Great Dupont Route

Since most everyone was either racing at 26W or broken in some way or another I decided to head for a XC ride this Saturday. I met with a coworker and his wife to show them around Dupont. The route itself was fantastic. It has been probably 6 months since I have been out there. Since it was a little damp when we first got there we decided to head up Big Rock first and leave Burnt for last. The work that was done on Burnt is AWESOME. This may defy some, but the downhill is about the same, no big changes, other than the big water bars that had eroded into decent sized drops have now been replaced with techy rock work. It is the climb that is 100 x's better. Once you veer onto the actual Burnt Mtn trail, anytime there is a flowy slightly DH or flat section there are a bunch of nicely built jumps. A few flowy tables, a double or 2 (nothing huge, but fun) and they even cleared out a nice sized rock drop. Additionally I always remember this hard right hand turn and then a section of straight up that always put the hurting on me. Well that has been reworked to have some welcomed switch backs that make the climb better.

Fun with GPS info here
http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/activity/6997711

JohnBoy said:

Sounds cool Rob, I have wanted to check out Dupont for some time. You think my clapped out XC bike could handle it? Or you think I could peddal the big bike out there?

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Hmm.. That would be an interesting choice. You would certainly suffer a bit with the big bike, but you would want to hit the fun stuff throughout the ride. I dunno, tough call.

JohnBoy said:

Hey, my foot is feeling pretty good today, think I will be back on the bike this weekend, wanna hit up some Wilsons? Or do you have some other gay event you have to attend?

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I should be up for some non gay activities on Saturday. It has been a while since we have been out at Wilsons.

brado1 said:

That's cool to hear people are diggin' the work done on Burnt - there was a lot of initial "Leave it like it is! " and on the rock work we certainly didn't want to dumb-it-down.

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I will just say that the difference on what everyone would consider the "DH" side really wasn't such a big deal. The pictures you included is where there used to be what, 2 or 3 pretty eroded water bars that made for some nice drops. Ya ok, those might be missed, but the real new fun is on the section just after the trail splits from Corn Shoals.

Nice work for sure

Agras said:

Rob, can a shorter loop be done? Say half of what you did on your 1st post?

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Only if you are a wuss

Agras said:

Thanks.

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You are welcome

Seriously a lot of those trails have a good nugget of section here and there, so saying you could only ride 1/2 would be tough. That being said if I only had an hour or 2 to ride Dupont. Hitting Big Rock/Cedar Rock and then Burnt Mtn isnt a bad plan.