So You Want to Ride Ringwood
Ringwood State Park
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Introduction
The first thing to know about Ringwood is that there is no "best" way to ride all the good trails. This is what makes a park both awesome and frustrating as a non-regular. You will have to ride some fire roads in order to put some things together. The main fire road is a climb which leads to a great downhill run. In general, we are "ok" with fire road climbs; less so with fire road descents.
This article really only gives a partial tour of the park. You could put together some epic rides within the park. By adding Sterling, which you can connect to with a minimum of road, you can string together an epic day.
Best Trails to Ride
The trails we are going to focus on are some of the more popular ones and easier to loop together.
- Ringwood Ramapo Knob to Warm Puppy Rock
- Skylands
- White/Crossover (this is a link to the main downhill)
- Poison Ivy
- (New) Crossover (Lot A, 19, National Trails Day Build)
- Race Loop
- Six Bridges Loop
- Cats Nest (formerly Renegade)
- TBD
Best Loops to Ride
Loop 1: Ringwood Advanced Loop
Notes
This route will touch on a lot of the trails mentioned in the Trails to Ride section above. Parking will be at Ryerson School, but you can also park at Lot A and do the same loop just starting in a different spot. In fact, one could argue that starting at Lot A makes more sense. The loop is not beginner-friendly, and even intermediate riders will have a tough time doing this in a single go. There is nothing in here that will kill you. But it's a long ride and you need to be prepared for that.
General Description (not a step-by-step walkthrough)
- You start by climbing up the hill for a bit. If the first 10 minutes make you hurt, you may want to rethink this
- The route takes you on a loop of Six Bridges (CW direction). You can cut this out to shorten the loop
- From there you make your way to Cat's Nest (formerly Renegade) which is a fairly technical trail in spots
- You then hit the first of the fire road climbs, which lasts a long time
- At the end you are rewarded with a really long downhill run on white
- At the bottom of this downhill, you climb up some switchbacks to the main crossing point in the loop
- Decision Point. If you have had enough you can go left on Warm Puppy Rock and finish out your ride
- If you continue on, drop straight across down the fire road which brings you to Lot A
- From the lot there are a few newer trails that bring you to the other side of the pavement
- Continue on until you get to the old piece of heavy machinery where there's a small loop at the NW corner of this GPS loop
- You can skip this CCW loop to save ~10 minutes
- From here head to Shepherds Lake where you can refill water if needed, season-dependent
- The remainder of the loop is a series of straight trails to bring you back. Note that the end of this loop is probably the most difficult of the whole loop
- Race loop (backwards)
- Skylands
- Ringwood Ramapo Knob
- Warm Puppy Rock
- Then you take a series of small connectors back to the Ryerson lot
Strava Ringwood Advanced Loop
Trailforks Ride Log
(need TF route)
GPX Download
Parking
Parking is available both inside the park, and from popular access points
- Ryerson School - When school is not in-session
- Lot A
- Shepherd's Lake - This is a pay-to-park lot in the summer
Amenities
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Features
Maps
The best map of Ringwood can be found on Trailforks.
Below is a screen shot of the Strava route, plus elevation profile. You can see the 2 significant climbs more clearly in this view.
Media
Links To:
For more information, see the following links regarding Ringwood:
- Trailforks
- Ringwood Trail Conditions on MTBNJ.com
- Ringwood State Park forum on MTBNJ.com
- Ringwood State Park on JORBA.org
Nearby
Food places
Bike shops
Quik-E-Marts
Coffee shops
And so on
