1. It's in easy day trip range, less than two hours from our house, and about an hour from our friends' house
2. The fast, flowy trails are a nice change from the rooty, rocky technicality of SMBA (which has been in great shape lately, by the way).
After a sweet breakfast at the Big Apple Diner, we pulled in around 11:30. It was hot. Really hot. And the way that Pine Hill is set up, you start climbing from the parking lot, and don't stop climbing until you get to the top right corner of the map:
We rode up and up and up (Lower Ledges to Upper Ledges to Droopy Muffin to Jersey Turnpike to Strong Angel to Stegosaurus). When you finally reach the top, you're rewarded with a pretty sweet view:
We were glad to be done climbing for a while, though. It was time to play. We rode Overlook to Underdog - a fast descent with some fun features. Then we climbed up Salamander to PA4J (really fun going from north to south). All the trails were well marked and fun to ride:
They have a bunch of really cool bridges:
We rode Lonely Rock, Rembrandt's Brush, Halfpipe (favorite trail there), Sisyphus, Svelte Tiger, Vista Trail, and then we started making our way back down. We got a lot of miles in, but it only took us about 2 and a half hours. Must be getting a little faster.
Not much else to say about Pine Hill, except that it's pretty perfect for families, beginners, or just people looking to take a hiatus from breaking their bodies on crazy technical rocks. I had the GoPro with me, so I shot some footage and made a little video. I'm thinking that I'm going to start bringing my video camera mountain biking, just so I can get some different angles to break up the monotony if I decide to make a year end video. Anyway, here's the vid:
Love "the vid."
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