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| John & I had an epic ride Saturday. John has rode up here on the Mohawk trail before and he's tried to talk me into joining him , but I always wussed out because of all the climbing. So this past December, he came up with a shorter version,that only had one serious climb, so I agreed to do it with him. |
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| So the two of us headed out early, for over a 2 hour drive, to reach our starting point. John with his bad knee and me,still about 30 lbs heavier than I want to be. We did have an out, if we couldn't make it up to the summit. We could turn around and ride back down to the start, which I think neither of us were going to be willing to do. |
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| We had cool mid 50 degree temps and some cloudy skies at the start, perfect for a hilly ride. Plus John designed the ride so we had about 10 miles of retaliative flat roads to warm up. If I have to climb immediately on a ride, I'm toast the rest of the ride,I always need at least 5 miles of warm up, before my legs feel good. |
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| There's a lot of history about the Mohawk Trail, but I'm not going into it here. You can Google it and you'll find all kinds of info. |
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| As we started to climb, clouds and fog started to roll in. By the time we reached the summit, we could barely see at times. |
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| A lot of the roads and bridges were washed out in this area, from Hurricane Irene a year ago. This is the last bit of reconstruction still going on, on the trail. |
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| I'm looking down the trail, from where we just rode up.We stopped here for a rest. |
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| This road is our return leg back down. I turned my lights on, so I could see and be seen by any vehicles. |
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| Here I am, celebrating after completing the climb. |
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| This is the east portal of the Hoosac Tunnel. It was built through the Hoosac mountains, because the trains couldn't make it up the steep climbs. |
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| Even after we came back down, we still had some climbing to do, here and there. |
