Little Kidney Lake; Car Wrecks and D606 Grunt...

I set out for a solo ride today deciding to explore some of the trails that we often fly past without a thought on to "better things".  It was great fun, taking a bit more time and navigating some local trails which were quite technical at times.  It took me a few minutes to get my "biking legs" back, and by the end of the trip I trusted Siouxsie despite the rain and slick muddy conditions. 

An overview of today's tiddly ride...

First I wanted to try the "Stool Loop" which sits behind a yellow "biosolids" warning gate.  It would be fun for a ride after work just to blow some steam off, particularly because there is a large gravel/sand/dirt pit in there to play on.  Great fun!

 



Then I decided to hunt for a lake that Andy has been trying to get to: Little Kidney, or, after having seen it, Atrophied Kidney!  It's really a little pond, and if it does have fish, I imagine they're quite small.  It's very snag infested.  Getting there though was great fun, and I had decided once I found it I would continue on through to the main Sundew Connector logging road and turn off to fish Kidney Lake proper...Well that was the plan!



So I turned right at T1 just after the pools that we usually take en-route to the Tank Traps.  This was a great ride!

Turning at T1 the trail is pretty easy until you get to the car wreck

God knows what it was, but it looks 60's vintage...A testament to the once large logging roads which are now quite crowded in. 

Just after the wreck the road splits.  The left side is what I call the "Gully Shoot".  Stupidly, I took the risky right route down - what I call the "Suicide Solution" with a foot of path to ride across and a dropoff on the right side -  in preference to the Gully Shoot: as I said, stupid.  I made it down, and was concentrating so hard I never noticed a little lake I was passing.  I entered a maze of tracks in a old clear-cut which is now well aldered in.  Ross Collicut has posted plenty of photos taken in this area.  They must have been taken a few years ago now, because things are very different...  I thought I was through to the main Sundew Connector and could even hear vehicles whipping by at some points.  In fact when I got to "No Way Through" I could see a truck and four quads chugging along 60m or so in front of me: I was almost opposite the Kidney Lake turnoff.  But there was "no way through".  Walking would have made it, but the dead fall and brush is vastly different from the 2005 image presented by Google Earth below...



If you go to GE, click on the picture icon.  You will see a picture of Ross Collicut's yellow dirt bike, stopped by pile of wood (Thanks Logging CO...why?).  If you branch right a short way after this, you can get to where I was stopped...That road after the logs is completely veg'd in now, and there's absolutely no way through....Not even the quads have tried....I BET they couldn't do it. I double-dog dare them to try!

 

So after being skunked on every trail that I tried in the clearcut, I decided to head back and try to find that darn Atrophied Kidney Lake.  I knew it was somewhere near when I had entered the clear cut, so I back tracked.  This time, I decided to ride up the Gully-Shoot.  A month ago I couldn't have done this.  The grade was so steep, littered with tree stumps and debris, and the mud wet and chewed by recent quad activity that I would have had to gassed it up at insane speeds and hoped...But the D606 just let Siouxsie chug up without a hitch.  Amazing - there is one curve that is so steep that I was sure the front wheel would ride up, but nope, up she leapt.  Great.  Down might be an issue, but I don't think so - the tires were really sticky.

 

 



You can see the two routes that I took through...take the one closest to the lake.  It was as I shot through the gully that I spied the lake I had missed on the way down.

 

 

It doesn't look much, as the little fisheye lens seems to flatten it out, but this was a fairly steep ascent.  Thankfully the D606 didn't so much as hiccup.

Below.  After retracing my track, just prior to the car wreck, I played on some single track mtn bike paths.  But they got quite twisty and it became obvious that I should turn back like a good little chicken...

 

 

After that, I retraced my route back out to the Doumont Main and headed towards the tank traps.  This time though, before I got to the traps, just after the river rock stream bed, I turned left and headed through what was an amazingly easy road which took me to a corner on the Sundew Main.  I'd always wondered where that went!  The map below shows - in yellow - the usual tank-trap trail. 

This picture is of part of the path through...

 Which disintegrates rapidly to this below:

But the D606 made easy pickings of this stuff... 

 Below: where you join the Sundew Connector

Below: What the entrance looks like from the Sundew connector...I've seen it many times before...but never had the curiosity to play...