Low Trees at Mohican

The Paragon is currently missing its fork as I await some new fork seals.  Everything else is ready to go for the service work, I just need the seals.  It's also missing handlebars as I've decided the Bontrager Big Sweep bars are not compatible with.... me.  So, when Ryan and I were making plans for an Independance Day ride I knew it would be on the Karate Monkey.

We left for Mohican before 8.  The plan was to ride most of the loop and then I would meet the family for a picnic lunch and play in the river.  We parked at the Discovery Forest parking lot and hit the trail.  It was instantly obvious something had happened in the woods.  The trail was littered with leaves, sticks, and branches.  Before long we encountered a blow down obstructing the trail.

Tree down!

The Monkey was feeling really good.  I was running about 20 pounds front and rear on the 2.4" Ardent tires.  The tires were hooking up and providing a lot of confidence, plus my legs were feeling good on the singlespeed.  The climb up Mount Doom was better than I expected.

Off the bike again, navigating

another blow down.

As we continued through the loop we encountered more and more blown down trees.  The debris across the trail was constant.  It sounded like riding on rice crispies at times, due to the snapping twigs beneath tires.  Between the mile 19 road crossing and the campground there were countless trees.  Somewhere in this section we came across two trail runners who commented on the down trees.  They live in Loudonville and said the damage was mostly from the storm this past Sunday night.  Strong winds and hail, up to quarter sized, caused the damage.

Did I mention it was hot and humid?  By the time we reached the campground I had drained my 70 ounce Hydrapak of Heed.  For the sake of time we were going to take the short loop connector and save a few miles, but I needed some water first.

Stopped at a campground shower house

for liquid refills.

Up the short loop connector and back on the loop we experienced more of the same.  Leaf littered trails and more blown down trees.  It was interesting to see how big some of the blow downs were.  Some of these trees were pretty good size.

A large, downed pine.

The last climb delivered us to the group camping area.  Ryan turned right to his car and I turned left to head down, down, down the road to the covered bridge.  KT had setup picnic paraphernalia and the kids were having fun.  Daniel was eager to go back into the river and I was ready for a cool off.  We made our way out to the faster moving water and laid down for a while.  Happy July 4th!

 Daddy raft.