Mountain Biking, Pocahontas State Park

Trip Report

Pocahontas State Park Mountain Bike Ride

Wednesday 6/10/2015

The trip began at the parking lot of the Heritage (science) Center, just around the corner from the Civilian Conservation Corp Museum, Pocahontas State Park. (see Pocahontas SP Entrance Sign picture)

The ride starts with a short bike ride up a rolling fire road (see Rolling Fire Road picture) which leads you to the trail head (see Trail head sign picture).  The conditions were warm and humid, but not too bad.  The trails were wet in only a few places, but mostly just damp dues to recent rains so they were in great shape, overall.

Just beyond the trail head trail it forks to three choices of trails: Green (easy) about 2.1 miles; Blue (intermediate) about 4.7 miles, and Red (advanced) 2.6 miles.  Since this was the first ride of the season I chose the green trail which is my favorite let’s-get-back-into-mountain-biking trail. This trail has a great balance of winding trails (see Winding Single Path picture), a few strenuous up-hills and nice gentle down-hills—a really great, expertly planned trail.  What I like best is that it has a few rocky sections (see rocks and bridges picture), about 6 bridges, (see bridge over stream picture). 

Because this is the first ride of the season, I had a few brief stops to catch one’s breath, wipe the sweat, relieve the burn, and intake some fluids as well as take in the sights and sounds of the forest. 

At the end of the trail I had enough energy to explore the fire road for ½ mile since it is a pretty nice ride and large areas of ferns (see Ferns and Fire Road picture).

The ride took just 45 minutes and it was a great way to get back into mountain biking as well as end the day.  More rides are going to be posted soon.

I have an extra Mountain Bike, so no excuses for not trying out this trail!

A nice bike ride about 5 miles long (40 minutes) which will challenge you without making you wish you stayed home!  There are lots of great mountain biking trails in Pocahontas but we'll go on the Fendly Station Road which rings the entire park.

http://www.dcr.virginia.gov/state_parks/poc.shtml

http://www.dcr.virginia.gov/state_parks/documents/pocahontas.pdf