J-Vicious, Clint, and I decided to meet up on Sunday for a 'ride with no restraints' (e.g. no time limits from the spouse, work, night-fall, etc.). The plan was to meet up at the entrance to the Colt's Neck trail behind the ice arena in Reston at 10 o' clock and ride to Great Falls park and back.
Given that it would be one of the hottest days of the year (heat index of 105), I packed some extra energy gels and filled the bladder to the rim not knowing how long we would ride. I threw the trusty C'dale on the roof and headed out. When I got to the arena parking lot, however, I was the only car there...
This is definitely unusual for Colt's Neck as there are almost always at least two or three other cars with racks there in the lot. Anyway, we acknowledged our lunacy and headed off nonetheless.
We made pretty good time out to the soccer fields, although we had to stop and wait for J. Turns out his chain got loose and he lost us up the hill. He turned left toward the campgrounds instead of taking the climb up (it was J's first time on the trail).
Once we got to Route 7 (actually Carpers Farm Way right off of 7) we stopped under a tree to rest and confirm our decision to go on to Great Falls instead of continuing the Colt's Neck loop. This is the point where the Colvin Run trail portion of Colt's Neck meets up with the Difficult Run trail. To do the Colt's Neck loop you actually continue on Difficult Run trail south (straight across Carpers Farm Way). We crossed Route 7 to take Difficult Run north.
I haven't been on this part of Difficult Run trail in a long time and forgot just how muddy it is. This part of the trail really never dries out...even in near drought conditions. From this point on it was a mud-fest. At one mud hole I watched Clint and J try to clear by skirting the outside edge. Each got caught up in the sludge and put a foot down in the mud. Well I thought I would just go straight through the deepest part of the mud-hole. Often the center of a muddy area is really more firm than the sides. This was not the case here, however. I rolled into the center and the bike just totally stuck right in the mud. I put a foot down and sunk so I hopped off the bike to try to get my feet on dry ground. The mud was so thick that the bike just stood there straight-up and down for about 10 seconds before slowly falling to the side.
We continued on along the eastern bank of Difficult Run (is this a river or a stream?) until we came to a section where the trail diverges. For those who don't know the Difficult Run trail is also the northern section of the Fairfax Cross County Trail (CCT). Fairfax Trails and Streams, the group that does the majority of the work on the CCT, has rerouted some sections of the CCT to (at least in theory) drier land. In some of these places the old trail remains and eventually meets up with the rerouted section.
At one point the trail diverged such that we had the option of staying on the newer trail along the eastern bank or cutting across Difficult Run to the old trail along the western bank. Clint remembered the old trail from his past so he was pushing for that option. Plus the extra challenge of barreling down the side of the river bank and cutting across the river to the other side was too much for him to resist. J and I were skeptical as the river was moving fairly quickly and looked like there was a deep channel in one section. Clint decided to do it anyway and we captured this video of Clint taking a swim. (I'd send it to America's Funniest Videos if they would take a digital file or DVD. Would you believe they only take VHS tapes?! With all the video cams and cell phones taking videos these days they are totally missing out on some hilarious moments.)
Click the image below to view a streaming video or download it to your computer. It's only 18 seconds and just under one megabyte in windows media (.wmv) format.
After you watch the video you will see why we ended up staying on the eastern bank at this point in the ride. There is a section of this trail that requires you to scramble over some serious rocks and obstacles as it runs up along a cliff next to the river bank. If you want to avoid this section you should cross Difficult Run. There are some better crossing points as we found out on the return (but you will have to keep your eyes open).
After a few more river crossings we ended up at the Georgetown Pike entrance to Difficult Run trail. There is some serious construction going on here and we decided that we did not want to make the final river crossing here into Great Falls Park, so we headed back.
Ok...this post is already way too long...The return trip was rather uneventful. Surprisingly we never really noticed the heat until we got back to the parking lot where the sun was baking. We re-hydrated and headed to Baja Fresh where some young chickies were smitten by the big-bad mountain bikers. Actually, they were really interested in J...but, hey, Clint and I had changed out of our rugged mtb clothes into our civvies. Tip: don't change after a ride if you want to create some interest with the ladies!
