Circumnavigated Portsmouth Mine Lake

Needed a good breakfast this morning. In our festival packets there was a slip of paper about a local youth center breakfast. Alas, there was no information of where the center is. At the motel, they said it was the Hallett Community Center - it wasn't. So, I parked on Main St. Crosby and ate at the North Country Cafe (where I ate last evening). And knew they had good food.

Day 2 of the Cuyuna Lakes Mountain Bike Festival started with a demo/workshop with Hans Rey. The workshop was held in the "skills" area (also know as Timber Shaft Trail) of the Yawkey Unit.

This was not a demonstration of jumping tables, and such. It was just some awesome riding on extremely technical trails. Hans coached the other riders, how to ride the technical features. The trail they were riding was basically rocks and technical features. At times it was difficult to see where the trail was.

No way I could ride that trail. But Hans "No Way" Rey made it easy.

OK, not time for some riding of my own. After changing into my cycling kit, I headed to the Crosby park to figure out where I could ride. Trails in a large section of the recreation area where not available for open riding because of the cross country race.

It was suggested that I ride some some of the blue (yellow on the map) trails in the Yawkey Unit. Checked out the trails, but most of them were one-way. I did not want to commit to a loop and they had rollers that were a bit too much for me.. The trail back to town was 2-way, but had some steep drop-offs.

Next I drove over to "Boot Camp". The maps shows it is a "green" (easiest) trail. Looked at it, but again, drop-off was a little too much for me. Since yesterday I enjoyed Drag Line yesterday, decided to check it our from the other end.

The first third of the ride on Drag Line was good. Most of the trail I could ride. Would have felt better (and might have ridden that while section) if it was not my first riding the trail.

That quickly changed when I encountered the 1-way section of the trail. Steep climb (and then decent) with a drop-off. I knew that the other end of the trail had another section I could ride, so plugged on, with walking most of that third of the trail.

The last section of the trail was a piece of cake - I had riding it (two way) yesterday. Drag Line nearly follows the north shore of Portsmouth Mine Lake. The Cuyuna Lakes State Trail forms the South end of the lake. The paved trail was a treat after the singletrack. I think I have enough calender quality photos of Drag Line to hold me for several years.

After the ride, i stopped back at the park to pick up one of the bright green festival t-shirt and on to DQ for a Blizzard (I earned them).

Washed the orange dirt on the bike tires. Now time to start packing for the trip home.

Photos of the workshop with Hans Rey are on my photo web site. Copies of the photo file are available for purchase at http://win-photo.photoreflect.com.