Danby State Forest loop

Just a quick ride report about an outing with Tim: we wanted to do a short, 1.5 to 2 hour ride with a bit of climbing. I thought a short variation of my January ride to Spencer would be good for this purpose -- and it was! We went out to Buttermilk Falls, up Sandbank Road, turning right on West King/Jersey Hill and right again onto Comfort Road. Comfort Road at some point turns into a dirt road but in dry conditions it's very ridable, even with 23 mm slicks. Comfort Road ends in the state forest and we turned right onto Bald Hill. Bald Hill Rd. is a very steep descent and where it becomes a "minimum maintenance road" you turn sharp right onto Station Rd, another steep and gravelly descent. Close to the bottom of the hill, the road becomes paved again and shortly after crossing the railroad tracks, you reach NY34. Riding on 34 from Ithaca into the Spencer direction is only medium. There's quite a bit of traffic, including trucks, and even though the road is never steep it nonetheless is basically a 15km uphill. On the other hand, going down on 34 is really neat. You can easily average 30 km/h and you don't have to brake at all. We considered punishing ourselves by turning right again onto Blakeslee Hill Rd (which is supposed to be a pretty mean hill), but for the sake of making it home in daylight we just continued into Ithaca on 34/96.

35 km, 420 m of climbing



Odo Wolfgang: 4158 km
Odo Gunnar: 1224 km
Odo total: 5382 km