Somerset Summit

This week we continued our quest to ride to the high point in every county. The ride was a lot hillier than last week since we were riding in Hunterton, Morris, and Somerset county.Besides finding the high point of Somerset county I wanted to do this ride to get in shape for the hills of Bike Virgina.

The weather was somewhat questionable since rain has passed through earlier in the morning and there was a 50% chance of some scattered showers around noon time. When I got up a 6 am I looked at the rain and the forecast and radar and it didn't look that bad. The rain has pass through and was clearing out. I figured any rain that might pop up later would be light and brief so we went ahead with the ride.

What this meant though was that the roads were on the damp side of wet. I had a bigger turn out than expected. Laura, Jack, Pete, Ken, Jim and Barry. I was most surprised to see Jim since he had emailed me telling me he could not make the ride.

We had less than a mile to warm up before the first climb which takes us over 206 and towards Tewsbury. After the initial climb the hills keep coming. Nothing real steep or long but when you're not warmed up it feels a lot harder than it is. Last on my Cocoluxe ride I wasn't in as good a shape and got a nasty stomach cramp after the first 6 miles and had to stop for a few minutes to recover. This year I didn't have any problems and felt pretty good.

I gave everybody a scare when I turned on Hollowbrook. There is a long steep (12-15%) climb on this road that no body likes and doesn't lead to a view. However I turned off onto Homestead Rd before the big climb. I didn't want a mutiny this early in the ride.

We headed to Rockaway Rd one of the nicest climbs you will ever do then on to the familiar roads around Califon. This route was similar to last years Cocoluxe ride but I made a few minor changes to lessen the traffic and do a couple of cool downhills. One of the downhills I added was Coleman Rd. Which is a long straight down hill that I wanted to do again since doing it last year. This brought us to the base of Schooley's Mountain and as close as we would get to the Columbia trail.

I tried a new rest stop which was a Quick Check right as we crossed 206. It was a updated one with a bathroom and decent food so I have another go place to stop when I ride in this area.

After the stop we headed up Pleasant Hill and around the Black River Wildlife Management area. The roads were a little bumpy and beat up here and Barry had a water bottle ejected from his bike. There were no flat spots in this area we were either climbing or descending. There were some really killer down hills here but the wet roads and unfamiliarity made me cautious.

At this point we were only about 10 miles from the end I could have cruised down into Gladstone and would have done that normally but this was a highpoint ride so we had to get to it. This meant a 400 ft climb up to the top of Mine Mountain. This was the longest and hardest climb of the ride. I know putting a climb like this at the end of the ride is mean but my insane bike posse has come to expect it even as they curse me out.

The high point of Somerset is nestled in the middle or some ridiculously large and expensive homes. We actually snuck up  a private driveway to get the high point picture. This put us at 850 ft which is only 13 ft below the actual highpoint which was probably behind us by about 100 ft. To tell you how ridiculous these houses are up here. The house you see in the background of the picture is really just the garage of a much larger house. As we road on we saw an actual castle of a house.

The path back to Gladstone was a decent down a series of roller coaster like hills. Then a brief ride around a lake before we got back to our starting point. A few minutes after we got back Marc showed up. He had got there a few minutes after we left and ended up doing last years route. Usually we never start a ride on time but I guess this time we actually left a couple of minutes early.

After the ride I felt pretty good and didn't cramp up. I plan one more really hilly ride before Bike Virgina but so far the training is going well and I think I'm almost in peak hill shape.

The next few weeks will be about training for Bike Virgina so I won't be doing any club or high point rides until July when we will head to Schooley's Mountain and the high point of Hunterton county.