On my last trip to the area I only rode the Yawkey and Portsmouth area trails. This time I headed over to the Huntington Lake area in the Mahnomen Unit, which has the highest concentration of trails in the CCSRA. If the Yawkey area is a mountain bike playground, then the Huntington area is a mountain bike amusement park. There is a similar feel to the trails, but they exist on a larger scale... more berms, more rollers, more diverse terrain, and more scenic overlooks.
I especially liked riding through the birch forests... Mucker Mountain is a fun, easy trail through some really nice stands of birch.
There are 3 "must ride" trails in the Huntington Lake area: Sand Hog Mountain, Ferrous Wheel, and Screamer. All of them have fast, bermed downhills and are a ton of fun. Screamer was my favorite of the bunch (video of the trail is in the previous post). The trail starts out with a bunch of tall, fast rollers immediately followed by a series of bermed turns. The one thing the Yawkey trails (specifically Bobsled) had over these trails is the tread in the berms... the berms in the Huntington area were often rougher and rockier, whereas the berms on Bobsled were super smooth.
The Huntington trails are basically laid out on 4 hills - Mucker Mountain, Sand Hog Mountain, Hopper Hill and Miner's Mountain. The extensive trails in the area made for a fun day of riding... you can ride one hill once or twice then move on to the next, or ride them (somewhat) consecutively and go back and re-ride your favorite spots.
All of the CCSRA units are accessible via the Cuyuna Lakes State Trail, a 7-mile paved trail running between Crosby and Riverton. It makes getting to and from the different areas of singletack (or town) quick and easy. It's a nice trail, and even has some really scenic spots of its own...
If you are within a few hours of Crosby, MN, and you haven't ridden these trails, I highly recommend checking them out. It is well-worth the drive.
Stopping can be as much fun as riding...
2 comments:
Its also possible to go singletrack between Yawkey and Huntington so that you can be "all singletrack, all the time".
Joshua, thanks, I wasn't very clear in my post. The nice thing about using the paved trail is that you can get somewhere quicker than riding the singletrack... I parked at one end of the trails, rode west down the paved trail, then rode the singletrack back toward my car.
The other option, as you said, is all singletrack.
Next time I go I plan to park at Yawkey, take the CLS trail to the west end of Huntington and head back to Yawkey via the singletrack. Or maybe vise-versa.
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