Dirt roads around southern/western ME and/or NH lakes region?

[Andrea Hafner]

I am looking to do more dirt/gravel road riding this year (just signed up for this year's D2R2,100k route) and am trying to find some dirt roads to train on within a reasonable distance.  Does anyone have any recommendations for routes or places to find them?  I have the NH and ME gazetteers but not sure that the level of detail is enough, also finding that a lot of the "unimproved roads" (I'm assuming these are where to look) seem to be dead ends which is not helpful.  

[Jon]

Hi Andrea,

I don't have any specific locations, but someone will.

You could do a bit of searching ride planning sites, via Google search with a term like "maine dirt site:ridewithgps.com."

For planning my own routes, I use RWGPS to look over areas, switching between various map layers. Sometimes it's easy to see a dirt road in satellite imagery, or looking for dashed lines indicating 4WD tracks on USGS maps. Google Bicycle Map data has started to show dirt paths, too. I recall Microsoft Bing maps showing dirt roads when zoomed in. And the DeLorme Gazetteer books are occasionally useful.

If you're going through state or federal lands, sometimes those have maps indicating road surface, gates, etc.

Jon

Watertown, MA

[Steve Park]

Garmin BaseCamp shows unpaved roads with dashed lines - though it does not report the type of unpaved surface. 
You would need a Garmin GPS unit with a Garmin map file to view that extra level of local road detail in BaseCamp.

On Monday, March 9, 2015 at 3:51:53 PM UTC-4, Andrea Hafner wrote:

[Steve Park]

Hey Jon,

Thanks for pointing out the site: search concept.  I had no idea that was possible. 

On Monday, March 9, 2015 at 4:43:30 PM UTC-4, Jon wrote:

You could do a bit of searching ride planning sites, via Google search with a term like "maine dirt site:ridewithgps.com.":51:53 PM UTC-4, Andrea Hafner wrote:

[Anton Tutter]

+2, thanks Jon for that tip! For kicks, I tested it for New York and some of the top hits were my Catskills routes!

Anton

[Ned Connell]

Everyone

The data to map gravel/dirt roads is available for free thru the GIS data systems for each state. It used to be alot easier to map this out. Several years ago on this listserv, I sent out a message that went over how to do this. Unfortunately, those methods are no longer available.

Currently, people would have to download the GIS coverages/maps for each state then using GIS software create an atlas for their private use. There is free software available to do this, but it is not the most user-friendly. Compare its difficulty to creating a really cool website - anyone can do an ordinary website but a really cool website takes some skill and training.

Is another GIS person on this listserv? - there may be a way to upload data to the Open Street Map website. I do not know what their size limits are for uploading data files, but I am certain there is one.

FYI - gravel/dirt data is available for all the New England states except Connecticut.

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[Brian Ogilvie]

The Jimapco western Massachusetts road map distinguishes paved and unpaved roads. You could see whether their Maine maps do.

The 100K D2R2 route only has a couple of short stretches on "unimproved" roads - when I did the 100K in 2013, the two unimproved stretches were on Old Albany Road uphill from the CT valley into Shelburne, and the infamous Hawks Road stretch toward the end. Most of the roads are perfectly fine, well maintained dirt/gravel. I wouldn't go out of my way to find unimproved or unmaintained roads. What you want are steep roads so you can practice your climbing and handling. And make sure that your bottle cages grip sufficiently. On Deer Park Road, in Halifax VT, I saw many bottles that had rattled loose and fallen off on the long descent.

The longer routes have more unimproved stretches, but they're still a small proportion of the total distance.

Brian

On Mon, Mar 9, 2015 at 3:51 PM, Andrea Hafner <arha...@gmail.com> wrote:

I am looking to do more dirt/gravel road riding this year (just signed up for this year's D2R2,100k route) and am trying to find some dirt roads to train on within a reasonable distance.  Does anyone have any recommendations for routes or places to find them?  I have the NH and ME gazetteers but not sure that the level of detail is enough, also finding that a lot of the "unimproved roads" (I'm assuming these are where to look) seem to be dead ends which is not helpful.  

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Brian W. Ogilvie <bwog...@gmail.com>
Hadley, Massachusetts, USA
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[Jeffrey Kane]

+3 on the site: search ... same thing happened when I searched dirt around my father's home in Northern RI -- turns out I knew most of the routes from exhaustive map and online comparisons (and riding) ... but yeah, that's a game-changer in terms of easy searching for somewhere you might not be familiar with.