in the 50s. Can't wait to do it again
As usual, lot of video to waste time. The header I took has a good slow-mo in Payne I
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avVM7X3Ljck
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KhX0Q1tVNI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WS4k_I0BdU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxYzUdVbb1Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyMRt0IaC18
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cD5fTCCe6Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiEJl3XP6so
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iimWmHBSGg0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZ617Nsz1dU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqPhFC8uw2I
Especially nice as it's 12 degrees today with a high of zero on Sunday
I know my buddy that lives in WI runs into the same issue back there; he has to travel hours and hours to get access to decent trails. We have it pretty good out here, 1.25 hours from our home and boom - I'm there.
