Ride Lugged

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Verča has some friends from a local shop that she doesn’t go to much anymore. One guy Pavel would call every once in a while to see if she wanted to go ride but she almost never could go.

So he called this week.
Apparently, the Czech national downhill championship is in Krupka u Teplic next week-end (May26-27), a town in the small mountain range between the Czech Republic and Eastern Germany. There is one lift that serves the area, but it takes about 25 minutes and $5 to get to the top. Pavel had hired a box truck driver and was going to shuttle people to the top in about 20 minutes for less than $2, looking to make some cash over the week-end with everyone pre-riding the course. So he was driving up there to work and offered to give us a ride so we could try biking on some of the cross country trails from there.

We rode 5km to his house across town on Saturday morning and loaded up. He drives a late model Skoda “jetta” wagon that fit our bikes in the back with a split rear seat. An hour and a half and we were at the base of the hill where he was to meet his driver at 11am for the first shuttle. We loaded up again (so we didn’t have to pedal to the top to start riding) with 3 downhillers (1 with a rohloff) and a couple on cheap touring bikes for the first shuttle of the day. A bumpy 20 minutes to the top and we unloaded. Talking to Pavel it appears that the truck driver wasn’t down with shuttling people in his truck too, and must have assumed he was only going to carry bikes.

So 90 minutes of a drive and some degree of planning and Pavel was at the downhill with no bike and no truck driver to make him money and we were off for a nice cross country ride (my first ever in the true sense.) He told us to go have a nice ride and even directed us where to go (which btw was in the wrong direction from what he thought.) He would hang out catch some sun and drink a beer or two. So at 11:30 we were off, leaving our chauffeur at Komáří hůrka, the top of the ski lift.

We headed across a nice promising farm field doubletrack east on a red striped trail (we thought west, but the sun was high and it was actually hard to tell.) It was pretty and there were grazing cows so it felt homey. Unfortunately the trail quickly turned to a paved trail then road. We thought we were almost on the German border and were looking for the next town after which we would find a crossing. We went through a town called Adolfov (sounds close to Germany, right?) and were on singletrack again. It was then we realized that after 6km that we hadn’t gone the way we intended to. A quick check at the map and we were OK, and actually on the eastward option we had suggested. We had a nice ride on mostly doubletrack with some nice single track for the next 20km, then came to a town called Tisá close to the border set against a backdrop of a long cliff of black rock. The trail got crazy steep and pedestrian, so we took a little road detour around and hooked up with a yellow striped trail on the other side (read: top) of the cliffs, and headed again towards the border. We zipped down a gravelly fireroad past a couple slew of walking tourists of indistinguishable nationality (btw, they call anyone here walking/strolling/hiking for pleasure tourists), through some more rock outcrops to a cool little inn and tavern. Unfortunately it was a couple hundred meters too far, so we huffed it back up the hill, caught our turn and were at the border.

A sign in Czech that read something along the lines of ‘Caution Border Ahead” greeted us as well as a makeshift telephone pole fence a couple of feet off the ground. It didn’t look too imposing; and I saw no sign telling me not to go there, so we ventured our way along the trail and into Germany. About 150m down the trail there was a guardtower/duckblind made of pine tree trunks, and no paramilitary, so off we went on the German section.

2 things about the German trails. They were all either paved or gravel and therefore sucked, and the signs measured distance not in km but in hours it takes to walk, so again pretty useless and sucky. After 3 1/2 hours, I mean 10km, on the blazed asphalt path we decided to take a venture on some dotted line on the map. Again the trail wound up being a farm path, this time made of fist sized gravel. We made it back to pavement and had to climb some annoying paved road. It was all pretty, don’t get me wrong. While the paved road rolled over just to the north of the top, of course our path went to the summit directly. At this point Verča cursed Germany, I agreed and we decided to ride in this country no more today.

We made a beeline for the border (or again, suspected border you know if the authorities and what not…) The paved then dirt trail ended about 200m from the tree line in a field where we found a row of nicely cut stones with their respective C’s for česka and D’s for deutsch. Back safely in the Czech republic we headed quickly south to our starting point. We were tired, and hot after baking in the 80 degree sun all day and hungry now that it was after 4pm. We fought mostly pavement for the 15km ride back to our start, and a nasty headwind. As we approached the top of the ski lift we realized that we would get to ride to the bottom. We took the last turn on a green trail before the top of the lift.

A screaming fireroad downhill turned into a couple quick steep singletracks up. More screaming fireroad and we dumped into some picturesque hillside town. We rolled down the street a bit, then along an urban singletrack between peoples back yard and a train track with some nice rolling sections and a berm or two. Then back at the car Pavel was relaxing and listening to music after a day of sunning himself. Loaded back up and we headed for Prague. We gave him a little extra money for gas and thanked him for the lift.

Then we headed home for dinner and to relax.
5 1/2 hours, probably 75-85km (still no computer)