Saturday, September 14, 2013

Bayley-Hazen Military Road Ride (BHMR2)

Bayley-Hazen Military Road

Riding Bayley-Hazen was a great adventure with scenic towns, sparkling ponds, rolling hills, quiet roads, and as the article says, "almost all are dirt. Dirt. Dirt. Dirt."
The bike trip was inspired by the photo and poem above that I saw in Yankee Magazine last year. One line in particular piqued my interest: "I ran with my dog on the Bayley-Hazen Road where it caresses the side of Caspian Lake."
I Googled Bayley-Hazen and found some great resources that I used to plan this ride.
  • In Search of Bayley-Hazen has maps the route, plus a little history.
  • Uraling Vermont's Dirt Roads has excellent photos from the Bayley-Hazen route, and introduces the "hero section" along the VAST 100 snowmobile trail that follows the original Bayley-Hazen Military Road, but was deemed too difficult for the bicycle route. (A Ural is a classic Russian sidecar motorcycle.)
  • Description of the Bayley-Hazen Road covers the history of the BHMR in an eye offending color scheme.
After nearly a year of dreaming about this ride, the adventure began Friday night as I drove to northern Vermont. The exit before Wells River, I stopped at The Colatina Exit restaurant for pizza, and washed it down with a beer called Rastafa Rye. 


Day 1 - Bayley-Hazen Military Road
Link to Day 1 route

 It was dark when I set up my tent on the shore of Ticklenaked Pond, and it was still dark the next morning when I was awakened by pouring rain drumming on the tent.
Rather than ride in the rain, I drove to town for breakfast. After eggs and sausage gravy, I broke camp and began riding in a cold drizzle.


Fortunately (?) the first 8 miles of Bayley-Hazen is uphill, so I quickly warmed up while riding on roads like these.







I stopped for coffee at a General Store on Joe's Pond in West Dansville. I actually posted on photo on Facebook with the comment, "50 more miles to go, but looks like this is going to be an easy ride." Boy, was I wrong. I totally forgot that the two toughest climbs of the day were in the last 20 miles: the hero section on Lowell Mountain and then Hazen's Notch.


 I crested the hill to Cabot Plains Cemetery and found these folks cheering me on and offering me Gatorade, cookies, and cheese. The were hosting the inaugural Cabot Ride the Ridges to benefit a mentoring program, but with only 15 entrants braving the clouds and the cold, they were happy to feed me too.












The dirt roads were very nice for most of the ride, smooth and well-graded with no potholes and very little loose gravel.  After I stopped to take photos of Circus Smirkus at mile 47, the road got a bit crazy.  In fact, I originally went the wrong way because I didn't think it was a road. Once I realized the jeep track was on my route, I bounced down a gnarly double track making pretty good time despite my semi slick 32c tires on my Roubaix road bike. In fact, I caught up with a woman in an SUV that was creeping down the trail at about 5mph. I sat on her bumper until she moved over enough for me to squeeze by and then bombed the rest of the hill at 15mph and quickly left her far behind.











Despite the clouds, there were some great views from the hilltops.
September in northern Vermont is for mowing hay, or splitting and stacking firewood.





I was admiring the ridge line in the distance and calculating that I was making good time and would finish ahead of plan, when I looked more closely and saw the row of wind turbines. Aargh! I had totally forgotten about Lowell Mountain and the "hero section." The mountain looked so far away and so high. Suddenly I was exhausted, cold, and wishing I were snuggled up in bed already.



I planned to eat a hot meal at the Albany General Store before riding the snowmobile trail over Lowell Mountain. Aargh! The store was "Closed due to fire!!" so I ate a Clif Bar and kept pedaling.





As I got closer to Lowell Mountain I realized that Bayley-Hazen didn't head straight over the ridge. Instead it climbs the mountain at an oblique angle, still plenty steep but not impossible.











I said "not impossible" but actually I don't think anyone could ride the hero section on a road bike. I'm not sure even Albert L or Kevin McG could ride it with a full suspension MTB.  I ended up dabbing several times and walking about 100 yards (.05 mile according to my GPS).



Eventually I got over and down Lowell Mountain and back to real roads like the ones below.





Just kidding, I didn't ride this little trail but I did walk up it a ways to "see a man about a horse" as Jay F likes to phrase it.



My bike was excellent for this ride. Super low gearing (34x36) made the steep hills possible. The 34c inverted tread cyclocross tires are the widest I can fit on the bike and provided decent traction and protection from pinch flats.



After going over Hazen Notch for a total of 8041 feet of climbing, I was happy to go downhill the rest of the way to my luxury accommodations. I had the whole hostel to myself and, after a burger and Otter Creek Black IPA at the neighboring Snow Shoe Lodge & Pub, slept on a waterbed underneath a mirrored ceiling (yikes!).





Day 2 - The Return Trip
Link to Day 2 route

I woke up early and walked to Bernie's Restaurant a few minutes after it opened at 6:30am. The temperature was mid-30s according to the regulars already at the counter, drinking coffee and reading the Sunday Burlington Free Press. All four were in their 60s, bearded, and wearing jeans and winter coats. In contrast, I was wearing shorts and flip flops, because I carried the lightest change of clothes I own. (Verified on the kitchen scale.)
I pretended to read the paper while eating my apple walnut pancakes with Vermont maple syrup, but really spent breakfast eavesdropping on their conversation. Topics ranged from the weather (Thursday's thunderstorm blew the roof off the barn, knocked a tree onto the house, and lightening destroyed the anaerobic digester: "Now I can't make electricity." "But you are making shit.") to stacking firewood, to NASCAR. They even mentioned the neighbor woman who killed a bear. "She's only five foot, but the bear was over six." I sort of think they were just fooling me about the bear.
On my way out, I passed another regular coming in. "These guys didn't beat you up?" he asked. "No, the hills beat me up."

 I started riding at 8am and it was still very cold, but the first 5 miles was all up hill and I warmed up after a few miles. The plan for the return trip was to stick to paved roads and take it easy, but GoogleMaps had a different idea.  I constructed the route by clicking on the start and finish points in RideWithGps and let it choose the best cycling route.

 Things started out okay, even when the route turned off VT-100 onto E Hill Rd. Despite the ominous name and the steep start at 15% grade, the road soon leveled off, and I was thinking "This isn't so bad." Then came another step at 20% and soon after the road turned to dirt with more steps at 18% and 15%.

 

 After a fast descent on Eden Mountain Rd, things calmed down for awhile, so when I turned on to Lake Rd I was lulled into expecting a gentle cruise along the shore of Lake Eligo. Then I realized the route was taking me over a ridge between two lakes and next thing I knew I was climbing a narrow, rutted jeep road that shouldn't be allowed to be named road on a map. Harrington Rd climbed at 21% to Lakeview Rd which finally descended to Lake Shore Rd alongside the fabled Caspian Lake.









Back at Joe's Pond, I stopped again at Hasting Store and ate the last of their delicious beef stew. Sliced bread slathered in butter never tasted so good.

GoogleMaps had one more surprise in store for me. My Garmin told me to turn left on Roy Mountain Rd then continue on Jewett Brook Rd ("This road may be seasonally closed"). I noticed a dead end sign ahead of me just before I whipped around the curve and flew down the road towards Harvey Lake. At the bottom I stopped to snap this photo, and then glanced down at the GPS and realized I was off route.
I climbed back up the hill and, sure enough, the correct route was down the "dead end" road.

 Eventually the road turned into a double track, then just sort of petered out in the middle of the woods. Oddly, there was a man standing next to his four by four where the trail ended. "You scared the bejeezus out of me. I never expected to see a bicycle out here." I explained I was trying to get to Wells River and he pointed to a trail through some bushes and said it would take me to a "scrubby little gravel road, but it goes straight up you'll never make it on that bike." He was right about where the trail was, but wrong about my not getting up the scrubby little road.



Foliage

The beautiful fall foliage is still a week or two away, but there were hints of color.








  

Monuments

At the site of Elkins Tavern I met a woman who grew up in the house next door.  In middle school she made a posterboard about the Bayley-Hazen Military Road for history class. Now she lives in Medford, just a couple of miles from my house.





Gotta love those early-American names: Constant Bliss and Moses Sleeper.

Behind the memorial, someone added "Lest we forget the Indians we stole the land from."

Churches and cemeteries










 Covered Bridges



The covered walking bridge above is across from the Hastings General Store.

The Foster Covered Bridge below sits in a pasture across from Cabot Plains Cemetery. The landowner liked covered bridges, so he dug a pond in his field and commissioned a copy of a covered bridge in Marshfield, VT


 Cows and Dogs

There were plenty of cows along the route. The were calm and barely noticed me. The dogs were more like Cujo.

 The first dog chased me up a 12% grade. I wasn't able to outsprint him, so I dismounted and yelled "bad dog" until he got bored and went home.
The second dog was silent but deadly. I was riding along thinking about keeping chickens in my backyard, when I heard a snarl near my ankle. I swerved across the road and did an all out jump to leave Bowser in my dust.
The third was the least sneaky. He started baying as he ran across his long front yard so I started sprinting immediately. By the time he reach the road, he was out of breath and I was out of reach.


This year's ride was a scouting effort. I rode slowly and stopped frequently to take photos. Mid-September was too early for the blazing colors of fall, but in every other way the ride met my expectations.  Bayley-Hazen is definitely worth doing again, perhaps in October next year. I hope some Rippers join me, but it takes a special kind of crazy to enjoy this ride.
Videos

If you just can't get enough of Bayley-Hazen, here are a few short videos from my ride.

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Location: Montgomery Center, VT, USA
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