The Schooley's Mountain Ride

Saturday July 11th

I have been contemplating doing this ride since I arrived back in NJ with a bit of fear.   Schooley's Mountain is not for the faint of heart.   It's not Fiddler's Elbow which has a 22% grade t the top of the climb but it mind as well be with the amount of hill climbing I have done over the past year.

The ride started at Raritan Valley College and went through bucolic tree lined roads that bring a sense of peace while riding.  However, that peace was interrupted with the sense of fear of the impending climb(s) ahead.  We rode along Rockaway Road which dead ends in Mountainville.  

This store served great coffee and gourmet breakfasts when it was open.  The "For Sale" sign was a sad sign of the times.....no pun intended.

We headed towards Califon with some great views of the countryside and an awesome downhill.  Well....it usually is an awesome downhill.  However, one of the bikes had a mechanical.....a broken spoke.   Yikes.  We were pretty much in the middle of nowhere and certainly no bike shops around to get the wheel to for repair.

How many Princeton Freewheeler's does it take to fix a broken spoke??   A lot!!!!


Luckily Jim Brittain who builds wheels was on the ride so he was able to fix the wheel so that we could hopefully get to the rest stop without having to call for help.

We climbed Slicker Road....boy I don't remember that road being that long....but we made it to the top before we made a right and headed towards our rest stop.  

The store is the only one in the area.

This satellite post office is contained within the store.   I can't remember the last time I have seen one of these.


Even though our ride leader, Tom , said that there was not a lot of climbing left he was mistaken.  We had a bunch of climbing to do but the scenery was great.   The roads were not so great.  Lots of potholes on the downhils lwhich were reminders of the harsh winter and had to be navigated very careful while controlling your speed. 

The rest of the ride was pretty uneventful and that was a good thing.  The broken spoke wheel held up and other that my neck and shoulder bothering me requiring the group to stop as well as one other ride cramping up  and requiring a second stop for him to ingest some salt tablets. we made it back to the ride start with all 10 riders.   We ended the day with 54 miles and 3,400 ft of climbing.