Recap: Union Furnace Gravel Grinder
12 cyclists. 33.5 miles with 2950+ feet of climbing (for our group). We cut short the route to get back to town for Easter festivities. The lead group of 3 did the full route, plus some bonus miles due to taking a wrong turn trying to find the water stop. They finished with almost 41 miles and 4000+ feet of climbing, including a tremendously hard climb with about 5 miles to go.
This route may be a holy grail route for Columbusites. The drive time is under an hour to get to Union Furnace Elementary School from Columbus. There is a lot of parking at the school. We headed out under sunny skies which turned overcast and temps stayed in the upper 40’s for most of the ride. We had a slight head wind from time to time on the ridge tops. There were plenty of animals out on the route. We had two groups of deer run in front of us and plenty of cows and moolets in the fields. We also met Sherman the dog weighing in a little over 100 pounds. Lunch and #coffeeoutside at the Lake Hope campground. Gravel was dry and fast for the most part and Tick Ridge was freshly graded with a lot of scatter gravel. There were a lot of morel hunters out today and the trees and flowers were blooming! Route below the photos.
