| Name: | Austin - Barton Creek and beyond | 
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| Description: | Thursday was the last warm day before a cold front was supposed to roll in, so, I played hookie and went for a ride desipte still having some cold remnants. The plan was to go in the warmest part of the day and not ride too hard. The main goal was ride Barton Creek greenbelt area, which is the signature natural area right off the downtown Austin. I set off around 11 am at balmy 72 F. Towards Barton Creek, I picked up a route that followed mainly roads with bike lanes - thanks to the Austin biking map that I got on the net. Another neat thing is that this map contains bike routes, which marks are also in the streets. This is useful when the route changes streets. The map is at http://www.ci.austin.tx.us/bicycle/bikemap.htm. So, I took route 68. It went first through a business park that houses AMD and AMD's flash spinoff Spansion. Then it went up and down a bit and then I finally dropped toward Zilker Park, which is at the mouth of Barton Creek. It was a bit confusing to get through the park but then I hit the Barton Creek Trail. It turns out that it's not a smooth trail like that around the Town Lake, but a more-less in a natural state. It was mostly smooth, but there were rocky sections, several creek crossings (fortunately, due to the drought, the creek was dry), and some rougher rocky sections that I had to walk. The singlespeed with 46x16 gearing was not the best choice, but, it worked OK. Because of the roughness of the trail and the choice of bike, it took me probably about 1.5 hours to go up (ca 7.5 miles) to the end of the park. There are side trails here and there so I a few times hit a dead end, or a trail that was just too rough to ride. The ride down was a bit faster, except for taking one turnoff towards the trailhead in the middle, and being confused with the direction in the gooseneck area about 2 miles from Zilker Park. Back at the park, I was out of water and food, so, I had to refill water and buy a hot dog at the park cafe. Then I decided to check out trail that goes up Shoal Creek, which goes north of the Town Lake just west of downtown. I went up most of the way, it's partly paved and partly gravel, and it was OK, except for a couple of creek crossings at the beginning. I turned around when I started getting tired, it was about 3.30pm and time to head back. I turned off the trail about 2/3 way down and just took the city roads back to the southern part of the Town Lake trail. This one ends rather abruptly at some kind of apartment complex, so, I hopped onto the busy Riverside Dr. and rode it all the way back to the hotel. I stopped at Subway to pick up a sandwich and got into the hotel just as the cold front rolled in. Overall, a decent ride, Barton Creek turned out to be a bit rougher than I expected, but, the singlespeed (and the back) handled it fine.One can't beat a 75 F weather ride in the middle of November. | |
| URL: | TopoFusion Home Page | |
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| Total Distance: | 41.83 miles (67.33 km) |
| Total Trip Time: | 5:19:37 (4:50:19 moving time) |
| Total Climbing: | 2873 feet (876 m) |
| Total Descending: | 2786 feet (849 m) |
| Average Speed: | 8.65 mph (13.91 kph) |
