Bigelow Hollow to Storrs

There's something I've been meaning to do for a while. I've been wanting to ride from Bigelow Hollow to Storrs on the Nipmuck trail. The idea first got implanted in my mind 2 years ago, but somehow it never got done. Last summer I rode solo from Storrs to the point where the Nipmuck and Natchaug trails meet and back, which is about 10 miles south of Bigelow. It was a brutal ride, but the best part was the area right near the trail junction.

This year I found a willing partner in Jesse, my soon to be moving to Colorado roommate. The Nipmuck north of Storrs doesn't see much traffic of any form and it's entirely possible you could lie there for days without anyone passing by, so a partner is a wise choice. We got a ride to Union and started pedaling at 9:45am.





Only a couple of miles in, we ran into trouble.


Luckily we're engineers and know how to use tools. We were soon back on our way.




As we had hoped, this section of trails was awesome! It followed lots of narrow, steep ridges and had a good combination of technical step up and downs with flowy fast sections connecting.









We were very relieved to finally hit the trail junction as the northern part took us way longer than expected.




By this point, Jesse was out of water, I was low and we were both out of food. Luckily the trail crosses Rt. 74 about a mile from a gas station, so we reloaded there.






The worst part of the trail followed, but we had to finish it up. Once we crossed Rt. 44, the last step was to climb from the Fenton River to the top of Horsebarn hill. This was the second longest climb in the 30 mile ride. Despite being only 30 miles, it took us almost 8 hours.