2025 Micro-Tour 12 Bikepacking Trip

2025 Micro-Tour 12 was a 58 mile (each way) self-supported bikepacking trip from NYC to Mountain Lakes Park in North Salem, NY on November 8-9, 2025

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Planned in 2024 as our last trip of the 2025 season, I didn't have the foresight to realize this Micro-Tour would happen after Daylight Savings Time set the clocks back. So, this trip had 2 major plotlines leading into it...what would the weather be like in November, and would we have daylight issues during the ride?

Although we had a little rain at our start point, the weather cleared into becoming a beautiful day.

The trip was originally full, but we had some late cancellations (and late additions!) that put the group at 19.

With fantastic weather, the next challenge was to get the group to camp (and more importantly off the roads) before dusk. It's a 58 mile journey (with some climbing and gravel at the end) that I have done a a lot, with the average group arriving at camp between 3:30 and 4:30pm. Because this turned out to be a smaller group, coupled with the fact that most folks had pretty decent experience with 718, we were able to shepherd the group to camp by 2:07pm (a record!).

Arriving at camp so early, with an impending sunset of 4:45pm was a bit weird in terms of set-up, campfire and cooking. We got a fire going by 4pm, and the temperatures certainly began to drop.

Right about this time we were visited by 2 special guests/groups. First, a childhood friend who lives in the area drove into camp with pizzas. Then, Miggy (aka @Helmetkids) and his merry band of riders showed to to provide culinary entertainment and spend the night.

The overnight temperature at camp dipped down to about 42 degrees around 3am, then really warmed to to the low 50's by the time folks were waking up. The night air was surprisingly dry. This was abnormally great weather for November in this neck of the woods.

We were treated to another great day of riding on our return trip in Sunday, with some rain happening in the last few miles and blocks of people's journey home.

The end of this trip was also the end of our 2025 season. The 2025 season was our biggest yet in terms of tours, new tours and mileage.

Note: For better or worse, I do not use AI to create my posts. This is all me, with my misspelling, poor grammar and tangential thoughts. I didn't get into this line of work to hand over my thoughts, expertise and experience to AI to spit out blog posts.