Just came back from Mt Snow, VT

Took the family to Mt Snow last week for a little vacay and of course brought my bike. Learned a couple of things: Biking is not my daughter's favorite activity, playing in the pool with her father is most important to her. My youngest son hates riding in the Burley trailer, and that leaves my oldest son who does love riding in the Burley Trailer.

Mt Snow is funny, they won't publish any of their trail maps online but once you get one you figure out right away it sux anyway. Mt Snow for DHing is great, but their trail system is FUBAR. It's so easy to get lost because only the trail junctions are marked and there are no markers once you go into a trail. It was really confusing. Hopefully things are better marked for the racers.

Climbing Mt Snow is a biatch. I should have just taken the chairlift and then road down but instead I tried to climb to the summit only to find that it was closed and of course no one at the bottom said any thing.

Mt Snow also has property for XC riding to get there you have to ride out three miles on this multi-use trail or put your knobbies on the hardball (no thanks). I didn't get to ride these trails because Mt Snow expects you to pay for them the same if you were riding the mountain. What little I saw of them was so-so to say the least.

My big ride was the Harriman Trail, which was a deserted railroad bed of a 100 years past. It's a bucolic ride but for a train buff or an engineer its orgasmic. There are ties still in the middle of the road, huge ridge cuts, and earthen trestles 100 feet up. Since it was summer you could barely see the Harriman Reservoir but all in all the 7 miles out and 7 miles back is still a great workout and a ride through history.

There are numerous trails that come off the Harriman Trail that I didn't have time to check out and then there is the Harriman Loop with encompasses single track, the old railroad bed, and numerous routes on the other side of the reservoir, including a stop by the ledges (you don't need your bathing suit to swim there, :wink: :wink:). The loop is approximately 30 miles and 3000 feet of climbing. Perfect training for the VT 50.

The other thing I wanted to do but didn't have time was to do the Sommerset Reservoir Trail, which is another railroad bed from the Deerfield River Railroad, which was a series of narrow gauge beds up and down the Deerfield River valley that brought logs down to a big mill and transfer yard at Mountain Mills, which is located at the top of the Harriman Trail. There, the lumber was transfered to the main line to head to mills further south. Next year perhaps.