idbrian
Crotch Rot
So i went to an interview Friday, North of Boston in Andover, so my girl and i decided to make a weekend trip out of it. We got to ride Harrold Parker State Forest near Andover on Friday, Fort Rock in Exter NH Saturday, and briefly ride Westwood in Guilford CT on Sunday. This is what we found:
Harrold Parker SF: This place is a very underrated destination for MTBing. We stayed in the campground and i would highly recommend this place to anyone looking for a camping weekend where you can ride in and out of your site. I wouldn't think it is a great place for kids as there is nor decent swimming to be found; no lakes. The sites are a mix of very secluded and not so secluded; but all rather large. There are warm showers but for some reason the shower head is 4' high. As far as riding goes, there must be close to 80 miles of trails here. Linking together all singletrack was all too easy, with most of the trails looking to be very freshly cut. The terrain was this very odd mix of flowy and techy terrain. Most of the place resembled the pine covered trails and flow of Kingdom Trails only less ridden, and then out of nowhere are these massive rock gardens and features. We would have taken pictures here except the place was teaming with bird size mosquittos. The second biggest plus aside from the sweet trails was that the mosquittos were big, slow, dumb, and easy to kill. You can't really plot out a course here as the place is a maze of singletrack. You best bet is to use the map to know the boundaries and roads that you cross as a reference and just go exploring. As far as a MTB camping destination goes i think Harrold Parker blows away Jim Thorpe PA.
Fort Rock:The highlight of our weekend. This place is a pretty notorious NH system and rightfully so. This place has amazing maintained and interesting technical trails. This is the coolest technical riding i have seen and ties Blue Mountain as the best place i have ridden. All of the pictures below were taken at Fort Rock. The mosquittos there actually took 5 seconds to find you so we got some shots in. I left this place with some pretty sweet bruises. Similar to Harold Parker, the map is good for knowing and staying within the boundaries. Gas lines, the tunnel, and power lines keep you on track. The place is split in two by a tunnel that goes under a highway.
Westwood: We only rode this place for about an hour and half and we hated what we found. We picked up a map at the local shop which is very accurate but we unfortunately picked the wrong trails to take. What we took were rocky trails with no flow whatsoever; not built for mtbing. We missed the good stuff which we read about later. Should have looked up the good stuff before heading out there. On our way back to the lot i decided to go check out one more trail from the map that looked more promising as i needed to see some reason this place was labeled the best in CT. I found a real trail that was well out of my league. This place has big features. Drops and jumps, some over ten feet. I can see why advanced riders would love it. No pictures here. The mosquittos swarmed here also only they were tiny and terrifying. My girl fell off a bridge and went knee high into stinky swamp mud and was not happy about it. We made our way back to the car beaten down. We need to go back here and ride the good stuff one day.
Now for pics:
Harrold Parker SF: This place is a very underrated destination for MTBing. We stayed in the campground and i would highly recommend this place to anyone looking for a camping weekend where you can ride in and out of your site. I wouldn't think it is a great place for kids as there is nor decent swimming to be found; no lakes. The sites are a mix of very secluded and not so secluded; but all rather large. There are warm showers but for some reason the shower head is 4' high. As far as riding goes, there must be close to 80 miles of trails here. Linking together all singletrack was all too easy, with most of the trails looking to be very freshly cut. The terrain was this very odd mix of flowy and techy terrain. Most of the place resembled the pine covered trails and flow of Kingdom Trails only less ridden, and then out of nowhere are these massive rock gardens and features. We would have taken pictures here except the place was teaming with bird size mosquittos. The second biggest plus aside from the sweet trails was that the mosquittos were big, slow, dumb, and easy to kill. You can't really plot out a course here as the place is a maze of singletrack. You best bet is to use the map to know the boundaries and roads that you cross as a reference and just go exploring. As far as a MTB camping destination goes i think Harrold Parker blows away Jim Thorpe PA.
Fort Rock:The highlight of our weekend. This place is a pretty notorious NH system and rightfully so. This place has amazing maintained and interesting technical trails. This is the coolest technical riding i have seen and ties Blue Mountain as the best place i have ridden. All of the pictures below were taken at Fort Rock. The mosquittos there actually took 5 seconds to find you so we got some shots in. I left this place with some pretty sweet bruises. Similar to Harold Parker, the map is good for knowing and staying within the boundaries. Gas lines, the tunnel, and power lines keep you on track. The place is split in two by a tunnel that goes under a highway.
Westwood: We only rode this place for about an hour and half and we hated what we found. We picked up a map at the local shop which is very accurate but we unfortunately picked the wrong trails to take. What we took were rocky trails with no flow whatsoever; not built for mtbing. We missed the good stuff which we read about later. Should have looked up the good stuff before heading out there. On our way back to the lot i decided to go check out one more trail from the map that looked more promising as i needed to see some reason this place was labeled the best in CT. I found a real trail that was well out of my league. This place has big features. Drops and jumps, some over ten feet. I can see why advanced riders would love it. No pictures here. The mosquittos swarmed here also only they were tiny and terrifying. My girl fell off a bridge and went knee high into stinky swamp mud and was not happy about it. We made our way back to the car beaten down. We need to go back here and ride the good stuff one day.
Now for pics:
