Let's hope that useless over pampered ground hog call Punxsutawney Phil is right and that we will have an early spring this year. Over the past few weeks the polar vortex has descended a couple of times to produce some really cold weather before getting blown away by a warm south wind. This had made if and where to ride a little harder over the past could of weeks.
Last weekend was a hike and bike weekend. We could have done another canal ride on Saturday but for a change of pace I decided to get the normal posse together to do a hike in the Sourlands Mountain Preserve. We did a 7 mile hike along the ridge trail. It was just below freezing when we started the hike. I got Jack, Ricky, Pete and Laura to join me.Even though I have lived in this area for almost 30 years I had never been to this park. The park has a small lake by the parking lot and hiking trails through the woods and hills of the Sourlands from a mile to about 7 miles.
The land is very rocky with a lot of little stream and water flowing through the rocks. I'm glad the ground was frozen or it would have been a muddy mess. The trails are well marked and there are some interesting rock formations and other things to see along the way.
We came across this shallow frozen pond. The white blotches are frozen methane from the decomposing leaves. In arctic climates there can be multiple layers or methane bubbles frozen in a lake from top to bottom which can produce and interesting 3D affect. Take a look at this video for an example.
The hike brought us through and around a lot of large rocks including the Devils Half Acre Bolders. These were kind of interesting but are mostly just a bunch of large rocks that you can climb around or over. The most interesting thing we found was some tree snot. There was a lot of talk of what it actually might be but it looked like snot to me. Here is Laura looking it up on her phone.
The was a moderately difficult hike mostly because of all the little rocks and roots on the trail. It would have been real easy to twist and ankle and fall if you didn't look where you were going.
On Sunday it was warm enough to get out on the road. Jack and I did a just under 40 mile ride in and around Clarksburg. It was good to be out on the road again. When you get temps over 40 you have to take advantage of it as you never know when it is going to turn cold again.
And we did get another blast of arctic air this week with lows in the single digits and highs barely in the teens. It wasn't as bad as Chicago where they had to set fire to the trail tracks to clear off the snow. Whenever there is this type of cold you get the usual weather people going out and showing how cold it is by throwing boiling water in the air and having come down as snow. Then you get the people who use this one cold event to say that global warming is a hoax even thought global warming is probably causing these quick cold snaps as this article points out.
It did warm up just enough for Saturday to think about doing a ride. It was still cold on Saturday and we had got a dusting of snow on Friday but this type of weather is the perfect time to go to Pennypack park. Pennypack park is a beautiful park along the Pennypack creek. It has a paved trail that you can ride on from north east Philly all the way to the Delaware. If you want a scenic winter landscape this is the place to come.
Still it was worth being a little cold for the view. This was probably the best winter scenery I have seen at Pennypack. There was just enough snow to blanket everything with out making the path too dangerous to ride on. The paved path had about a half inch of snow on it but it was not icy and were were able to get up the hills if we were "careful"
The trail itself is easy to follow and with out too many people out today we quickly made our way down the trail. Most of it looked like these pictures above. We stopped occasionally to take pictures but none of them do it justice. I would have taken more pictures but my battery quickly froze up and lost power so I had to put in back in my jacket to warm it up so it could take more pictures.
Eventually we made it down to the Delaware which was semi frozen.
Then it was back up the trail the same way we came. It had warmed up a little and some of the snow on the trail had melted to the point that we could see the paved surface. I managed to get a shot of the small waterfall near a bridge. I take this shot every time and it is always a little different.
This doesn't really capture how good this actually looked maybe one of these years I will get a shot that I'm happy with.
We all made it back to the start with out any problems. I always worry about falling in cold and icy conditions. I will mention Bob did fall but is was actually when we crossed a road with out any snow on it and he fell trying to go up a curb. He still getting use to the new mountain bike so falling it all part of the learning process.
Even though it was a cold ride I'm glad I made the trek to Pennypack as it really was a beautiful ride and one of the few places you can safely ride through a frozen snowy landscape.
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