Extra Lake Trips and a Dark Ride

Wow, what a fun ride that was! Mountain biking is back on my repertoire of outdoor activities as of Tuesday!

Accompanying me on this adventure were friends Moe and Peter.

The weather turned out excellent, turning from a cloudy 50 degree morning to a nearly clear 70 degree afternoon and mild evening.

First stop was Wakefield Park to travel around Lake Accotink. Along the way, we tested out many different off-road trails, some even ending in small ponds! After exploring a bit, we headed to Lake Accotink to loop around the lake. The ground was still moist after the previous day’s rain, so there were plenty of puddles with which to test out my new front and back wheel fenders. The back fender, which is also a frame for storage, worked wonderfully. The same could not be said for the front fender, which popped off the front fork numerous times until I just stored it in my backpack. Looping around to the beach/recreation area, we checked out the dam that was there.

Upon reaching the dam, I realized that I had forgotten my sunglasses whilst taking a picture earlier on the trail! I quickly biked around a third of the lake back to find it, then caught up with Moe and Peter to retrace our steps to the dam. Once again at the dam, our next task was to tackle a really steep hill on the trail going up from the left side of the dam. Switching into a lower gear and building a lot of momentum won the day for me with the hill. Peter and I took a water break while Moe checked out the train bridge in front of the dam. After joining back up, we saw some fun little paths that posed a few challenges for my novice self, with me having to take a few “second looks” before trying them. All in all, it was a good time, and we played around in a creek for a bit before deciding to head back to the car to drive up to Great Falls.

After taking a little break to drive up to Great Falls, we set out on our next ride. At the visitor’s center, we decided to “get some water” from the falls. This meant climbing down on the rocks to get water from the flowing water, risking falling into the water and drowning (7 people each year drown at Great Falls). With Moe there, this wasn’t a problem. We climbed our way out to the side of one of the massive waterfalls, and you could see how great the volume of water was being moved through that area. After getting some water and posing for pictures, we headed onto the trail.

The sun was setting around this time, but we decided to keep pushing forward. We saw many, many deer along the trail. Each time we would spot one, then another would show its white tail, then another until we would see up to 8 of them at once! Our goal was to travel along part of Difficult Run, aptly named. In order to get there, we had to push up a long, arduous hill that got even the best of me, though I was disappointed that I was only 100 feet from the top when I had to stop to catch my breath. After reaching the top, we headed down the other side and reached a road that we would have to travel on for about a quarter of a mile. At this time it was dark enough to warrant use of our lights. Luckily I had both my bike light and my caving headlamp, and Moe had his own headlamp. Entering the road, I stayed last since I had a good taillight, for good reason too. After going around a somewhat blind curve, we were about to be passed by a few cars when the first one didn’t notice we were on the road and we heard a bit of a skid and were glad no one came any closer to being hit.

Getting off the road, we made our way onto the Difficult Run trail. Visibility was severely limited to our lights, and finding the correct path became harder amongst the network of paths that all led the same way. We stopped because we saw some toads hopping around in the mud (their camouflage worked pretty well), then passed under a bridge as the darkness covered everything around us except for the dimming sky. Legs feeling weaker, we took a break at the top of a hill and bore witness to a pretty amazing view of the Potomac River as it was flowing towards the capital. Also, the picnic table we sat at featured a Stick Death drawing showing the use of a rocket launcher. We decided to head back along the horse trail since Difficult Run would live up to its name and be difficult to navigate back on. After some seemingly endless uphills, we reached the hill that I could not reach the top of without a break, but luckily we would be going down it this time. A very fun dark flight down the hill ensued, with us going just fast enough to be able to still react to the intricacies of the slope. Luckily it was actually very smooth so it was fairly straightforward. I made sure to hit the last few long puddles before we returned to the visitor’s center and the car.

I will surely be sore on Wednesday, but at least I have made my first trip to Great Falls Park and my first time mountain biking in a few years. Can’t wait for the next trip!