Albert

Yes, I updated the forum yesterday. There are a ton of mostly minor changes and bug fixes, as well as some interesting new features I haven't played around with yet. if you see anything outright broken, please let me know. 🙂

It poured quite hard in Round Rock last night for a bit, so not surprised the trails at Brushy are fairly wet this morning.

The costs aren't too bad, the commercial forum software is a few hundred dollars a year, the SSL cert isn't too bad, and I'm hosting the site on one of the dedicated servers I have with some other sites on it (this isn't a very high-traffic site). I hate bots and spammers, so I don't mind putting in a bit of extra effort to help insure their appearance here is very rare. I do need to update the software to the latest version soon, which brings some nice, new functionality as well as the usual slate of bug fixes. I plan on doing that in October.

I've seen rattlesnakes twice between Hogg and Overlook. During the day, snake just sunning itself on the trail. They seem to be pretty stubborn and don't like to move without a lot of coaxing. I saw a snakeskin hanging from a tree between Cedar Breaks and Cedar Hollow. That's always a bit disturbing. 😄

I think I've only ridden some of the northern part of LGT at night (Overlook to Hogg or Russell and back, if even that far). I've always wanted to do a complete lap at night, would be fun. I find that I ride a bit faster on trails at night.

Everyone is different, and for me it really depends on how hot and/or humid it is. If it's relatively cool, one three liter bladder is more than enough for me. But if it's hot, I'll usually refill at Tejas to help ensure I won't run out of water. Assuming I'm starting at Cedar Breaks or Overlook.

I'd just be careful if there's any dew out there that might make things slippery.

True, I think I've only done that once the entire time I've lived here. 😄 And at least you can get water at a few places, such as Tejas Camp, so that helps.

Ahh, interesting, I did see the new sidewalks when I climbed the hill out of the park, but didn't notice the sidewalk was sitting higher than the road surface. I would not be surprised if they resurface it. There was a crew working on the bridge when I rode through and they had it blocked off (except for the sidewalk on the side).

To answer the original question. Trails I would definitely avoid in the middle of a summer day: Reimers Ranch. Very little tree cover. Reveille Peak Ranch. Mixed cover, but the heat radiating from the rocks is brutal in the summer. Thumper - Any trails stuck in a valley with little airflow are sweltering this time of year. Lake Georgetown - Just, no. I'd get a lap in if I started right at sunrise, but would suck with the humidity in the morning. Probably others, but those are the ones off the top of my head that would be far down the list if I had to ride in the middle of the day. Most anything is tolerable for me if I start early enough (even with the humidity), but generally nicer if you ride late in the day as the sun is going down.

I enjoy the Juniper Ridge trail. Haven't been out there in a while, though. I think it would be pretty brutal this time of year. Yes, I did a 50 mile loop between Walnut Creek and downtown recently and the route goes through Govalle Park. Haven't done that loop in nearly two years, so was nice to see they finished the work at the park! They were still working on the Montopolis bridge, though and I had to ride on the sidewalk across it. I wonder when that will be finished? Kind of surprised it's not done already.

I manually approve accounts in order to (help) prevent spammers from getting in. It's usually pretty obvious when someone signs up from Vietnam or China that they are not interested in talking about mountain biking in the Austin area. 🙂

Fixed.. I forgot that even though I purchased a five year certificate, it has to be manually renewed every year. Annoying. Sorry!

Whoops, I'll get this fixed today, weird that I never saw any notifications about the cert expiring.

Holy crap, that sucks! What trail is that on? I'm not familiar with any trees that close together at Brushy, and I have pretty wide handlebars at the moment (they need to be cut down!) Edit: I think I recognize where that is on Double Down, but I could be wrong.