For the vows that I break, I'm going to hell!
Visiting all the county highpoints has made for a tough riding season and as I'm accustom to doing I may have not been entirely truthful about the difficulty of some of the rides. (i.e. I am a lying bastard). However the last couple of weeks I have lead some nice flat rides which has redeemed me a little. I thought I was done with the hillier rides for this season but I was wrong.
Laura who has been having chronic problems with the gearing on her Synapse (the bike not the ones in her brain) finally determined the problem was a bracket on the frame that could not be repaired. Because of this she got a new frame at no cost and wanted to try it out on some hills. We had talked about this on the way home from last weeks trip and decided to head up to Califon from Hillsborough. Laura came up with a route that was mostly rolling hills with one steep long climb in the middle. The climb was up Parsonage Lot Road which I had never done although I had planned a ride up that road a few years ago but got sick and asked Laura to lead it for me.
The turn out to the ride was larger than expected there were 8 of us total. The ride toward Califon was on familiar roads past the Solberg air port then across 22 and towards Rockaway Rd. A few more turns we were going up Parsonage Lot. It is a 400 ft climb in 3/4 of a mile. It was a tough hill and I was in the low gears of my triple all the way up but we have done a lot worst this year. It has been a few weeks since I did any climbing and I definitely a little out of shape.
This climb is up the side of Hell Mountain. In keeping with the sprint of doing something stupid we went up a dead end street just to say we got to the top of Hell Mountain. I took my normal high point picture even though this is not a real county high point but at least I can now I can say I have been to the high point of hell.
I didn't know why it was called Hell Mountain. I assumed that it was because of some horrible massacre or series of unexplained deaths. I did a little research and it turns out the name is as stupid as us riding to the top of it. According the the Tewksbury historical society...
"The original German/Dutch settlers named it "Heil" (which means high in German) Mountain as it was the highest part of the area. When the map was being made, the ink dotting the 'i' dripped and it looked like it was Hell instead of Heil"
So it is called Hell Mountain because of an early form of the typo. In any case I don't see us going back to hell as there are easier more scenic ways to get to the same place. From the top of hell we made our way down the mountain using Sawmill Rd and Fox Hill. Fox Hill is a very scenic road but I didn't stop for any pictures because most of the leaves were down and the overcast skies made every thing look murky.
We made a quick stop at the Oldwick General store before heading home. Laura's new bike seems to be working well. You can see more details on the new bike here
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