For our Tuesday night ride I was inspred by Jay's ride which I missed last week. (maybe next week) We rode a variation of this ride starting from the train station. We debated canceling the ride since it was misty and about 50 degrees when we arrived at the train station, ultimately deciding to begin our climb up to flagstaff via paved road/switchback trail. After all, it was only misty and no rain was forcast. On our way up the mist turned to light drizzle. After the long ascent to flagstaff, we started accross the boney double and single track across Mauch Chunk ridge. At this point, we had full lights since we did not start until 6:30. This section has lots of baby heads and a few tombstones thrown in. Still raining. After a few miles it turns into smooth fire road. When we arrived at Bob's Option (drops you east of Mauch Chunk Lake), we decided to continue across the ridge to Summit Hill. This would avoid the steep, rocky descent in the darkness and rain. This would add about 6 miles to the ride. Once at Summit Hill, we sped down pavement toward the lake. Still raining. Once at Mauch Chunk Lake, we dropped into Shoreline Trail single track at boat launch B (west end of lake) and headed back toward the Switchback. At some point during this section it stopped raining, but the wooden bridges were still extremely slick. Trust me. This was the only section where the trail needed work, but it was still a lot of fun with the twists and log overs. We cleared what we were capable of and repaired/improved a couple log overs, but a couple of the downed trees were just too damn big. Low-point here was my flat rear tire. After this section we popped out at the east end of the lake and rode switchback and pavement back into town. Our total mileage was 18, took us about 2.5 hours to complete.
