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[bike] Arlmont Hill
Apr. 2nd, 2006 09:43 pmI figured I'd take a 25ish mile trip out around Cambridge Reservoir (much like Arlington's Great Meadows, in Lexington). This expedition started by going across the Fitchburg Cutoff trail, then across Brighton Street in Belmont and up the hill. The Arlmont Hill climb took a little more out of me than I really expected. (Note to self: remember to bring food, even on "short" trips.) I headed out on Concord Ave., which also isn't terribly flat, so I turned off towards Lexington and came back by the bike path; busy, but not unmanageable (no baby SUVs or rollerbladers with iPods). Route map here.
Here we also discover a failure of the GPS plot. The data set I have doesn't know about things like the various local rail-trail conversions. While Mass. Ave. approximates the Minuteman, nothing's really that close to the Fitchburg Cutoff trail aside from the commuter rail proper, and the GPS is clever enough to know I'm not biking on that. My planned return route came back via Belmont Center, so it concluded that I had gone outside of 128 and come back without telling it and the nearest match from my current location to the route was on the way back. Not so useful. Finding out that Brighton Street didn't actually go anywhere useful past Route 60 was a positive use of modern technology, though.
Total of 17 miles. Climbing Arlmont Hill looks like about a 3% grade climbing 250 feet in a mile and a half; coming down the Minuteman from Lexington is more of a 1% grade.
Here we also discover a failure of the GPS plot. The data set I have doesn't know about things like the various local rail-trail conversions. While Mass. Ave. approximates the Minuteman, nothing's really that close to the Fitchburg Cutoff trail aside from the commuter rail proper, and the GPS is clever enough to know I'm not biking on that. My planned return route came back via Belmont Center, so it concluded that I had gone outside of 128 and come back without telling it and the nearest match from my current location to the route was on the way back. Not so useful. Finding out that Brighton Street didn't actually go anywhere useful past Route 60 was a positive use of modern technology, though.
Total of 17 miles. Climbing Arlmont Hill looks like about a 3% grade climbing 250 feet in a mile and a half; coming down the Minuteman from Lexington is more of a 1% grade.
