Shenipset State Forest Ride

I met up with Norm Tremblay, Norm Jr., Dave Violette, Scott Weiting and Ben from Bicycle Concepts today to ride Shenipset in the Somers/Stafford Springs area of CT. The parking lot is on Gulf Road, I think technically in Somers.

This past week I tried to sell the ride to other folks in my regular Wednesday ride, but the best I could do was get a maybe out of Bryan Quach. I was pretty sure based upon our meeting time there was no chance in hell that we'd see him. I was right. Ron Erickson pretty emphatically told me Shenipset sucks. I think Ron sucks for saying that. If you read this Ron, I'd like to tell you that you suck.

We met for 8 am. No sign of Quach. No sign of Buddha, Jesus, Allah, Zeus or Thor either. I guess he was right. It was an ungodly hour.

Bright sunshine. And CHILLY. Probably low 40s at best. I carpooled with Dave and he alleges he thinks he saw a little ice around the edges of West Thompson Lake on the way over, although I find this allegation suspect. I decided to go short bibs and a short sleeve jersey hoping it would warm up in pretty short order.

We headed into the trails down a rooty, rocky path at a pretty hot pace. By the time we hit the first stop, Dave had started having mechanical issues. His chain had gone over the big cog in the back and became lodged between his cassette and spokes. Apparently serious enough that the only remedy was pulling the rear wheel off to get it out.


We kept on and at maybe mile two hit the first real mud pit. There were remnants of a wooden bridge across it that looked like had started waving the white flag about four years ago. I think you would have been safer traveling across the backs of disappearing turtles.

I followed Norm Sr and Ben through a line that ran between puddles, but we became clogged up and I ended up dabbing. My left foot landed squarely in muddy, muddy puddle and sat there for about five seconds while I let the other behind me pass by. Fortunately by this point it had started to warm up. I have to say that this might be the first ride this year where I've gotten a soaker and not had cold feet the rest of the ride.

About a half mile further up the trail we hit a really tough, albeit short climb. Pretty washed out, but I dropped into granny and pushed up it. Five of the six of us were waiting at the top for Dave to crest, but after about five minutes I went back down after him. He had his his chain stuck in his spokes again. We got it out, but on closer inspection he realized the casing his limit screw goes into was cracked. Dave made the rest of the ride, but always very cognizant of where his gearing was. On the bright side, I was able to make it up that super steep washed out climb a second time.

We came to a point when we finally crossed a dirt road where we started to hit some pretty sweet hucking terrain. Lots of side paths that only went off to hit a rock ridge and meet right back up with the main trail. The beautiful thing is that Norm and Scott knew exactly where and what every one of them was. Seems like they even made a couple of them.

We had a couple of tricky climbs, one with a hairpin turn leading to a super narrow ledge of trail that kept going up. Once we made the top we came down and then hit a flat, really rocky section, reminiscent of Douglas (my kind of trail). I was following Norm with Ben behind me when Scott flew by on the side. I heard Ben yell at me to reel him in and took off with Ben hot on my tail. We bombed a beautiful section that seemed to go on forever in very tight fashion. It was friggin' awesome!

It wasn't long after that when all of a sudden I saw car in front of us. Our cars! I looked down and saw 7.37 on the cyclometer. I wasn't ready to be done. I asked Norm if we were heading across to the other side of Gulf Road and it sounded like he didn't plan on it. It didn't take much convincing though. We went across and did three more miles with some serious climbs before ending with just over 10 miles. All in all a great ride.




Shenipset does not suck. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

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