The boys from Gastonia have been putting the trails at Wilson’s in heavy rotation on their play list lately. A few weeks ago they gave us gave a shout and asked us if we wanted to join them for a good ol’ fashioned all day trail ride. An all day group ride at Wilson’s? Of course the answer to that was a resounding “hell yeah!” Plans were finalized in a flurry of e-mails and text messages. Before we knew it Sunday’s big ride had arrived.
Roll call for this outing was as follows: Wes, Jake, Nick, Glen, Guido, Morris, OG, Steve-O, Little Carlos, Ronnie and yours truly were all in attendance. It was the first time some of the fellas had made it up to sample the healthy selection of killer single track that Wilson’s has to offer. The parking lot at the dirt mounds was slam full with the buzz of folks loading gear and fine tuning bikes before the ride. The excitement was straight up contagious and all of us were feeling the vibe.
We settled upon a warm up shuttle run down Headly Ridge to start things off. Usually we tack Headly on to the end of the day if we have spare time but it actually felt good to hit this trail with a fresh set of legs for once. Having the energy to throw the bike around and hit some of the larger gaps was a great way to start the day. Little Carlos caught a bad one and wrecked pretty hard on the way down. A severely twisted knee meant the day had to end early for him. Luckily he was in good enough shape to drive home for a doctor’s visit and some rest. It was a reminder to us all that even if you’ve ridden a trail a hundred times you still need to keep your head in the game.
Stoked off a nice long drop in elevation we loaded up the trucks and headed back up for the main event: Raspberry to Greentown to Beehive. It’s a nice mix of screaming fast downhill and extended climbs topped of with a shot of Beehive’s deliciously gnarly rock gardens at the end. We couldn’t have picked a better weekend in terms of trail conditions. Everything was fast and in good shape. The Gastonia boys showed off their great trail riding skills and dialed in a few trailside repairs throughout the day. When everything was said and done I couldn’t decide if we had more fun riding or talking s#!t the whole time! Major props go out to everyone for hooking it up and making this an awesome ride. The day ended with several serious cases of single track perma-grin and rounds of exhausted high fives. Below are some pictures of the crew in action.