Blinding Salamanders

Well tonight I hit The Woodlot at night with Tim and Denise. It was lightly raining on the way up and from time to time there were flashes of Thunder heard off in the distance, but nothing other than a bit of rain really developed while we rode the trail.

As we were pedaling our way up, Tim blurted out, "Hey look, a salamander". Now I've seen one salamander in the 5 years riding up here but no more than a minute later, he blurts out, "hey look....another one!". The second one was twice the size with a big pot belly.

We climbed up to Krazy Karpenter which Tim is now beginning to work on regularly a geared up for the ride down. I had on my 'loamburner' light set-up. Dual 50W with a 4-LED light and a HID on the bars. It was literally like riding in the daylight for me.

So far Tim has fixed the classic log ride at the top and is beginning to fix a skinny section at the beginning of the trail. Karpenter is all about old school technical riding of ladders, logs, skinnies and the occasional drop here and there. None of the flavor will be lost with this re-vamp of the trail but new things may appear from time to time adding to the character of this classic.

Tim, Denise and I made our way to Upper Toadstool that Denise and Greg have been maintaining for some time. It is such a great mid level trail that runs really well in dark.

We then hit B-Line for a bit of a change. 100% natural is the current theme.

So after the certified organic run down B-Line, we traversed over to Snakes and Ladders where saw two more salamanders. Snakes was running really well. Right now there is no water collecting on the trail and the trail for the most part is in good shape. Likely within a few weeks I will need to do the once over to fix any drains and wet spots on the trail. Riding such a familiar trail at night is a riot with others that know the line as well as you. We were hitting everything in sight until Tim hit a rock and cut his tire.

After the tire was fixed, we all rode a bit faster pace down to the bottom as it was now getting late and we were approaching the 3 hour ride time with all our stops. Shotgun was a blast with all the greenery encroaching on the trail and ripping half blind on a trail is a hoot.

At the bottom we each packed up and set sail for home. Another glorious ride in the dark.