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New Years day last weekend was record breaking warm. a few of us from our strava group headed out to take advantage of the balmy temps to crawl up to the headiest heights of the Higganum hills to the dizzying elevation of 619ft. the map reads eagles beak — in my search for winter overlooks in this area (its am obsession rarely scratched), I came across this one in a snow squall, so was excited to just give it a long hard slow day in the woods with the boiyz.

shorts on January 1st — it would be a fine day. I pedaled from my house to our meetup with the sun warming my face — it felt like spring, and I was sprrrringing! happier than normal is what I am saying. favorite way to spend a day.

started out with a few miles before ruth hill kicks in — and then its time to crawl. we took a new trail I had not sampled and it ended up being a beautiful ribbon of wide up hill switchbacks. 99 percent ridable in the 22×30. we ended up having to whack across a few beaver dams to connect over to where we wanted to go on the deep hollow trail.

once safely and mostly dry on the other side of the pond, it was time to wiggle into Cockaponset state forest on a mudding road. oh, but right as we got out of deep hollow we intersected ruth hill near the top where we ran into a rival gang of cyclers. a local frame builder Thomas Bikeworks form Killingworth and a group of his friends were heading in the opposite direction and we got to swap a few “oh yah, that connects” stories about our local route knowledge. we rarely if ever see other cyclers out in our haunts, so always fun to yam it a little.

deep into Higganum and scratching the chin of Durham we began climbing up to Eagle’s Beak Peak in earnest. what a beautiful day up there — we hung out on that big beak of granite for as long as we could in the sun. I finished off my thermos of chaga tea mixed with melted collate truffles. they are French. time to descend back down to river level. the air is thin at 619 feet!

we had to stop for some water and snack refills in down town Higganum, and then jumped onto the tracks of an unused steam train line that took us all the way back to the swing bridge. we parted ways and I climbed back up to the house with the biggest smile of the year — being January 1st and all.

thanks for watching!