2025 Micro-Tour 11 (Fall Bikepacking)
- nocellajoe
- Oct 27
- 3 min read
Updated: Nov 13
2025 Micro-Tour 11 was a 44 mile self-supported bikepacking trip from New York City to Croton Point Park (NY). Full Image Gallery
Late season trips to Croton have to be among my favorite rides. These generally happen in late October and oftentimes serve as the end to our touring season (not this year, however). The weather is usually crisp, we tend to get lots of beginners, and it's a great setting for a campfire.
"Late season" at Croton Point Park (October) usually means the bathroom/shower building is closed for the season, and the site's porta-potties are reduced from 3 to 1. This really isn't a big deal.
As always, we met in lower Manhattan to get moving at 7am. Although it is late in our season, we don't really have daylight issues as it's a shorter ride, and it's before Daylight Savings Time.
We do al lot of trips, so I am always looking to pick out the 5-6 items that will make this a memorable experience...the things that stick out to me (NOT in order of importance) are:
The Amazing Weather
A whole bunch of people new to 718/bikepacking
Jared's Tall Bike
Agata's interviews
4am Raccoon Attack
Great campfires (night and morning)
This was a rather large groups, as late-season Micro-Tours tend to be as I think people just really want to get that last ride in before winter. The ride up was rather smooth for such a big group that contained a good amount of new folks.
We arrived at the campsite around 2pm, which is typical for this ride, and got everyone set up. One of the rules I use is to get set up (tent, etc.) as soon as I arrive just in case there is a weather issue. Also, putting off setup means it may happen in the dark, which could suck.
After set-up, there is just general sitting around, getting to know each other time. Firewood was dropped off early, so we decided to get that party stated at around 4pm
People starting cooking over the fire at around 5pm.
After that, we used most of the wood we had to create a great campfire
The evening was cold, but not too cold (around 43 degrees), and relatively uneventful until the racoons made their initial assault at 4am. We had the campsite in good shape as we went to bed (in terms of hanging food and discarding garbage), but they still found a weakness and exploited it for a food bag theft. Every successful raccoon attack gives
me more knowledge on how to defeat them in the future.
Of our 6 trips to Croton this season, we have 2 wins, 3 losses and a draw (this trip) versus the racoons.
After all of the raccoon excitement, I just stayed up and built a fire.
The next morning, we shoved off as a group at around 8:40am, stopping in Briarcliff for coffee and bagels.
The ride back to NYC was full of beautiful foliage and some classic fall weather. Such a great trip with a wonderful crew!
Note:Ā 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.
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