June 2018 Road & Trail Conditions

[Slosurf]

@Crickey7 178885 wrote:

I know this doesn’t solve all of the River Road problem (and I feel your pain), but how about peeling off at Persimmon Tree and heading down to Macarthur, then hopping on the CCT at Sangamore?

Thanks for the suggestion. That is actually my route of choice. I get onto River at Esworthy so I have about 5 miles of River before Persimmon. Not as peaceful a ride as the towpath but certainly faster.

[Slosurf]

@ursus 178886 wrote:

Now you tell me. :p There is also a tree on the path further in, but that will be easy to remove.

I road today out as far as Seneca when I used roads intending to cross at WF which was closed. So I turned around and went through that mess again. Actually the section which is really a mess is shorter than 4 miles.

On the good and unexpected side, at least to me, there is now a bike lane under the Freeway on Water Street (K Street). They did put both directions on the same side which I don’t really like.

Edit: see https://twitter.com/Bilsko/status/1004845996180897794

Glad to hear that the trail damage is limited. I had to climb over the trees yesterday.

I hope that the new Water Street bike lane makes navigating to the CCT trail head at the end of Water easier. Mornings are fine. Evenings are a free-for-all between pedestrians, cars and bikes.

[ursus]

I rode to Purcellville today and found out that sometime since the last time that I did it on 6/4/18, the W&OD has been being repaved from the western Leesburg bypass bridge eastward. It was a pleasure going under the eastern Leesburg bypass and not being jostled by the buckled trail. Also the area just east of the there where several years ago they had fixed the underpinnings of the trail is no longer rough. According to someone working there whom I asked, they are repaving as far east as Cochran Mill Road. They were within a mile of that today as it should be finished fairly soon. Hopefully the center line will also be repainted. They still haven’t done that for the short section just west of Vienna which was repaved a couple of years ago.

[mstone]

@ursus 179027 wrote:

Hopefully the center line will also be repainted. They still haven’t done that for the short section just west of Vienna which was repaved a couple of years ago.

You mean the passing lane?

[ursus]

@mstone 179034 wrote:

You mean the passing lane?

The paving appears to be finished now https://twitter.com/WODTrail/status/1007726108576567297.

[mstone]

The towpath out toward the west is pretty rough for those planning a long ride. Past mile 80 it looks like the river topped the towpath and dropped several inches of mud and downed some trees across the trail. This seems to be river bottom silt, so it’s fragrant and very attractive to the flies. Where it was thick it was like riding through concrete, where it was thin it was slippery like riding on phlegm. Also, with all the rain, the mosquitoes are out in clouds–I’m looking at 5 bites on my right hand and three on my left as a type this, and that was after I sprayed…

There are some detours and closures posted: https://www.nps.gov/choh/planyourvisit/conditions.htm Bottom line: as much as I love bike camping on the towpath, I’ll wait at least a month before going out again. That said, I did run into a couple of long distance riders, including one who was a bit over 100 miles in from Cumberland through all that–helmet’s off to you!

[dbb]

Tree down on the MVT just south of the railroad bridge. Single lane available. NPS GWMP notified by twitter

[Emm]

@dbb 179067 wrote:

Tree down on the MVT just south of the railroad bridge. Single lane available. NPS GWMP notified by twitter

There was a crew there working on it by 7:45. Looked like a pretty big part of the tree came down.

I actually thought this was all on purpose and wondered why they did major tree trimming during the morning rush without putting cones or any other warnings out. It makes much more sense now.

[lordofthemark]

The hailstones mostly did not stick to the sidepath on 28th. I did not venture on the Boulder creek trail in the hail. I am walking this evening, having gotten in my ride yesterday and it might hail again, and I don’t want to ride in hail (plus I would probably have to walk as much to and from the bike share stations anyway)[ATTACH=CONFIG]18038[/ATTACH]

[Erin Potter]

Reports of high water along the W&OD shared with BikeArlington on Instagram this afternoon: https://www.instagram.com/p/BkOHwvmnGv3/?taken-by=atopanoname

[ATTACH=CONFIG]18046[/ATTACH]
Anyone see anything similar?

[Judd]

There was slick mud underneath the underpasses on Four Mile Run Trail between Shirlington and Mt. Vernon Ave tonight.

[Erin Potter]

@Judd 179112 wrote:

There was slick mud underneath the underpasses on Four Mile Run Trail between Shirlington and Mt. Vernon Ave tonight.

If you happen to ride by and it’s still there, snap a picture and send it my way (or to trailsATarlingtonva.us)– Parks & Rec has been pretty good about clearing mud once they are notified about it.

[mstone]

@Erin Potter 179115 wrote:

If you happen to ride by and it’s still there, snap a picture and send it my way (or to trailsATarlingtonva.us)– Parks & Rec has been pretty good about clearing mud once they are notified about it.

If only there were some way to guess when there might be mud…

[ginacico]

15th Street cycletrack between L and M is finally OPEN. It looks like L Street between 16th and 15th is about to open up as well; I’ll check it out tonight, but it appeared most of the barricades have been removed.

This is the site of the (former) WaPo building, where construction created the worst “safe passage” failure in the city. Oh happy day.

[cyclismo]

Sarcastically, I was cleaning up the mud just before I read this thread

[Author]

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