Backroad Mapbooks GPS Map Review (Ontario)

Read the review on my Richard's GPS Trail Maps site.

Cycling and Mountain Biking Season in Review

I know it's not over yet, and with the winter bike it is never over, but I feel it's been a great season so far and now is as good a time as ever to put my thoughts down in print.

The time will come soon enough when the trails are no longer rideable and the salt is being dumped on the roads and paths, that I will have to bring out the winter bike. Last year my last mountain bike ride was on November 11th in the South March Highlands and my last hybrid ride on November 22nd, my first winter bike ride was a week later on November 29.

Last years total was 3175 km, 475 on the MTB and 2700 on the hybrid and winter bike from January to December. So far this year, since January, I have done 2630 km, 930 on the MTB, 1410 on the hybrid and 290 on the winter bike.

Will I actually beat those numbers this year. In a sense, I probably already have when you consider that I have almost doubled the distance on the MTB which is considerably more intense riding than hybrid riding. Of course, last year I was off the MTB for 9 weeks and off both bikes for 6 weeks, after the incident (broken arm).

But I am hoping, considering how dry the trails have been this year and still seem to be, to see an extended season before the fall rainfall and slow drying effect of the fall weather come into play.

The season started well with putting the winter bike away at the beginning of April and about a month of hybrid riding to prepare for the CN Cycle for CHEO. I really enjoyed the improved route this year, even if there was more climbing. They certainly improved the way they handled the route across the downtown core. Unfortunately the organized mountain biking participation has been steadily declining since we had 5 teams raising $15,000 at the peak of MTB Kanata. I may simply ride independently next year.

My first MTB ride this season, on the GFR trails and Trillium Woods Trail, was the day before the first OMBA South March Highlands group ride on May 12. After missing most of the SMH rides last year due to the incident I got off to a good start this year, enjoying the Thursday night rides up until they became night rides and I decided to restrict my night riding to the Greenbelt.

But perhaps what I am most pleased about this season has been the enthusiastic participation in the Tuesday Night Greenbelt Rides, and no broken bones yet. We have a great regular group of riders, sometimes joined by others, that enjoy the casual pace of just tooling around the flowy Greenbelt trails, with some technical sections thrown in for added fun. I finally got my new batteries for my Magicshine lights, which I had hardly used before. What an improvement over my old NiteHawk lights, for the same (aprox $100) price. It is a real joy to ride with these and I am really finding the continuing night riding to be a great experience.

The Greenbelt rides have also led me to find a new riding buddy, that shares my local trails and rides at about my same pace and technical ability, so riding with him has been great fun. I have to get him to expand his riding preferences though - get him out to SMH and into distance riding the on paths and roads.

I'm going to have to say, what some in OMBA might consider to be blasphemy, but I also prefer the Greenbelt to SMH for sheer enjoyment, probably because I can ride to the trails from my front door.

I believe I have only been to one OMBA SMH trail day this year but I have spent some time working on the Greenbelt trails clearing dead-fall. What a season it has been in both SMH and the Greenbelt for storms bring trees down over the trails. I have plans for early next season to get into Middle Earth on foot and clear out what is certain to be a lot of dead-fall in there and to do some discreet trail work near Old Quarry to connect up two sections of trails that are calling out to be connected and clear another section of trail that is difficult to follow, especially at night. And then some new trails to take the Tuesday Night group out on.

A report on riding would not be complete without talking about my Richard's GPS Trail Maps project to map all the western Greenbelt trails as well as other trails. I never did get back to mapping the Bruce Pit Trails, as planned this summer, as I got sidetracked into unplanned mapping at SMH in response to the clear-cut of the Beaver Pond Forest trails and the impending development of the old Kanata Lakes Trails. I also was made aware of a neat little trail system by Lytle Park that has been added to the collection.

In regards to the GPS Maps project, about a year ago I was contacted by the people who produce the Backroad Mapbooks who wanted to use my trail maps in a new GPS map product for Garmin GPS units. The end result of that was that I agreed to let them use the GPS data with no conditions and they graciously provided me with a free copy of their Ontario GPS map product. I have only used it for about a week but I have to say that I am very impressed and a full review will appear soon on "Richard's GPS Trail Maps" site.

Had a really nice ride today on a nice cool afternoon. The next two weeks are still looking pretty good, especially both Tuesdays. See you on the trails.

Update (2011-11-10)

I just realized I had a formula error and my hybrid distance was incorrect.
My corrected totals as of today are:

Hybrid: 2632.20
Mountain Bike 1004.75
Winter Bike 287.50
TOTAL: 3924.45 Kilometres

Looking Forward to Next Biking Season

The Season in Review

As the snow falls and the salt trucks prepare to dump their loads of corroding crap on the roads and paths it is time for my season end report. I did my first below freezing ride Sunday and it was not too bad. This is the latest in the year I have ridden in recent history and I just might not stop yet.

Overall I have ridden 2684 kilometres (175 hours) this year, 508 (45) on the mountain bike and 2176 (130) on the hybrid.

My season had a poor start though with my riding only the 30 km route in the CN Cycle (formerly Tour Nortel) and dropping out of the first Ottawa Mountain Bike Association (OMBA) South March Highlands (SMH) Group Ride and never getting back into them. My first attempt at organizing a Greenbelt group ride also proved unsuccessful, hopefully just due to poor timing.

CN Cycle for CHEO

Ottawa Mountain Bike Association (OMBA)

But things did pick up and I got into the swing of things. The early part of the season saw a lot of rain and muddy trails so I spent a lot of time on the hybrid putting the kilometres on. When the trails dried up I did a lot of Greenbelt riding and ventured into the South March Highlands. I made a point of getting out on the old Kanata Lakes Trails to ride them before we lose them, as well as riding the upgraded Rockhopper Trail. I also had an interesting ride riding along the new Terry Fox Road right of way, after it was bulldozed for surveying.

Terry Fox Extension Caterpillar Track
Near end of the season I tried out a night group ride in the Greenbelt, where I managed to lose my helmet light. But that did get me back interested in night riding and the search for a new light began, and just as I decided on a new light to buy my light was surprisingly found on the trail by another rider. But it was too late, I had already decided to buy the better replacement light. That is until news of a new better and cheaper alternative was posted on the OMBA website. That is now my new light of choice, I'm just waiting for some trail reports from other riders, who are buying this light in droves, before I purchase it, likely in the spring.

OMBA :: Topic::Latest in lights....

My wife has decided that snowshoeing into work from Kanata to Stittsville just takes too long in the morning so we got ourselves a winter bike - a $100 Supercycle with $200 worth of studded tires for her to ride the two days a week she goes to Stittsville. So I might take it out sometimes during the rest of the week, as long as the weather does not get too cold - but that's a big "might" right now.

Another experience I had this summer was discovering the undocumented Stittsville Trails. And I use the term discover here in it's true meaning, just as the early explorers did - I found something that I didn't know existed but that others knew about and have used for long periods of time. It was still fun exploring them and mapping the trails to add to my collection of GPS Trail Maps.

Stittsville Trails
GPS Trail Maps Website

This was part of the impetus to reorganize and redo my trail maps and move them to a new home. The site can be found here:

Richard's GPS Trail Maps

It started with establishing a new site on blogspot and deciding to add trail descriptions as well as annotating the actual maps with more information. That led to adding photos and actually redoing some of the maps. I then decided to make the GPS data available which meant creating GPX data from the Google Earth kmz files for my earlier maps as I did not save the GPS files for them, as well as cleaning up the GPX files by removing overlapping tracks as much as possible. The project just sort of mushroomed, including photo sessions especially for the project.

And now I am looking at adding additional map views from different maps and satellite images, possibly over the winter, since I discovered another mapping program to add to my collection.

OMBA :: Topic::TopoFusion

Mountain Biking Advocacy

I was also busy this season blogging and making submissions to the City of Ottawa and the National Capital Commission on Mountain Biking Issues, in particular the South March Highlands Management Plan and the Greenbelt Master Plan Review.

My blog postings and submissions can be found here:

THE FIFTH COLUMN: Greenbelt Master Plan Review

THE FIFTH COLUMN: South March Highlands Management Plan

I will be presenting further submissions on both of these issues.

Other Mountain Biking News

This season saw OMBA's catweaver formalize her after school rides into MTBCAT - Mountain Biking Children and Teens to provide opportunities for children and teen to experience adventure through mountain biking and other outdoor activities. MTBCAT believes every child deserves the opportunity to explore the great outdoors so they provide the equipment. This is a great program that not only gets children interested in a great sport but also brings them into contact with nature, two things that many children today are missing. The program provides proper equipment to youths who otherwise would not have access to proper mountain bikes to learn on, as well as teaching them bicycle maintenance and repair skills.

Mountain Biking Children And Teens

MTBCAT and OMBA sponsored this years International Take a Kid Mountain Biking Day on September 26th.

This season also saw the announcement of the Joyride 150 Indoor Bike Park in the Greater Toronto Area, much closer to Ottawa than Ray's in the United States.

Joyride 150

As well there was the announcement of the closure of the MTB website a silvertouch and it's replacement by PrivateerMTB.

PrivateerMTB

Talking about MTB websites, the grandaddy of them all, MTB Kanata, is still around but struggling. Check it out.

mtbkanata.com

Looking Forward to Next Season

So here I am already thinking ahead to the spring and next biking season.

First thing on my mind is keeping and getting into shape and doing enough early season training to complete the full 70 km route in the CN Cycle for CHEO.

I also hope to get back into the OMBA SMH Group Rides as well as do more riding in SMH by myself, including the old Kanata Lakes Trails before they are gone. Maybe this year will be the year to get around to riding Outback again. My hope is to do a nice easy paced beginner group ride of Outback with the pace set by the slowest rider, and just hope it isn't me.

I also expect to do a lot of Greenbelt riding, in particular the mapping of Trail 10 and area near the Ottawa River and Trail 29 and connecting trails at Bruce Pit. I also plan to re-activate my series of weekly Greenbelt Rides rotating through the western Greenbelt Trails, including some night rides.

One ride in particular I have been planning for years is a 40 km marathon Greenbelt Trail ride of the western Greenbelt Trails. Maybe next season. Hopefully.

Finally of course will be lots of hybrid riding when the trails are too wet to ride. This past season I didn't get any real long 100km hybrid rides in, so hopefully next season.

Happy riding to all of you riding throughout the winter and see you on the trails in the spring.

Richard's GPS Trail Maps Site Completed

I have finally finished updating and moving all my existing GPS Trail Maps to the new site, with photos for all the trails except the Marlborough Forest Roads.

I will be adding more trails to the site as I get them mapped, in particular the Bruce Pit area trails including Trail 29 and the trails near Shirley's Bay, including Trail 10.

Check it out at:

http://gpstrailmaps.blogspot.com/

Richard's GPS Trail Maps

My new site for posting my trail maps is up and running and I think it looks good. I have some background information posted plus links to all the existing maps.

I used Blogger's simplest template and I think it's a good fit for the project. It is a work in progress. Eventually all the maps will be moved so there are small versions viewable on the site and clicking on them brings up the full map. I hope to add more annotations to the maps along with trail descriptions and photos, and of course more maps.

Check it out at:

http://gpstrailmaps.blogspot.com/

Mountain Biking and Cycling: The Season in Review

Another season ended a few weeks ago when the roads were covered in white stuff, not snow but a heavy layer of salt that the city felt necessary to dump on the roads during a few light snowfalls. But as I do much of my riding from home, even the ride to the mountain bike (MTB) trails requires riding on the roadways so I decided it was time to end the season. A couple of weeks later everything was covered in snow. The bikes have been in and out of “Joe's Garage” for Eric's annual tune-ups and are waiting downstairs for the new season. Christine's Brodie Sterling is set up on a trainer, and my Devinci Remix “as good as new” with brand new Kenda Nevegals is waiting for next season.

My season started on April 6 on the Brodie hybrid riding the back country roads near Kanata and the mountain bike season started on May 6 on the Old Quarry trails and ended November 20 on those same trails. I rode a total of 2715 km (174 hours) this season, 1977 km (113 hours) on the hybrid and 739 km (61 hours) on the mountain bike.

We took a three week vacation in Austria but even managed to get 179 km of riding in there on Trans-Canada Trail type trails and paved paths, on borrowed mountain bikes. More on cycling in Austria in a future blog post.

We also decided not to take our bikes on our one week northern vacation this year, concentrating on kayaking up north instead, including a bit on the French River.

The highpoint of the season for me, as far as hybrid riding goes, is the Tour Nortel. I rode just over 80 km in 4.5 hours at an average speed of 19 km/hour and raised $525 for the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario. My longest hybrid ride this year was 101 km from Kanata up into the Gatineau's and back in 5.5 hours at an average speed of 19 km/hr. I did not manage to beat last years personal distance record of 110 km.

This Seasons Long Hybrid Ride click image to enlarge
My mountain biking season this year was concentrated on the Greenbelt trails and Kanata Lakes with some exploring in the Marlborough Forest. We live right beside Old Quarry and those trails interconnect to all of the western Greenbelt trails so we spend a lot of time on these trails whose difficulty ranges from easy flat gravel to the highly technical Lime Kiln Trail and everything in-between.

I got a new toy this year, a new, much more accurate GPS to use on my mapping projects. I added maps of Greenbelt Trails 11 & 12 and the Marlborough Forest to my map archive this season. Mapping the trails is an added bonus to riding them since I have always loved and collected maps, and it adds some extra fun to the experience and is a way to give back to the community.

I first checked out the Marlborough Forest in the previous season attempting to follow the Rideau Trail through it. But as soon as the trail left the forest roads it became very muddy and unsustainable so I switched to the forest roads and mapped all of the forest roads that connected to my starting point this season. There may be a few other orphan roads out there. However there are lots of cart trails , snowmobile trails and other trails interconnecting with the forest roads that I have yet to explore and map. Perhaps next season.

Marlborough Forest Forest Roads click image to enlarge
The other part of my regular riding schedule is in the South March Highlands, also known as the Kanata Lakes Trails. This year I managed to get out a number of my times on my own, in addition to the regular Thursday night Ottawa Mountain Bike Association (OMBA) rides where I was asked and reluctantly agreed to lead the OMBA Group D ride. My reluctance was based on the large shoes I had to fill from previous Group D riders such as Peter and Mario (and Catweaver before I joined the rides). However I think I set my own tone for the rides making them an easy going beginner level ride. Indeed I think there is room for a group between D and C that would be a little more challenging than Group D as I lead it. It also looks like A and B might possibly be combined as they usually ended up being combined this last season. Leading Group D got me out a few more times in the season trying to scout out different routes for the group to take. Next season if I am still leading the group I think we will do more of the old Kanata Lakes trails between the rail line and GFR and I expect to spend even more time in SMH next season.

A Typical Group D Ride click image to enlarge
As well as riding in SMH I also had the opportunity to participate in OMBA trail days doping trail maintenance. This season we managed to get Rock Hopper made into a much more sustainable trail. Trail days are a lot of hard work but also a lot of fun and a great way to give back to the trails that we all enjoy.

The City of Ottawa is currently preparing the management plan for the South March Highlands so helping keep the trails sustainable, as well as riding responsibly and avoiding the trails during muddy conditions, improves the chances of having mountain biking recognized as not only a legitimate but a desirable use of the trail system.

And besides all the riding I have gotten involved in a number of other MTB related projects this season. I just agreed to monitor the NCC's greenbelt review for OMBA and keep my eyes and ears open for any impacts on mountain biking.

I have also been helping PeterV learn about GPSing and mapping software for his Nakkertok project. I have also been providing Catweaver with some informal assistance on her Trips for Kids project. And I am now an EcoSteward for the Dominique's Creative Wheel Centre, an environmental retreat and MTB training school, for women and children, where I help out with mapping projects.

It has been a great season and I look forward to next season. I have already started to plan a short MTB holiday in the Muskoka region that I will be writing more about in the future.

Happy Riding to all of you that are continuing to ride through the winter.

Easier Trail Mapping With My New GPS

Last year I started mapping the Greenbelt trails using my GPS unit. With my older GPS unit it was a long complicated process requiring that I avoid overlapping my tracks and involving extensive editing in Photoshop Elements.

I talk about how I became interested in maps and my map making process in an article in the MTBKanata Newsletter.

With my new Garmin GPSMAP 60Cx, which is much more accurate, the process is much simpler.

When I recently mapped Greenbelt Trails 11 & 12 I did not have to worry about overlapping tracks nor did I have to do extensive editing. All that was required was to input the data into Google Earth and MapSource Topo Canada and save an image of the track, and then add whatever text or labels I wanted on the maps.

These are the maps that I created.





All of my Greenbelt maps can be found here.

Back On My Bike With My New GPS

Well spring has finally come, even if it has been interrupted for a few days, and I finally got back out on my bike. Early this week I got out on my Brodie Sterling hybrid for some rides around Kanata and the back country roads. I got to try out my new Garmin GPSMAP 60Cx GPS unit and I was very pleased with it. I am looking forward to getting back on the bike again early next week when the spring weather returns.

click on images to enlarge