Not for the faint of heart, the 12 Hours of Santos is challenge that leaves riders nowhere to hide. The 12 Hours of Santos draws riders from all over the nation to challenge themselves against the Vortex and Santos’s harder trials, and to find that center of pain in themselves to see if they can beat it down. If you’re a racer, the 12 Hours of Santos is one of the Southeast’s, if not the nation’s, premier 12-hour endurance races. Pain, suffering, up and downs, flats, headlamps, cheering fans, and pain. It’s a fun ride and well worth slowing down a bit to take in Florida flora and fauna.Īside from the riding opportunities, Santos has a great social calendar that offers a variety of events, from lung- and leg-burning endurance races to family friendly rides. The trail is a gentle climb that meanders through pine forest and provides some striking views in the winter, including deer and the occasional turkey. Early mornings can result in all kinds of spiderwebs across the trail and, therefore across your face. Spider Kingdom North is a little over three miles and has easy to intermediate sections that are perfect for a warmup, cool down, or spin with a group of mixed abilities. It’s the kind of trail that leaves you wishing for something easy to cool down on, like Spider Kingdom North. You may even find yourself standing on the pedals in your lowest gears wondering if you should get off and push. In the summer, the trails can get really dry and slippery, adding to the challenge.
Long beach mtb ride on the beach trial#
The trial has rocks galore and more switchbacks and walled climbs than you can imagine. With its rocks and short, steep climbs, it can rival some of the hard technical trails of the American West. AnthillĪnthill is short, but challenging.
Long beach mtb ride on the beach Patch#
At just under three miles, this is a great warmup trail before moving to the more technical aspects of Bryar Patch and then the black expert trails of Vortex or Anthill. The trail has one wooden feature switchback that can be the highlight of the run. The trial is a slight downhill with very few technical sections, unless you consider a couple of hammocks that with speed can launch you skyward technical. The speed and experience are great warm ups for the more technical trails like Vortex and Anthill.
With some 180-degree switchbacks and loose sand, it is easy to lose your front tire and find yourself sliding. These wood features make a lot of riders nervous and challenge the handling skills of even the best riders, but it’s the switchbacks and speed you can carry through the section that make it the most fun. A quick loop section, about a mile, has a number of challenging wood features, one a bridge about 8 inches wide. Bryar Patchīryar Patch is a short, but taxing trial right of the central connecting trail, Blue Highway. With belly-taking drops, the famous Banana Hammock wood feature, and rocks and roots thrown across an already challenging up-and-down trail, the Vortex is the centerpiece of Santos and wraps right around the Santos Trailhead. Although the American mountain-bike scene appears to orbit the steep trails of the American West, Santos all alone on the East Coast was the first trail system to earn the IMBA Epic trail designation since it “emerged as a model trail system, with flowing singletrack, bombproof wooden structures, a bike skills park with progressive challenges and jaw-dropping technical features at the Vortex quarry.”Ĭarved from an old quarry, the Vortex Trail is world renowned. Santos is the center of Florida’s mountain biking universe for good reason. What is not so apparent is that you’re also ground zero to some of the best mountain biking in the American southeast. Pulling into the car park at the Santos Trailhead, deep in the tall Florida pines right outside of Ocala, it’s apparent you’re in the backwoods of old Florida. One that is technically and physically challenging.A true backcountry riding experience in remote settings.Demanding, mostly single-track trail experience in a natural setting.There are five criteria that qualify a trail to be epic, and Alafia and Santos meet them all: In fact, the International Mountain Biking Association, a non-profit advocacy group that teaches best trail management practices and works in the halls of Congress to provide equal access for mountain bikers in our nation’s wild spaces, rates two of Florida’s trails- Santos Trailhead and Alafia River State Park-their highest trail designation: Epic. But it should.įlorida not only has a vibrant mountain biking community, it also can boast hundreds of miles of mountain bike trails that welcome the beginner and challenge the best mountain bikers in the world. Think mountain biking, and Florida may not immediately come to mind.
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