October Mountain State Forest

Our recent NJ gravel ride was a ton of fun! Thanks everyone for joining us. A few photos are included in this post. You can also check out Steve’s Strava activity for a very quick recap and some additional photos.

New Business: Two upcoming GrNY Rides!

Saturday June 21: October Mountain Gravel Grinder (CT to Berkshires). RSVP here: https://www.strava.com/clubs/513005/group_events/2096935

Saturday June 28: THE TUNNEL and Lake Waramaug (regular 3-speeds ride with three different pace groups and associated ride leaders.) RSVP here: https://www.strava.com/clubs/513005/group_events/2101834

Join us if the routes, pace groups, and distances suit you. The Strava links, above, contain more complete ride information.

Important info before you ride with us: https://grny.org/guidelines

TLDR version…
1) Please take two seconds to fill out the online waiver form on the GrNY website. You only need to do this once.
2) Please RSVP to the ride via the Strava event links.
3) If you’d like to support the club with a few bucks, you’ll find info on how to do that in the link above, but there’s no cost to join the ride or the club itself. After reading our guidelines, and signing the waiver… Just show up and ride!

Questions? You can email Steve at track.smart@gmail.com, but please read all of the information in the above links first.

Disclaimer: GrNY rides are completely informal. You ride at your own risk and are responsible for your own safety. You are expected to be self-sufficient. We cannot guarantee the condition or safety of roads and trails. Nor can we control the behavior of other riders. Our rides are not supported events. We expect everyone to be an experienced cyclist who can repair a flat, carry appropriate food and hydration, and navigate independently if they lose the group.

The spectacular Teetertown Ravine climb from our recent New Jersey gravel ride.

Views from our recent NJ ride.

We were originally targeting Sunday for this ride, but Saturday’s upcoming rain was going to make that a bad idea. Instead, a couple of us took Thursday off and we queued up a different Berkshires century ride for Sunday!

This route (October Mtn) was a gorgeous mix of deep woods, open vistas, smooth dirt, rough dirt, and some double-track and jeep-road adventure mixed in. About 85 miles was new exploration for GrNY, including the lovely October Mountain area. Note that conditions will change greatly if the weather has been wet recently (i.e., expect deep puddles, mud, and stream-bed-like sections), so choose your timing for this route accordingly! We chose a period of dry weather. Also consider whether to bring larger tires for the rougher sections. Steve was on 40mm gravel tires, but he would have appreciated fatter tires in places. Please use caution on the rougher parts, particularly the descents.

The route travels from North Canaan, CT to October Mountain State Forest in Massachusetts and includes all of the dirt from F2G2 (Fall Foliage Gravel Grinder) and a lot more. Expect ~65% dirt roads by distance, but probably 75% dirt by riding time.

Here’s the route (with some warnings you should heed in the route description): https://ridewithgps.com/routes/48256312

Here’s Steve’s Strava Post: https://www.strava.com/activities/12336524065