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Old 12-14-08, 10:05 PM
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jboyd
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Location: Southern Illinois
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Bikes: Giant "Rainier"

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Fantastic Day - 3 Trails - 2 States

My local riding bud Jarvis and I had a great day today. We rode an elusive forest service trail that all the local riders talk about, but no one seems to have had much information about. The best part about the ride was that it included a full three miles of ridge line without any drop, and very little Climb. This is very unusual in this area.

The cool thing was that when this trail was in the books, we were another state and just 10 minutes away from two well planned Mountain Bike trails in Cape Girardeau, Mo, so we had 2 hours of daylight left and maximized it

Below is a re-post of this trip that I posted on my local mountain bike forum. I am too tired to rewrite this. There is a link to some pics in the post below.

Thanks, Jay
...........................................

Rode the Grapevine today. I was wondering why I was having so much trouble finding info on the "Grapevine Trail" that we had heard Albert speak so highly of. The Forest Service name for the Trail is actually "Horse Creek Trail".

Horse Creek is a 6 mile loop. It starts high and runs a ridge line for the first 3 miles, with only small climbs, then it drops into a valley to Horse Creek. The trail then runs north along the creek for a couple of miles, never changing level until a forest service CLIMB out and return to the Trail Head.

My bud Jarvis and I were the participants. The ridge line trial was a little soft, at least for me and my 250#, and I have not switched out my tires from my summer urban, suburban, County Rock's and so my climbs sucked too, with slips and spins early. The trail had very little deadfall, and now is a great time to ride it, especially since you can see out across the Mississippi River bottoms to the west and south.

We ran GPS on this trail, but here is the Forest Service Topo on the trail.
http://www.fs.fed.us/r9/forests/shaw...orse-creek.pdf

Here are some pics from the ride: http://s425.photobucket.com/albums/pp331/homeairdirect/

The really cool thing about this trail, is that it is 10 minutes from two Cape Girardeau mountain bike trails. Delaware Park off of Lexington Ave is a great little park and play. the creek area has dozens of steep, fast crossings and the trails have some nice corner banks for some inertia rides
Klaus Park is about 5 minutes north of Cape on the way to Jackson and is a new set of trails that the local riders have been building. Klaus is crazy pristine and you can almost see the entire park from everywhere, but you can still get lost on the trails. Really good design. All fast single track and very little technical.

We hit all three trials today and I am wonderfully exhausted
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