Ernest's Mountain Bike rides around Virginia Tech area

Memorial weekend MTB adventure

Amy rode the century at Mountains of Misery on the roads near
Blacksburg on Sunday; I'm in no shape for a road century so I took the
mountain bike to Brush Mountain, near VT campus. If you lived around
VT somewhere, you'd probably ride to the Meadowood access on your bike
and over the Brush Mtn ridge on the way in and out. You'd be a monster
if you did that as often as we ride Umstead/Crabtree/Sludge/etc.
Map:
http://www.weaselworks.org/pandapas/Pandapas_Pond_Trails.pdf

AM Ride: From Papandas Pond access (top left corner of the map), Horse
Nettle --> down Old Farm --> up Old Farm --> down Jacob's Ladder -->
up Snakeroot --> down Snakeroot --> back out on Poverty Creek. ~7.25
miles.
PM Ride (or, "What was I thinking?") from Meadowood Parking in lower
right on the map: Up Gateway/Old Farm, down Jacob's ladder --> CCW on
Queen Anne --> up Prickly Pear --> Down Grizzly -->down Royale --> up
Snakeroot --> down Old Farm/Gatelway. ~8.4 miles.
And Amy has no sympathy for me being wasted after a measly 15 miles.
Figures.

Trail notes:
-- Horse Nettle is mostly "jeep trail" with a little singletrack at
the beginning. In local terms, it's a "roller" which means I was in
the granny on most of the climbs.
-- Jacob's Ladder had a few switchbacks at the top, then opens up into
some long straights. How does 30 MPH over shale scree sound? There's
no riding back up this one, it's washed out pretty badly in places
and has sections of 2'+ waterbars and steps.
-- Snakeroot: nice level singletrack at the bottom near the creek,
then opens up to doubletrack for the middle third, with rapidly
switchbacky singletrack at the top. There were only a couple of
switchbacks I couldn't ride going up, going down the doubletrack is
nutso fast and there are banks you can rail on the faster corners.
-- Poverty creek: Mostly flat singletrack, a lot like around here
without the roots and logs.
-- Queen Ann's/Prickly Pear/Grizzly: Good tricky singletrack with long
sections of rocks to climb.
-- Royale: fast downhill twisties with a good flow.
-- Old Farm: Going up, it's a leg and lung burner, harder than
Snakeroot going up with more tricky sections. Going down, it's a
white-knuckle ride. You build speed very quickly, but you have to keep
scrubbing it off for the tight switchbacks. My hands were cramping a
little from hanging on to the brakes after the last time down.