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The "Non-Invasive" Dirt Roads Around Austin Thread

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Coolhand said:
Bunch of mis-fits at the beginning of Gotier Trace on the park side :)
Click to expand...

You can see where I got my avatar pics from. :trust:

529378460_jZtQK-L.jpg
 
those guys are NOT to be trusted under any circumstances... No wonder ranchers get their shotguns out when they hear you comin...:eek2:
 
Zapp et all -

I found a post containing Ken Ingham's Hill Country 400 ride tracks...

Here (Post #4)

I need to check these at home and update the master map on this thread :)

J
 
question: can one simply drop that .gdb file onto Google Earth to get a look, or does it need converting first?
'twas a good find... I knew I had seen those posted somewhere but I thought ADV
 
Excellent tool! :clap: Thanks for the link.

Just took a look at Ken Ingham's route... it's a beaut. I think it's essentially what I followed him through on in 2006. Long day of riding. I'll get it put into Google Maps and link it onto this thread.

Still waiting for one of you CS types to man up and make us a Google Earth App/Database that we can go in and highlight good roads and provide commentary... :)

Edit -

Here is Ken Inghams THC 400 route. I'm not 100% satisfied with the distances that Google seems to be giving me...

Here's Leg 1. ~ 145 miles.

Here's Leg 2. ~ 46 miles

Here's Leg 3. ~ 126 miles
I'm not sure why a portion of the route seems to be missing.... these are tough to do, as I'm having to put in a bunch of "destinations" to get them to route correctly.

And finally, Leg 4. ~ 80 miles
Basically pick your poison for the trip home from Austin.

For a grand total of 397 miles from the Y in Oak Hill (although I'm not sure Leg 3 is including the little problem section)!
 
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Hi guys, I too have been thinking about a dirt road ride this weekend, but this full route is 385 miles according to Mapsource. That's a long day on a dirt road.
Maybe we can shortcut somewhere along the way?

thc400.jpg
 
maybe a shortcut, something like one of these in yellow...

thc400b.jpg
 
Unless you want to go 12 - 14 hours, you gotta short it somewhere. Back in '06 we started with 30+ riders at about 8:00 AM and about 6 - 8 made it the entire loop, and that was 10:00 PM if I remember it right... and that was moving out most of the time. It was brutal for me.

Edit - thanks for Mapsourcing it BTW!

You could also make the jump from Lower Crabapple (above F-burg) over to Eckert and Willow City... but F-burg is a nice break for dinner and gas.
 
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this is still 283 miles, but we can shortcut again if nec.
t-day.jpg


I'll check back in in an hour or so.

John
 

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I PM'd Ken to see if he's doing a Turkey run into the hills this year, we'll see what he says. I could handle 280 - 300 miles, but I'm still working out our schedule at home (Turkey Day feast, mountainbiking wife, sick kid, etc). I'd be tempted to cut out the close in stuff and hit the far out stuff, because I've done the close stuff... makes for a long ride before hitting good road though. :eek2:
 
I wouldn't mind the further stuf, I was just trying to cut the excess mileage. The only dirt roads I've done around here were the Beyond Epic roads and that was good enough that I have been considering running them again.
John
 
So I was thinking about a little idea/experiment. At the beginning of this thread there are screen shots with notes next to roads with a little bit of explanations.

Since we now can embed a Google map here, I was wondering if we could start a map that we can all collaborate on. So each person can add their own way points/markers with notes, pics and/or video's.

We wouldn't post routes just information on the actual roads so over time we can have a good idea of where all the dirt roads are, the condition and fun level.

Thoughts?

 
That's exactly the intent, let's do it. I can probably save a G-map with the "collaborate" flag checked in the first post and we could start there? I think that some of the individual G-maps I posted were collaboration enabled... word of warning, routing on dirt can be a **** on G-maps.
 
Updated
I started a map. I need people's email address to send an invite to them to collaborate. Please PM me with your email address if you would like to be added as a collaborator. Once you've accepted the invite I have it set up that you can then invite others to collaborate so that I don't have to be the bottle neck.
There is an option to allow anyone to edit the map but I'm concerned some yahoo will come in and mess up a bunch of work people have done.

Thoughts?

Click on the blue way points to see my descriptions.


View Hill Country Dirt Roads, Texas Dual Sport Rides in a larger Google map for markers, pics and commentary
 
This is going to be cool. Now if we really wanted to take the mystery out of it, you iPhone nerds could go take some geo-tagged pictures... ;-)
 
Adding pics will be a cool thing and the pics can be hosted similar to what we do on this forum. So they can be in photobucket or smugmug or whatever. :sun:
 
So here's where the fun begins. I did a ride this weekend and took pics and added it to the map. Check out "House Mountain Rd water crossing".

Click on the water crossing icon and you'll see a description and pics. :trust:

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?hl=e....589603,-98.924332&spn=0.096643,0.206509&z=13

Justin, if you don't mind can we add the Google map that we are collaborating on to the very first post? It will make it easier for new comers to find. :thumb:
 
Added a few more pics of roads on the map west and northwest of San Saba. :rider:

I'm find that cropping the pics to 320X240 pixels seems to come out nicely sized on the Google maps pop-up.
 
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