Mountain Biking at Elm Ridge

This post is a bit delayed, so my apologies in advance. Last month a few of the girls and I drove down after work for an afternoon ride at Elm Ridge near Windham in the Catskills. (Very stoked to have a group of MTB ladies to ride with now!) Even though we arrived to the trailhead 6pm, we still have lots of daylight to get some good riding in. The trails at Elm Ridge are great. Despite a lot of initial climbing to get to the ridge, the descent makes it all the worth it.

The trail starts across the street from the parking area for the Escarpment Trail and climbs up. We found the best route to take was Gold Mine > Fun Loops > Levitate > West Gauntlet (TOP) descending on Black Bear Hideout > Mid Mountain > Lower Trail > Run Noot > Levitate. I’m sure there are some other great combos but the descent on these trails is SO FUN! I can’t wait to go back there for some more.

On my last ride here I felt like I really had a breakthrough on cornering. I admit I’m still pretty terrible at descending sharp corners and switchbacks but I definitely made some progress here.

The first time we rode here we ran into one other rider (a guy on an e-bike). He left an encouraging note on a napkin stuck to my windshield. I had to take a picture of it to remember his kinds words!