The Blue Ridge Trail....... a work in progress

Some of that BRT looks like my big Valk could do a little ..

Hey did ya get any icecream @ BW mtn. ??
The lemon crunch is to die for

We had fun with ya'll.. Come back any time..

So three days of riding from Harrisonburg, VA to Hampton, VA. Hmm, might be able to pull that off one way on my EXC without an oil change, hmmmm... (The thought of taking the KLR in the woods after getting a KTM just isn't sounding that appealing.)

Looks like y'all made a good little run of it.

If you don't have a stearing stabilizer on the exc......take the KLR! much more comfy.

Great to meet you guys! The KTM did wonderful on the first off road ride, a huge upgrade from the old KLX650... The trip looks like a ton of fun I hope to make it soon! Thanks for turning me onto ADV!

Hey, it was good to meet you too Matt. Glad you are happy with the bike. Hang around on here and you will get to meet some good people and get in on some good rides. We will let you know when we are back in your area or doing something you might want to join.

Good job finding this Matt! Nice meeting you, and welcome to ADV. I have a feeling you will fit right in.

Here are a few pics from our day ride on the BRT today.(in the interest of keeping the thread moving….).

We’re still looking to ride the whole trail this summer, but haven’t been able to make a multi-day trip happen yet, and the forecast for that is getting worse and worse. Decided to take what we can get now, and ran 100 mi up the highway today to ride roughly 50 mi of trail before blasting down the highway back home.

Even grabbed a little parkway on the way up:


We hopped on at Buchanan and headed south on the trail (ok, north on 43, s/sw trail direction....). I’m pretty much a complete off-road noob, so I’m really excited about riding the BRT. My CRF230L is the first “off-road” oriented bike I’ve ever owned, and it’s definitely a noob friendly playbike.



I made DH go back across my first “official” water crossing to get a pic. Ya’ll can share in our amusement that I was a little bit intimidated by what turned out to be the world’s easiest water crossing. Little did I know how much practice I would get, there were like 8 or 9 more crossings, none of which were any trouble today.



The ridges in this section were a really nice way to escape the heat, but summer growth didn’t allow for any pics with a view.







Thanks Error Cooled for the hard work. Even for a day ride, having the BRT route saved us a bunch of time trying to figure out where to go. Instead, we enjoyed a great ride in beautiful weather. Hope to be able to post that link to a ride report you asked for later this summer.

About that second picture... I felt like I was riding in Nevada at that point so I stopped and took the very same one.

Dont get butt hurt when I say this because I can only say it as a wise ass.

Those long stalky things coming off the handlebars with the reflective doodad attached to them that look like an excelent place to hang a helmet are an excelent place to hang a helmet. Just sayin'

Thanks for the ride report!

I had a mirror break not sure if it was due to hanging a helmet or vibration.The one I hung my helmet on was the only one that broke.
I stopped hanging the helmet on the mirror until I got a pair of double takes.

I received the tracks and imported the RAW file into Basecamp on my mac. All looks good, but when I move the file to my GPS (montana 600), I can only see a small portion of the BRT at a time.

Can anyone school me--I am a GPS noob--and help me figure out how to see the whole Trail as a single loop on my GPS?

Probably too many "points" for the GPS???? You can "filter" some out or cut it into smaller tracks. Just guessing as I don't know anything about the Montana 600, but I need to do this sometimes with a Garmin Foretrex, but not so much with the Zumo. Have you tried the ".....500ptmax" file?

I tried the 500pt max file, but it would import. Got a dialog box saying the file "could not be found." I can try to filter the tracks, but wonder if this is everyones' experience. My Montana can handle like 10,000 points per track on up to 200 tracks, I think.

Anyone actually using these files have some info?

I loaded them to my Zumo, they seemed ok, but I did not ride it yet. And I reworked into one long track so I can just start and ride for 5 days with out messing with it.

I believe what is happening is that you will either have to enable all the little tracks one by one or you'll have to link the various tracks up.

If any GPS can handle it, the Montana can.

Both these sound like exactly what I want to do. I'm brand new to the GPS world and don't know how to "rework into one long track" or "link the various tracks up"

Do I do this in Basecamp or on the Montana itself? Are there any resources (i.e. links) that will give me instructions?

Thank you

BaseCamp. The Montana is pretty money, but it still doesn't have as much processor as your computer, much less a keyboard or mouse.

From the email I got with the files (hope EC doesn't mind me quoting the email):

Basically, you can select multiple tracks in BaseCamp and tell it to join them. However, tracks are directional so the joins may not be exactly what you want. So, it is best to duplicate the tracks, put them in their own folder in BaseCamp and do the join on a couple at a time until you get the hang of it. Experiment, that's one of the best ways to learn this stuff.

Garmin also has some BaseCamp forums to ask questions in. Here is the link to the Windows version:

https://forums.garmin.com/forumdisplay.php?179-BaseCamp

They also have a Mac version.

EDIT: here's a link to the Montana wiki, lots of good stuff there:

http://garminmontanagpsr.wikispaces.com/

This is great. I shall continue mucking about with it!

thanks for your help Jack

Lol, I just noticed the comments about the helmet on the mirror...Next time, I'll have to stage my pics better!

Thank you for the info. I hope to try this trip soon.