Ride Report: 2012 Berryman Social Ride

Three weeks ago a simple post was placed on the GORC site from Jim Davis who was cross-linking a blog post from Team Virtus. Until that post, I had not heard of this adventure race team. Turns out Bob Jenkins was part of this crew and he had thrown the idea of a Berryman Social Ride into the wind - then it took flight.

No big deal - until the the post was relinked across several sites. On the day of the ride, Saturday, January 14, 2012 the cars kept shuttling in to the Berryman Campground lot. A few GORC folks showed up, including Dave and Jim Bacon and a couple others whose names escape me. Twenty-Five riders suited up, greeted each other and took off clockwise on the Berryman.

 

A cold morning of 23 degrees greeted riders from all over the state.

 

About 25 riders set off together for a social ride put
together by Team Virtus based near Jefferson City

Lisa and I took our time and enjoyed the inch of snow covering the woods and tread. I admired the new reroutes on Berryman and they are definitely a good thing! I used my GPS to place waypoints on my track to pinpoint downed trees and trail sections that needs some GORC love. This was my early reconnaissance on the eastern side of Berryman as GORC is working on an agreement with the Ozark Trail Association to take care of this half of the Berryman.

The big news on the trail is that there's a new reroute that skirts the deadly switchbacks into Brazil Creek campground. The reroute skirts the hillside and plops you out directly across from the trail continuation on the paved road. There's even a spur trail that will take you into the campground. However, there's at least two spots that won't work in the long run due to fall-line into a small creek crossing - but maybe it was not complete when we rode it.

 

The Hoosier Daddys out of Sullivan brought a BBQ pit,
brats, burgers and a pony keg of Blue Moon.
Now that's a social ride!

 

We tried to burn the logs as close to our face
as possible - it was chilly for sure! 

When we arrived back at the campground the Hoosier Daddys from Sullivan were grilling up burgers and brats on their own BBQ pit and had even brought a pony keg of Blue Moon. We thanked them and they said they never went on any big ride without the pit and keg - my kind of people!

We spoke about the upcoming CedarCross endurance cyclocross race with Bob Jenkins and he is the perfect guy to pull this adventure off. Some sponsorship is coming in and he revealed tidbits about the singletrack sections - it's going to be a good time.

By the way, Bar Mitts rock!