Mountain biking Rude Skov
We are very fortunate with where we live. We have forests a mere stone throw away in almost all directions. Another fortunate factor, for me, is that there are mountain bike routes in several of these forests.
Yesterday, I took a ride on the blue trail in Rude Skov which really rekindled my love of cross country mountain biking.
The map below shows how the route, marked with blue dots, travels through most of the landscape of the forest. View the map on Flickr, by clicking on the image, to see all the notes I made on the map.
I started in the south eastern corner of the route riding counter-clockwise. The route is marked in the forest with blue dots on treetrunks at regular intervals. Since I have never ridden the route before, I did get a little lost in the beginning, but quickly found the blue dots. The first incline was between low beech shrubbery and quite narrow. Unfortunately, it was also very muddy and slippery. I ended up having to walk up a large part of the slope.
At the top of Højbjerg I saddled up again and rode down the other side of the hill. It’s been a long time since I last went mountain biking, so my technique is very rusty, and my tolerance to dicy situations is much lower than last time I rode down hills. It didn’t help that there was a great big branch lying in the track near the bottom of the hill. Fortunately, I did hold it together, but my pulse was racing when I made it onto more solid ground.
The next part is more straight forward trail riding, not that much up and down (in any case not that memorable). After crossing Møllevej (the continuation of Høje Sandbjergvej – if that means anything to any of you) there was an uphill section where Hørsholm moutain bike club have created a downhill track. It’s supposed to be very technical, and they warn that only very experienced riders try the track with proper safety equipment. Since I am not very experienced, and only had my helmet as far as safety goes, I decided against trying it.
After crossing Hørsholm Kongevej (the large diagonal road on the map which is also very trafficked) the trail enters Femsølyng where they used to cut peat. It is now mostly used as a pasture for cattle. This is very I met my first big hurdle. After the trail turned off the road it came down to a mud hole where after some indecision I decided to try and power through. Big mistake. My front tire sunk in a good 20 cm, and was stuck. Naturally, I let slide to the side and landed on my left foot which also sunk in, up to my ankle. To try and get out before it became worse I quickly leapt off, and pulled on the handlebars only to have the bike lift the rear wheel becase the front wheel was still stuck… I pulled up on the handlebars hard, and got the wheel free, and was quickly out, with very dirty shoes as seen in the picture below.
In the picture you can also see the mud I got on my helmet just a short while later. When exiting the pasture there was a cattle-grating with a great big puddle in front. Following my usual approach I decided to power through. I figured that the worst that could happen was that it was deeper than I reckoned, then my front wheel would hit the front edge of the grating (made of square steel girders), I would fly over the handlebars, and faceplant on the grating. Unexpectedly, nothing of the sort happened and I made it through. However, my rear wheel kicked up a huge lump of mud that sailed over my head, just striking a bit of my helmet, but nothing else. Would have been a pretty sight to have 3 liters of mud land on top of my head.
After mud-bathing my feet I had to cross a stream. Fortunately, someone had built up a “bridge” from a lot of branches, but I decided to dunk my bike to clean off my gears and rims (I have rim brakes and they were getting caked up with mud). In the mud and on the inclines earlier I had also noticed that my gears started acting weird. It felt like they jumped out of gear and back. Not a nice feeling when you’re putting almost your full weight on the pedal, and stopped me dead in my tracks more than once. I later learned that I could overcome some of it by downshifting earlier, but also experienced this on later climbs of the trail although not as much with improved technique.
The next section was a hilly muddy trail. Nice, but not that memorable. At least not until I arrived at the bottom of Maglebjerg. The steepest hill in the forest. After my setbacks in Femsølyng I opted for a shortcut that cut out Maglebjerg. I guess I’ll save that one for my next ride.
The next section was a really nice mostly downhill narrow muddy trial (between beech shrubbery like on Højbjerg). I really built up my confidence on this part going quite fast on some parts, although my brakes also got quite a lot of use. This continued pretty much until the area right above the area marked as Sortedam on the map. Here is a large section shown as coniferous forest (dark green on the map). This large section is actually a marsh that, with the wet summer and autumn, has become a lake. Fortunately, the route goes around this area, but the trail was very wet and muddy here (a recurring theme methinks).
When I got out from the muddy part I got confused about how the track went because I had to circumvent a large tree that had fallen and blocked the path. I ended up on one of the forest roads. I didn’t want to try and find the trail in the forest, so I just followed the road to where the mountain bike trail came out to cross back over Hørsholm Kongevej.
The next section was ok, and appearantly not memorable (at least I don’t really remember it). Then came a long straight section which was really cool. It was quite hilly, and a bit muddy, and you could just go high speed. Awesome. I think I was grinning from ear to ear when I came to where I had to turn off and head out of the forest.