Bear Brook State Park in New Hampshire has about 40 miles of trails. It’s a fun place to hike but also to mountain bike! Huiyeng lives nearby, so we often default to mountain biking there. She used to live in Massachusetts near Harold Parker State Park, and the trails there are much more technical and difficult. Bear Brook has trails for everyone from green beginner trails to black technical trails and rock hopping. I pretty much stick to the blues and greens, just like downhill skiing.
For this route, we decided to park at the archery pond parking lot and explore a new part of the park. We took Pitch Pine to Hemlock and then Campground all the way out to the campground, which was surprisingly still quite busy! From there we turned back around and followed Broken Boulder to Bobcat to Salt Lick and finally back to the parking lot. There was only one part in the beginning where there was a narrow trail and a rolling drop to the left where I ended up walking my bike a short distance. The rest of the trails were ups and downs, some with more roots and rocks than others, but all totally doable. I even took some of the downhills pretty fast, which is a first.
Before we headed out to the park I was in a funk from the week and not feeling very motivated. But after a few minutes into the ride, I felt all that melt away. Sometimes all you need is a little Vitamin N (Nature) and some quality time with someone you love.
We went a total of 8.5 miles and took just over an hour to complete the ride. The app paused when we did, so we were out for maybe another half an hour on top of that. I had so much fun. When we were packing up the bikes, I commented about how bouncy it felt going down the hills. We’d only filled the tires up to 20 psi, but we discovered that my suspension had been locked, and neither of us had any idea how long it had been like that! Live and learn. And now I can’t wait to do again with proper suspension!
