Western MTB trip 2008

Bangtail Divide Trail

2008-09-08T19:47:00.000-07:00

Well it was finally not raining here when we got up, WOO HOO! Our plan was to check in with another bike shop to get an opinion on the Bangtail Divide trail, if it would be dry enough to ride. So into town we went, stopping at the Bangtail Bike Shop. These guys really know their stuff, bikes and trails. They assured us we would be go to go on the trail, it would have some grease spots and be a little muddy in spots but it would be a good ride and we wouldn't do any damage to the trail. We made a quick stop at the oil change place to prep the truck for the big ride back then up the road to the final trail head. One of the guys at the shop suggested doing the road portion first and that made sense to us. It was 8 miles to the start of the single track, a bit of climb up the first couple miles then downhill for the next 4 and up a dirt road for less than a mile, total of just 30 minutes riding. We ran into some chick with about 10 dogs at the trail head, the bus she was driving said something about doggy hiking program or something, she also happend to be orginially from Pittsburgh. So up we went, a series of over 20 switchbacks then more straight stuff, total climb of a little over 2000 feet in 5 miles, all graded that kept us on the bikes. The next bunch of miles was up and down, through meadows, forested sections, and the occational amazing view, sometimes almost 360 degrees.

We were only upto about 8000 feet at our highest but we saw a number of ranges in the distance that were obviously a good bit higher since they had a bunch of new snow on them. The track was in really great condition for having had some much rain lately, just the occational puddle and some of the high forested stuff was still a little soft.
About 19 miles after we started on the single track we hit the final downhill, about 4 miles of well graded benchcut fun back to the truck losing about 1600 feet, thats like doing Sassafrass from Kettle down to rag hollow rd twice in a row. Total millage about 33 including the 8 road miles and we were out about 5.5 hours.

The Weekend - more rain

2008-09-07T12:08:00.000-07:00

Well we made it to Bozeman MT yesterday, deciding not to try the ride that was on the way since it was wet and the clouds above the mountains did not look promising. By the time we got out towards a ride near here it started to rain so we headed into town for a bit, checking out one of the bike shops, looking for some info on how the trails dry out after the rains they have had. We woke up to more rain this morning so we just hung out at the trailer, howie made omlettes, and we are watching some NFL football on the one over the air channel we get, CBS. I also did some video editing and uploaded them here.
http://vimeo.com/1684972

2008-09-05T17:06:00.000-07:00

Well 2 days ago we woke up to a slight drizzle here in town. The radar didn't show much so we decided to head up to the trailhead to see what was up. The rain picked up as we headed north but we figured we would check things out. We headed back the dirt road as the weather started to clear and by the time we got to the trail, we were really thinking we could get the ride in, that was until we checked out the trail tread, two steps on the dirt and we knew we were done as the mud stuck to our shoes like peanut butter. We headed back to town and went into the park and finished up the northern loop that we had started the day before. It had rained more up in the mountains that night so we decided to head into the park yesterday and do the southern loop. This is the one with Old Faithful as well as a couple of amazing waterfalls on the Yellowtone river, and most of the thermal activity. Its an amazing place, I would highly recommend anybody that has a chance to check it out to do so.
Today we wanted to give the northern stuff a bit more time to dry out and we will also be going right by it on our way to Bozeman tomorrow and theres enough room to leave the truck and trailer at the trailhead. So today we checked out the Continental Divide Trail that crossed Rt 20 just south of West Yellowstone. The plan was to do an out n back, 10 miles each way to the high point. It started as jeep trail, then down to an old double track, nice views but a few quarter mile hike-a-bikes. There were some nice views but not alot of sun.
After about 7 miles the trail turned to singletrack, climbing at a reasonable grade, across meadows and through forested sections. At just about the 10 mile point we hit a first for the trip, some snow flurries. Our altitude wasn't what the one guide book said it should be, I think they re-routed it since the book was published, but we got to about 10.25 miles in and the trail started down a bit so we stopped to re-evaluate. As Howie was eating his fluffer nutter, he spied a critter down below us in the meadows. I thought at first it was just another mule deer but got out the video camera and Howie his camera. We both came to the same conclusion, it was the first moose we had seen this trip. Just after that, the flurries picked up and we decided that we should really start back. So on went the jackets, I had already gone with warmer gloves.
The way back was pretty uneventful, the flurries waxing and waning for a while then quiting all together. All told, a bit over 20 miles with somewhere in the neighborhood of 3500 feet of climbing.

Yellowstone, day 1

2008-09-02T20:27:00.001-07:00

no ride today, a trip up from Victor ID to West Yellowstone, WY. Drive was uneventful, a bit of mountain to deal with but nothing like Teton pass or anything. We got set up in the park, right in town, a small place but everything is really good, flat spot with plenty of room for the slide out, good water, clean bathrooms, internet connection rocks. We got set up, took a quick walk through town to the post office, grabbed some lunch on the way back, a quick stop at the grocery for some cheese and crackers for later, then headed out to Yellowstone National park. We headed up the northwest side for a "short loop." We caught a glimpse of a bull elk with a heck of a rack across a meadow. We stopped at a waterfall then a hot spring sorta place then up to the artists paint pots, see the first picture. Pretty cool spot, with all these different colored hot spring holes.

Next stop was Mamouth Springs, a series of hot springs with a board walk through the area. Really amazing spot, as with all these the pictures don't really don't do it justice but the different colors and the blue water with the mountains in the background is pretty darn cool. The trip back down gave us a few more critter sightings, first a buffalo literally right along side of the road, then another one marching up the other lane of the two lane road, leading a parade of a half dozen cars. A few more buffalo in the next field as well. We also saw a bunch of cars parked along side the road where we saw the bull elk earlier and stopped. The field was littered with elk, a few right near the road, but no bulls.
Howie caught this sunset along the Madison River on our way out to the west entrance.
Tomorrow is another potential epic, but I had nothing to do with route finding, so maybe this one will work better, cross your fingers.

Aspen Trail

2008-09-01T15:15:00.000-07:00

Well the forecast for today was pretty miserable and there was rain on the radar in just about every direction except a bit to the north of us. As the clouds lifted off the mountains we could see it had snowed up there. We were debating on whether to ride at all but since howie did have this Aspen trail on his spreadsheet and it was in the area that it was not raining and it was on the low side, not getting above 7000 feet we decided to give it a go. We drove the few miles down towards Driggs then cut towards the mountains just before town. The ride starts up a creek canyon but works its way back out and follows a contour more or less about 600 feet or so above the valley floor. We knew it was not going to be a particularly scenic trail so howie left the big camera at home and we made due with my little guy. The space in the packs were taken up with foul weather gear including rain pants incase the skies let loose on us. The mountains in back are pretty washed out but those are all storm clouds above it. You can also see the circular nature of the planting patterns that correspond with the rotating sprinklers. For having had so much rain, the trail was in great shape, only a couple of soft spots. There were a few small rock gardens to keep things interesting and just a lot of fun to ride. It was only 10 miles but it was certainly better than nothing. We started the ride at about 44 degrees and finished at the same temperature. We went through Driggs on the way back, its a bit bigger than Victor, it actually has a red light, not just a blinking yellow. We stopped in at an outdoor store as well as a bike shop that were open, and howie found another ride map that he didn't have.

Phillips Canyon

2008-08-31T21:04:00.000-07:00

Well today was to be another Jackson Hole Classic, the Phillips Canyon ride. The ride directions had us starting at the same place we did for the Black Canyon, the start of the old pass road, but that was a couple miles and a couple hundred feet above where the the single track finshed outside of Wilson, so howie's suggestion was to park in wilson and get all the climbing outta the way first. So thats what we did, parking at the rodeo/park grounds in wilson then climbing the couple hundred feet along the highway on the bike path to the old pass road. Then the climbing started, i started feeling a little bonky so i stopped to ingest a few gummy bears and get the blood sugar back up where it should be but that gave howie a bit of a gap on me. Feeling better i kept pace with him but unable to gain. As I rounded the last switch back before the turn to Phillips, I saw him standing there with a hot looking blond. Not sure how it all happend but by the time i got there he had asked her if she wanted to join us as she was alone. She certainly did not look like she had a baby 7 months ago and certainly didn't look like nor as we found out later decended like she was 43 years old, she also has great taste in vehicles. (also great taste in bikes, same blur as mine, and gloves, same AXO gloves i used to have that they don't make anymore). Anyways, this mariage and baby thing had put a bit of a damper on her riding lately not that it showed. After a few more gummie bears, we headed up toward phillisps canyon, i owe don one for turning me on to those treats. Just after passing the highway, we picked up a brand new trail that the boyscouts had just put in a month or so ago, not on our maps and im sure we would not have had the courage to explore without our local riding diva. So up we went on Arrow trail, basically parralleling the dirt road we would have been on otherwise, great piece of track. We continued to follow it, I think ending up bypassing a bit of the orginal Phillis Canyon trail, but this trail was SWEET, great grade, really fast, just plain fun. Julia was not quite up to her prime climbing state(although she never slowed us down a bit) and i was in front on the Arrow trail as it climbed then started down, with her right behind me, keeping up a conversation. After a stop to wait up for howie, she started out in front and I only caught her due to a slight mishap in a creek crossing, as i found her sitting in it as i rounded the corner. She has some major skill. We continued down this relatively buff, gradual down hill, me starting out on her wheel and soon loosing it, damn was she good. We met up with the old Phillips downhill and she let me go first, I think mainly to make sure she survived to feed her darling baby, as she had not ridden this trail in a while and I could tell she had the potential to take it really fast. After another stop she couldn't take my lame downhilling skills and took the lead again, leaving me in the dust after a few hundred yards, but it was a lot of fun to follow her until i lost her, the girls has game. The bottom mile or so was a bit of up and down, still alot of fun then it all ended as we hit the paved road back to Wilson where we parked and she lives. She invited us back to her place where we decided to go grab some mexican at the corner, and have her husband and son meet us (they were up buying their skiing season passes, even the 7 mo old got one, they start early in Jackson Hole). What a great family, it was really a pleasure to hang out and get to know them for a bit before they needed to head out and we back over the mountain to Victor. Sorry for no pictures, this ride was all about the ride, not so much about the views. We do have to change our lexicon a bit, no longer can we refer to not doing something hard or technical as putting our pretty pink skirts, because Julia had on a great pretty pink skirt and schooled us on everything technical, tough, and fast today.

The Abandoned Epic

2008-08-30T18:22:00.000-07:00

Well the plan was for an epic ride today, starting out at Mail Cabin Canyon and work our way up to the Center Stock Drive trail then down into Mosquito Creek valley, then up that valley and back the way we came down Mail Cabin. The first 2.5 miles up Mail Cabin were really nice, running along the stream at a very reasonable grade. Then the dreaded half mile hike-a-bike we knew was coming hit. It really was not that bad, but there was certainly no riding up it, but at least we figured we could ride down it on the way back. Even after that was done, we still had a bit of hiking before we hit the intersection with Mike Harris trail. It took a minute to figure out which way we wanted to go especially since there were no bike tracks heading our way. The next mile was pretty beat up with horses having been up there last time it was wet. We were now up on the ridge and this trail really wanted to stay on the ridge as much as possible. We hit a section of exposed bench cut that horses had really done a number on, there wasn't a whole lot of bench left. We picked up the center stock drive trail at Mosquito pass and started a series of hike-a-bikes as the trail followed this up and down ridge. We were only about 7.5 miles into this 30 mile ride and it had already taken us over 3.5 hours. We did some calculations on time and figured there was decent chance that we were not gonna finish this before dark so after eating our fluffler nutter sandwiches at this point, we started back. You can see Grand Teton Peak all the way in the back.

The mile between Mosquito pass and where we picked up the downhill into Mail Cabin was alot of hike-a-bike then doing the exposed beat up bench cut. We actually missed the turn but I was keeping an eye on the GPS and realized we missed it pretty quickly so a quick back track and we were headed down, big time.

The last couple miles along Mail Cabin Creek were a very pleasant way to end a not so great ride. Total of about 15 miles in close to 6 six hours. We stopped for a pizza in Victor, it was really just a take out place but had picnic tables and Adirondack chairs out side and the weather was so pleasant we just sat there, waited for the pizza, then ate it there.

Black Canyon

2008-08-29T20:12:00.000-07:00

Well we headed over from Jackon over Teton Pass to Victor ID this morning, probably only about 45 minutes or so without a 12,000 plus pound trailer tethered to ya, but we made it with no issues other than slowing down a few people behind us. Victor is an interesting place, i think population on the sign was less than 1000 but some serious high end homes. Im jumping a little but we stopped in the corner store on the way back after the ride, it looked like some po dunk corner grocery but it had all the high end stuff of a Wegman's, very strange.
Anyways, we settled in here then headed back over the pass to start our ride. I was a little apprehensive about the ride, it seemed like the down hill had the potential of being a steep washed out, rocky mess. It was the easiest (not easy) 2000 foot climb ive done on a mountain bike. It was actually on the old pass road, now basically a two lane multiuse trail from just above the valley floor to 2000 feet and four miles above at Teton pass. We made the climb in just under an hour, not having to slide down to the small chain ring at all. From that point the ride directions took us back a dirt access road for a half mile but howie spied a single track that said it took us in the same direction so we took that instead. It was probably a bit steeper in a couple sections and much more exposed but a good call over all. This started the second half of the climb, only 700 feet or so on a nice single track over the next 1.5 miles.

After about 5.5 miles we peaked out and started down. For now out fears were allayed as the trail started down at a reasonable rate, the track was in excellent shape switch backing through wildflower meadows. If we had any complaint it would be the trail was a little on the dusty side but that would really just be whining. After losing about 1000 feet we took a short break to cool howie's brakes down. Just after that we we headed into a pine forest and eventually the trail found the creek. It remained in excellent shape, with a number of drops due to roots, maybe 12" at most. The tread stayed in excellent condition all the way down to the truck, defying our expectations in more than a pleasant manner. For only a 10.5 mile ride, we were quite satisfied, especially due to our some what limited ride time.
I have an epic planned for tomorrow, all the trail is either in the guide book or on the map so im pretty confident it should be a good ride, although we will run into a half mile hike a bike according to both map and book. so keep your fingers crossed and say a prayer for us.

Catching up

2008-08-28T19:46:00.000-07:00

Tuesday we decided to check out Grand Teton National Park and then ride a gravel road in the park along the Snake river near sunset. Well we got through the park one way and were eating a couple sandwiches at a marina with the Tetons as its backgdrop and decided to be lazy and just make a couple stops on the way back to get some pictures. But the best lighting for the tetons from the national park side is in the morning since they basically face east. So we hatched a plan for a return trip at sunrise then to do a hike on the far side of Jenny Lake on Thursday. Wednesday we had some work to do in the morning and it was crazy windy. Neither of us seemed very motivated and end up not going anywhere or doing any riding. I did mangage to get one of the trailer tires fixed that had a slow leak due to picking up a drywall screw somewhere. So that brings us to today. We got up early and made it to the snake river overlook towards the Tetons at sunrise.

Then on to the Jenny Lake North View Point

Then on to the Jenny Lake South area where we where going to catch a boat across the lake to the trail. Well we didn't find out the whole story till later but there was a search and rescue operation going on for a missing hiker from yesterday but two area/trails that we wanted to check out were closed due to the search. So we decided to come back another day and go for a ride today. Back to the trailer for something to eat then out Gros Ventre river valley. The ride was on the Adventure Map but not in any of the guide books, raising a small red flag. But the rides on the Map are usually pretty good. The map showed it as all single track, about 16 miles, so that sounded good. The route started out as a red dirt jeep trail, so much for all single track. I then started think this would be a really nice ride with a jeep right up next to slate creek. About the time I finished that thought, the road up ahead had long ago fallen into the creek bed leaving a very faint track that was difficult to hike across let alone try to ride. This led down to the creek and was then ridable for a bit until it climbed outta the bed and turned into a nice single track for the next two miles, climbing up above the creek in the widening valley. The trail ran into a double track that we continued to follow up the valley. It started as an old jeep trail with another track running off to our right. I figured it might be what we returned on but the mileage didn't quite add up. We continued up the double track as it turned into an ATV trail, really just two single tracks right next to each other back into the hinterlands. The valley was not quite as wide now, but basically we were riding along a flat with the occational steep up including a few crossings of the creek. We reached a split in the valley where we took the right, starting our clockwise return to the singletrack. We were on the edge of the valley and the forest and after one of the short steep ups we had a nice view of alot of beavers' work

We continued along the edgle of the meadow/forest dipping into the forest a few times. We started running into some trails heading off to our left, we stayed to the right on our trip around. I did manage to leave the GPS on the trailer table so we had to rely on our sense of direction. The mileages were not quite adding up so we had to kind of feel our way around the loop. After about 10 miles we hit the longest of our climbs. Here's a couple pictures of coming up to it and heading down the other side.

By the way, it was still double track, mostly in good shape, but definitely rutted out in areas, especially on the climbs. Down we went running into a few unmarked, unmapped intersections staying right for the most part keeping the range that we had behind us as we started, in front of us now. The mileage was starting to pile up and if we were gonna finish in the aloted amount, we would need to hit that intersection pretty quickly. We both felt pretty confident with our collective route finding but were both pretty relieved when we saw the big truck with all the hay bails on it that we first saw at the intersection of the single track and the atv trail. The last two miles were alot of fun back to the truck.
Critter count - I flushed some sort of gray heron looking bird from along the creek and we saw a herd of prong horn antelope on the drive back from the trail head
Beer recommendation - Grand Teton Brewing Company Bitch Creek ESB - a really good taste without quite all the hoppiness of the IPA's ive had recently. And yes there really is a bitch creek in the area

First Ride In Jackson

2008-08-26T09:34:00.000-07:00

Well it took a little while, had some things to take care of, but we finally hit dirt in Jackson about 2:30. It was a treat to actually be able to ride right from the RV park. I was a little skeptical about how good a ride was that you left right from town for but was pleasantly surprised with a great one. The loop involves another bike path return that basically takes you right by our RV park, thus the starting point. It was a couple miles along the edge of town out to Cache Creek drive then probably a half mile on a the dirt road before we picked up a trail along the creek. There’s a few in there so it took a little bit of route finding but soon we were headed up along the creek. It hardly felt like we were climbing but the GPS was slowly showing our progress up. This first trail, Hagan, crossed back over the creek and we were supposed to pick up another trail on the other side continuing up the drainage. I think we missed the higher trail and caught a lower one that just meant a little more road than trail heading up to the next trail head. 7 or 8 miles into the ride we hit the Game Creek trail head and crossed over Cache Creek on a nice bridge and started climbing in earnest for a bit. The trail moderated to a reasonable middle ring climb till we hit the crest between the two drainages. It was a fun ride down along Game Creek for the next couple miles.

What goes down must come up. At the intersection with West Game Creek trail, we took the right and started to climb again, still at a very reasonable middle ring rate occasionally having to drop down into the little ring for a couple minutes in steeper sections. Like many of the trails that follow creeks, once you get near the top things get steep and the trail climbs out of the drainage on a series of fairly steep switchbacks. We got to the top then headed down towards the next intersection and decision point.

Wilson trail headed left, had a couple black diamonds on the map, and would leave us with about a 4 mile paved railtrail ride back to town. The right would take us back over by the ski resort with what looked like long swoopy switchback trails back down near our camper. We chose left. It actually started out at a very easy fun grade down for a while and started to wonder about the most difficult black diamond sections. Soon enough we found them, it got steep and loose with a few small drops but all quite ridable. It was pretty obvious that this trail doesn’t get used quite as much as the others as the vegetation was a bit more grown in than what we had been riding, but not a problem.

As things leveled out we caught our first views of the Tetons and the valley we would take back to town.

Once a bit of single track above the highway ended, we caught the bike path which took us right back to within a half mile of the camper. Although it was about 4 miles, it was pretty much level and not near the pain that the ride back to Snowmass was a few days ago. The last mile or so was actually very pleasant running along the creek.

Government Trail

2008-08-24T19:51:00.000-07:00

Again, not sure when Ill actually be able to post this, but it was Saturday’s ride. The ride basically runs between Snowmass Village and Aspen so we took the drive up along the Roaring Fork from Glenwood Springs towards Aspen, taking a right up to Snowmass about 10 miles before Aspen. We tried to follow the directions for parking but we figure a few new structures there at the ski resort had taken up the parking lot we were looking for so we found an alternate lot, a little outta the way but not bad. Unlike Park City, the climb was up a paved road through some VERY nice houses. A little over 2 miles and a shade over a thousand feet higher, we headed down a dirt road towards the ski slopes. A slight misinterpretation of the ride directions gained us about three quarters of a mile of bonus mileage and bit of extra climbing but no big deal. Back on the right track we found the trail head for Government Trail after about a mile more of dirt road. Initially it was a little steep and loose but even howie really didn’t have any issues riding it. Howie had a little equipment failure on the way up, the hose came outta the bottom fitting of his camelbak and spilled about a half liter of water so at the first stream crossing we filled his empty water bottle with filtered water just incase. The trail was really sweet after that, up and down a little bit never straying more than 100 feet from 9200. It really had it all, a few nice exposed benchcut views of the valley, swoopy trail through aspen groves, some nice pine forests, some wild flower meadows.

There was also one rather steep grunt of a climb as well as a few rock gardens that made you pay attention, nothing like Rothrock, but fun. We were hoping to find a trail that took us back up to near the top of the ridge for some bonus miles but we either missed the single track or it was really a jeep trail. So down we went across some of the Aspen ski trails and down switchbacks till the trail spit us out on the paved road. We took that down through a golf course back to Highway 82 then along a bike path to the cutback to Snowmass. I think this may have been the first time I’ve encountered switchbacks on a paved bike trail, and certainly this many. It may have been a good thing we didn’t make it back up to the ridge as there were some serious thunderstorm clouds building back up above Aspen as we headed the other way. There’s a bit of ridge between Aspen and Snowmass, a good 500 feet, not a bad climb, but when you are on a big low pressure tire mountain bike on pavement with a head wind, the inefficiencies just really mess with your mind. Im finally acclimated enough that my cardiovascular system is able to keep up with my leg muscles so now I can make my legs hurt before I completely hyperventilate (oh goody), again, not a good thing with an inefficient mountain bike on pavement climbs. Almost 10 miles later we were back in Snowmass with only a .3 mile steep climb back up to the truck. Total mileage was 20, guestimate on climbing of 2000 feet.

Howie’s main bike out here, brown stumpy, has been complaining for a while, something from the rear end, and he finally diagnosed it as a rear hub issue and now the front mavic hub is complaining as well, so we hung her up on the wall and fixed up the Spider with a new rear tire (david had poked a hole in the old one and had been using a tube in it, it had also seen better days, thus the lack of attempting to patch it) and the longer stem and set back seat post, the harp seal is much bigger than the pup. I also had put a new rear tire on my blur, the tread on the 2.2 mountain king was totally wore out after about 600 miles. Seems like they went over board as did Kenda with the nevegal UST, making a tire with a great side wall but with minimal tread. I had also noticed a number of small punctures that the stans had sealed, the sealed holes are still a little wet in the morning when the rest of the tire is total dry. The 2.4 version of the mountain king starts with more tread and seems to be working well on brown stumpy, well until she got hung up today anyways. I guess the search continues for the perfect tire that actually fits in the back of my blur.

btw we made it Jackson WY Sunday evening, im posting from there, woo hoo!! we actually have good internet right from the camper as well as water we can drink.

The Best Trail in Colorado

2008-08-24T19:48:00.001-07:00

This is the installment for Thursday and Friday but as we are having internet issues here at the campground, Im not sure when it will actually get posted.

Thursday we were leaving Fruita for Glenwood Springs CO, but first a beer recommendation. I was in the mood for some brown ale but the beer store did not have any moose drool, and HO had gotten a 6 of the SKA’s brown (a brewery in Durango) that was not good at all, so I opted for Sweet George’s Brown Ale from dillon DAM brewery, Dillon CO. Its very good. Anyways, we couldn’t check into the place in Glenwood Springs till 1pm and it was only an hour and half or so from Fruita so we switched on the Olympics and stuck around long enough to see the US women loose to the dutch in water polo in the gold medal game. We finished packing up and headed across I-70 with only a minor slow down for some repaving. HO followed us to the campground to help us get set up then continued on to Denver to turn in his rental car and stay near the airport for his flight out Friday. Now to the name of the post, when we checked into the campground mountain biking came up and the guy here let us know that they had the best trail in Colorado right here in Glenwood Springs. We had already planned on doing it, it’s a loop but the final “great” trail is called Scout or Boy Scout. Since it started right in town we decided to do that Thursday afternoon. We parked at a park downtown and proceed outta town first on the wrong road, 3 bonus miles, then on the right road. Up Red Canon road then to lookout mountain road where we picked up a serious 4wd jeep trail. This is where we ran into problems with the directions and a hidden trail sign. We got to a decision point and misinterpreted the directions as they said stay straight which really meant right (as we figured out on Friday) so we went on the straightest of the three possible trails. After more climbing and a couple miles it dumped us out on the road we had been climbing on before, just up higher. The maps we had from the guide books were not very good either. We back tracked to that bad decision point, took the other possible way that was not correct, back to the road again. It was getting late and we were both getting dehydrated as the water we had filled our camelbaks with from the campground tasted awful, well, kinda salty/soapy, and we were not drinking much. So we ended up bailing back down the roads that we came up, 2400 feet of climbing for nothing.

Not to be deterred we decided to try again on Friday. First we needed to find some good internet downtown, not a problem, then over to one of the bike shops to see if they could help us figure out what we did wrong as well as pick up some tubes since we were down to one between the two of us after David’s couple of flats and HO taking off with my last one in his pack. The kid at the counter helped us out a bit so off we went, back up the mountain. We got to the bad decision point and poked around a bit, found the trail marker and now realizing what direction we really wanted, we continued on the jeep trail we needed. Some up and downs and under power lines the book kept referring to, we made it to the first more or less single track. The book refers to a trail sign here but none could be found but we figured it had to be it. This took us down a pretty good pitch for a little less than a mile then a left on a real single track, I believe that was Forest Hollow trail, but hard to tell when that officially started. It was actually a very nice benchcut single track, basically flat for about 2 miles. It was actually rather tight with tall grasses and other greenery encroaching, a bit reminiscent of Pennsylvania, except no rocks. There were a few nice view points of the canyons to the east of Glenwood Springs.

This took us to Boy Scout. It started steep and loose, but not too bad, even howie made most of the switchbacks. He had been having some issues with his rear brake over heating and getting brake fade on previous rides (it a lot work for those poor brakes, keeping all the weight of a well fed harp seal under control) so proactively he decided to cool them off with his camelback. I never gave it a second thought until we just started back up and he said something to the effect that he hoped that wouldn’t make the brakes sticky, then I remembered he had gatoraid in his camelbak. It was kind of interesting after that, I just smelled sort of a carmel / sugar cooking/burning smell for the rest of the ride down as his brakes heated up. The second half of Boy Scout was less steep and had some really nice benchcut sections carved into the rocks. Total of about 19 miles and 2500 feet of climbing. It was a nice trail but hardly the best in Colorado, but I guess if that’s the only trail you have really ridden, it’s the best to you.

Back to Fruita

2008-08-20T16:01:00.000-07:00

Well yesterday we packed up and left Moab. Howie, David, and I had no real interest in doing a ride but little HO was ready and raring. So we got a late check out and sent him over to The Slickrock trail. Had David gotten up earlier and shown any interest, he and Howie were going to go over to Arches National Park, but David didn’t on either account so we just hung out and got some work done and Howie made himself and me one of his famous omlettes. The drive back to Fruita was uneventful, just over an hour and half and we were back at the same RV park we were in a couple weeks ago. HO and I took advantage of the hot tub and pool after dinner and then we started in on the second season of the TV show 24 since we finished up the first season a couple nights before.

The ride today was the famous Kokopelli loops, just a few miles down the interstate from where we are staying. It was reasonably cool at 8:30 when we started, in the high sixties. Not so cool by the time we finished about quarter to 2, 96 degrees. This was actually David’s second time here as howie had him on part of it when he was about 10. The ride starts with a quick road climb into the Colorado river “valley” and then a right on Mary’s loop, basically an old technical jeep trail, but still really nice riding. After a mile or so we took the turn off for Horsethief’s bench trail. This is true “singletrack” alternating between hard pack, sand, and slickrock sections.

Once around and we climbed back up onto Mary’s loop. It continues as a jeep trail till this point

Bypassing Steve’s loop, we got to the intersection with Lion’s loop but missed the left and did some bonus mileage up to the intersection with Mack’s ridge and Moore Fun. Backtracking the quarter mile, Lion’s was made quite clear and off we went, first climbing then up and down on super rocky benchcut trail above the Colorado. This dumps onto a jeep trail climb then intersects with Troy’s loop. The initial plan was to finish out around on Troy’s but David had jammed his thumb on Lion’s and was having issues holding onto the handle bar so we bypassed Troy’s and finished the dirt road climb over the ridge. Howie and David bailed down the dirt road and back to the truck while HO and I took a right up Mack’s ridge since we were already most of the way to the top. This runs along the ridge for a bit with some fantastic overviews of both the river and all the trails we had just ridden. That took us down off the ridge to the intersection of Moore Fun trail. None of us had ever done this so we really didn’t have a clue what to expect other that it is rated most difficult and one description mentioned a 900 foot climb. It did not bode well that we were off the bikes within a couple hundred yards of starting as there was a big drop that neither rider or bike could handle. We started climbing on a steep rocky switchback trail, and climbed and climbed and climbed. It was all pretty much granny or 1-2 with a few short hike-a-bikes. The top of the ridge afforded a few more really nice views. Just when we thought all the climbing was done we had to summit the ridge one more time. The initial trip down was on the same sort of rocky switchback trail as we climbed up, almost as slow but obviously easier cardiovascularly. It got a little more flowy and fun after that with some really wild off camber slick rock sections that you were amazed your bike stuck to when you got over them. A few short ups managed to sap the last of our energy reserves just before the final descent to the dirt road that took us back over to the truck about 23 miles and 5 hours after we started.

Cool Critter count went up by one as HO spotted a pretty cool looking snake on Mary’s loop pretty early in the ride.

David flies out tonight just in time to move into the dorms on Friday, and tomorrow we head for Glenwood Springs for a couple nights before heading north to Jackson. Now that David is leaving I can start to rebuild my self esteem without him constantly making me fun of me.

The Whole Enchilada

2008-08-19T10:31:00.000-07:00

That’s the name given to the ride here in Moab that starts up in the La Sal mountains at Burro Pass, elev 11,000 feet. We had initially planned on using a shuttle service to take us up when we thought it was $100 for the van but when we double checked it was $200. Since HO had a vehicle and the bike shop in town said it could make it up there as well as the truck we decided to shuttle it ourselves. We had the truck packed up the night before so first thing we headed out, first into town to drop off HO’s vehicle. Up first a paved road then a gravel road to Geyser Pass, total of about an hour’s drive. The last mile to the road up to Burro pass was pretty degraded so we just rode from Geyser Pass. It was a good 800 foot climb, first on really really old jeep trail then on single track, in about 1.5 miles up to the pass at 11,000 feet. It started out great, very reminiscent of Crested Butte although a bit looser tread on the track. Well that lasted for about 200 yards. Then it got steep and very loose. About a quarter mile down or so, David and I both agreed that we had had more fun on a bike before as we waited for HO and Howie to catch up. We rode it all save a few of the steep loose switch backs but HO who is stuck with my 26” Fisher (he’s now spoiled with his big wheel bike) and Howie were even less thrilled then we were. It got better from there, as things leveled out a bit and ran along a creek. We moved from pine forest to a nice ride through aspen groves ending up at Warner Lake campground. Who would have thunk , pine, wildflowers, and aspen on a Moab ride.

From there it was a short dirt road ride to the Hazzard County trail.

As with all good rides, it started with a bit of a climb culminating in an epic view of both Spanish Valley where Moab is as well as Castle Valley, the valley the Porcupine Rim edges. It was a great single track ride down through meadow and scrub. Locals have built up rock “gap” jumps along it that we all took the bailout options on as the consequences of a mistake were pretty huge. The Hazzard County trail ends right across from where the Kokopelli trail heads along an old degraded jeep trail.

This heads down to the Porcupine Singletrack. This is an amazing piece of trail switching between hard packed sandy soil and “slickrock.” For those that have never ridden it, slickrock is a sandstone that actually provides incredible traction for bike tires. I believe the name initially came from the poor horses that had to cross it, not so much traction. The other amazing part of this trail is the incredible views of Castle Valley. For the most part the trail was pretty easy to follow with one exception where HO came through with the find of the rest of the single track.

This runs into the more Porcupine Singletrack, same sort of drill and again we lost the track at one point and again HO to the rescue, it was quite the drop through a shoot to continue on the correct path. This put us back on the Porcupine Rim soon to hook up with original Porcupine Rim “trail.”

This is what Howie and I rode 8 years ago when we were in Moab. Its basically a very technical jeep trail for about 7 miles before turning to singletrack as it hit the rim and heads down to the Colorado River. The memory of this part of the ride was a rather scary, very exposed, technical ride down. What it seemed like this time was a fun, somewhat technical ride with a few points necessitating a little walking, but nothing like what I remembered as it was one of my first western rides. We ended up 7000 feet below where we started and about 45 degrees warmer, it was in the mid 90’s at the end. After about 7 hours we had riden about 29 miles from geyser pass to the bottom of Porcupine, then about 6 miles into Moab on road and bike path and back to the car. We were all glad we did the whole thing but in retrospect, next time we would skip the time and effort to get all the way up to Burro and just do the ride from Hazzard.

Probably the funniest part of the ride was as we were heading back to town a roadie blows by me then I see roadie-HO blow by me and bridge the gap to the roadie. HO said he stayed off him enough that he wasn’t drafting but could tell the roadie was not amused and tried to drop HO on a small rise but couldn’t.

The Weekend

2008-08-19T10:24:00.000-07:00

Well the plan for Saturday was to do a quai-epic including some of cement mountain as well as the doctor’s park downhill. It was raining and even hailing a bit when we woke up so we decided to sleep in and re-evaluate later in the day. We ended up not doing anything except HO did take a ride into and around Gunnison in the afternoon. I also caught up on some bike maintenance as well as a little laundary.

Sunday we were leaving for Moab and needed to be outta the campground by noon. We decided to get up early and do the “shorter” Doctor’s park down hill by riding up the Spring Creek road then cutting over on some degraded jeep trails. The ride up the road was pretty easy, about 1000 feet in 9 miles, other than being cold, around 50 degrees. We found the jeep road we needed however it was on the other side of a very wide and cold Spring Creek. We decided to take off our shoes and wade across. I had a couple bandanas to dry our feet with before putting our socks and shoes back on. This is where it got steep, alternating between granny and a spot or two of hike-a-bike, although I think David and HO may have gotten it all. The climb was taking a little longer than anticipated but we still held to plan by bypassing the actual doctor’s park trail head and going another half mile past and doing two plus miles of really nice single track leading back to the downhill.

It was as great as last time, maybe even a bit nicer with no mud at all. We got back a little later than anticipated but still got outta camp on the road to Moab by 12:30. It was an uneventful trip back through Grand Junction to I-70 then across and down to the campground here just outside of Moab. We took a trip out to Dead Horse Point State Park for some pictures at sunset. A quick trip into town for dinner at an Italian place finished off the day.

Here is the view right outside of the trailer here at the RV park in Moab

Monarch-Silver Creek-Rainbow

2008-08-16T11:36:00.000-07:00

The ride today was the classic Monarch Crest shuttle. Last week we did the Agate Creek shuttle so we decided to try something different this week. On the advice of one of the shop mechanics, we chose the Silver Creek downhill. While we were dropping the shuttle vehicle, the boys had some time in the Monarch Crest Gift Shop and saw there was a forecast for possible snow over 10,000 feet. That added a bit of a sense of urgency to keep moving as we rode. We had met another mountain biker in town earlier this week and we hooked up with him, Marshall, for this ride as well. It started at the same point, Monarch Pass at about 11,300 feet.
There were some clouds around but nothing like the fog we had last week.

We continued on the Crest trail past the turn off for Agate Creek to the end of the single track, about 9 miles out. The route follows a gravel road for about a mile and half down to Marshall Pass. From there the Crest trail picks up on single track again for a few more miles with a short road section before the intersection with Silver Creek trail.

Silver Creek trail is a great downhill, starting out working down through a few meadows then right along the creek. There were some rather loose sections of trail, some sections were almost like gravel. The final bit we actually had to ride down in the creek for a few hundred feet before the trail finished up on a dirt road.

About a quarter mile down the road we hit the trailhead for Rainbow trail. Marshall decided to bail out back the dirt roads while the four of us hit the 9 mile trail. The first 6 miles turned out to be some of the most fun singletrack we have ridden yet. It was buff, benchcut single track running above the creek. The pattern was a slight down grade going into a small tributary stream followed by a bit of a grunt climb then levels out, sometimes getting into a nice open view, then back down to the next tributary and repeat. The motorcycles must not like this trail as it did not seem damaged at all by them. The last three miles were rockier with a couple extended climbs finishing down a relatively loose switchback single track to the paved road. Down route 285 for 6 miles and we were at the truck. The weather ended up just about perfect. It was about 50 degrees to start, hovering in what seemed to be the high 50’s for most of the ride. There were a fair amount of clouds around, one actually dropped a few rain drops and a bit of hail early on, but it was all good after that. Millage was 31 trail/dirt road and 6 on paved, the guide book put the climbing at about 3500 feet

We all agreed this was one of our top 10 if not top 5 rides ever.

Marshall stopped by the camper afterwards as I burned him a CD of all the pictures we took. I had broken another spoke, this time on the drive side so this time I had to get the cassette off. Marshall helped and offered up the use his chain whips. I finally manged to poke out the pin holding the cassette together so I could get the offending cog off by itself. Marshall also offered to share some really great sausages he had brought from home so we grilled those up along with potatoes and salad for a really great dinner. He stuck around as we watched the helmet cam footage after we ate.

Back to Reno

2008-08-14T19:25:00.001-07:00

Ho need to do this ride too so we headed out Cement Creek Road once again. He stayed right with us on the initial 1500 foot climb, actually all four of us were right together for the first three miles or so. The chorus of shifter clicks was kinda neat as we all saw the rises in the road at the same time. Eventually as with most gravel road climbs, howie went off the front even though he was “taking it easy.” Once at the top, Howie headed down to set up for some camera shots and this really skinny mule deer came outta the woods and wondered around the top of the ridge where we were standing. We headed down the slightly loose, slightly dusty single track, the one that a week before and been tacky with the occasional mud puddle. Although we had to be a bit more careful and slightly slower, I would always trade the dryer conditions for the mud puddles.

David had already made the creek crossing at the bottom of the flag creek trail where we started climbing again, so he decided to walk it with the rest of us. Ho continued his great showing and kept right up with David and I on the next climb, up the single track. We all walked a few sections, but all in all, a good climb.

The next descent was even more fun than last week without the mud puddles. Since we had gotten good helmet cam footage last week I didn’t take it along so my ride was a little more relaxed as I didn’t need to try and keep up with David on the down hills.

We reached the intersection to either start climbing back towards Deadman’s or head down a couple miles to Rosebud trail, then back across Cement Creek trail. David and HO both didn’t feel the necessity of the extra miles so we headed up at that point. There were a number of really cool beaver dams on the creek we were heading up along.

The ride back down all the switchbacks was great, especially with no mud in the ruts.

It is David’s birthday so howie picked up steaks, baked potatoes, corn on the cob and chocolate Bryers ice cream

Tomorrow we are doing another shuttle run on Monarch Crest, riding with another guy we met in Gunnison earlier in the week so stay tuned

401 Again

2008-08-14T15:10:00.001-07:00

Paul and Alex headed out yesterday and Ho made it in about 8 pm. We gave him a choice of types of rides and he was a skirt and wanted something easy to start to acclimate to the altitude. Since it is a county mandate that any mountain biker must do trail 401, we decided that would be a good first ride for him. Howie’s wife had bought him a few egg poaching rings for bagel breakfast sandwiches to try to encourage him to stay out even longer on the trip. Seemingly she wants us as comfortable as possible to keep her house free of pigs for as long as possible. Anyways he has used these a few mornings to make eggs for bagel sandwiches and I had come up with the idea of possibly adding some pepper relish to the egg in the ring last evening. It was a matter of space but howie did manage to make it happen and it was quite the addition to the sandwich, along with the bacon and cheese. (howie edit btw). We headed out for Gothic, just past Crested Butte to start the ride. Even without Alex as a foil, David did quite well keeping us laughing. The parking area had a lot less vehicles than last week, but we chocked it up to us being there a bit earlier. The weather was perfect, mid 50’s to start and just a few clouds over the mountain peaks. We started up the 5 mile road climb, Ho staying right with us, even leading at times, that 101 mile bike race training really shining. At Schofiled Pass we headed up the single track climb. It had not rained up there for a couple days so the climb was much less slippery, david making one stupid dab and I cleaned it for the first time ever and Ho staying right with us as well. The pictures at the initial meadow are probably the best yet with the great weather/ lighting.

The trip down the incredibly beautiful exposed bench cut single track above the valley was a tich slower as the trail had dried out a bit and was not quite as tacky as last week, requiring a bit more caution in the corners. I had also replace David’s rear brakes so he was breaking in the brake pads. The lack of any mud more than made up for the minor inconvenience of staying on the brakes a bit longer this time.

We gave Ho the option of some additional mileage but he said he had enough for the first day. We went into Crested Butte, a quick stop at one of the shops got me another couple sets of brake pads. We headed back up to the Brick Oven for another pizza before heading back to camp.

Back in Gunnison, Ho and I headed into town to see if he could track down a shorter, steeper step for the bike I was letting him borrow (Ho is a very small animal). We actually found what he needed as well as the Gunnison Brewery that our waitress in Crested Butte recommended. After twisting my arm, we stopped for a quick IPA. It was a very good brew and the bar staff, including a perfect Ginger specimen (see the previous posts) was really great.

The Epic

2008-08-12T13:35:00.001-07:00

Well this time we really did have an epic ride, although there were not the usual mechanical issues or even any bad weather although we did have a minute or two of very light hail. What made this an epic was just the time spent in the woods, over 8 hours. It was supposed to be a fun single track way to get to what is billed as the best downhill in Crested Butte, Doctor’s Park. The ride was in the guide book, 26 miles with 4400 feet of climbing. I made sure everybody knew about the 4400 feet, which is definitely a lot especially mostly all above 10,000 feet of elevation. This is the ride that we got rained out of the day before.

It starts above Taylor Reservoir following the Gunnison spur of the Colorado trail. The first mile is along the Taylor creek, just out in the meadow then crossing the creek on a nice bridge. The next couple miles are a grunt up a loose and often rutted trail heavily used by the motorcycles, thus the less than ideal conditions. David and I managed to ride almost all of it with a few stops to catch our breath along the way. After about 800 feet of climbing it started to level out a bit, catching a dirt road, then back to trail. It was not nearly as steep for the most part but still rutted out with a lot of mud puddles all over. I failed to notice the statement in the guide book that this trail stays pretty wet for a couple days after heavy rains, like the ones that we just had. The trail went up and down, seemingly mostly up, but as I watched the GPS elevation, we really were not gaining much altitude over all. The issue was that even on the flat to downhill sections the trail was in such bad, rutted, muddy shape that you could not really enjoy it. At about the 6 mile mark taking a good 3 hours, having walked much more of the trail than he rode, the Madness decided to bail back to the truck. The four of us soldiered on, walking parts, trying to stay out of the really deep mud ruts for a few more miles. There was one downhill section that we lost close to 1000 feet but it was so steep and rutted it really wasn’t that much fun either. That was followed by a section of hike a bike that was at least a half mile of pushing up a really steep section. We new the last 6 miles were all down hill and we were about to the 18 mile mark so we knew the torture would soon be over, but not soon enough. We crested the ridge with a really nice 360 degree view.

There were a couple more old road grunts up to where we diverted off the Colorado trail spur onto 2 really nice miles of single track. We then hooked up with the famed Doctor’s Park downhill for the last 6 miles.

It truly is a great trail, living up to the hype. It starts out at a gentle grade down through the meadow then entering aspen groves getting more technical with rocks and switchbacks. There’s a few nice sections of exposed benchcut between aspen groves.

It smoothes out then a short climb out of the drainage you were in over in to Spring Creek with more flowy single track before a pretty exposed final descent on rocky switchback single track finishing up in a national forest campground, about a half mile from where we left the shuttle vehicle. Ride was 27 miles, total time of about 8 hours. My gps had a moving time of about 5.5 hours although it was probably a little more and just didn’t pick up our snail’s pace up some of the hike-a-bike.

Although the last 8 miles were some of the best single track I have ever ridden, the consensus was that it in no way made up for the previous 18 miles of torture. Most people take the road up close to the top of the down hill or shuttle right up to it, we’ll be like most and take the road next time.

Change of Plans

2008-08-11T20:58:00.000-07:00

Well we headed out to Taylor Reservoir, dropping the Madness’ car off at the shuttle point. It was definitely looking cloudy but we held out hope. It started sprinkling a little about 5 miles out but not a big deal. About two miles from the trailhead it started pouring. It was a pretty easy decision that we were not gonna do that ride. We drove the next mile or so just to confirm where the trailhead was but then turned around. That whole ridge line up to Crested Butte looked pretty stormy so we headed back to camp to pick up the map for Hartman Rocks, the high desert riding area on the edge of Gunnison. Howie and I had ridden here last year but got chased off by rain after about 10 miles or so. Its really a lot of fun and definitely different than the high alpine stuff we have been doing.
Its smooth slightly sandy single track punctuated with fun technical pieces working through various rock out croppings. Just looking at the map the trails seem very random, but once you are on them you realize a lot of thought and planning went into hitting all the fun stuff as well as doing their best to work around small canyons etc.

There were no real sustained climbs but lots of 100-200 feet ups as well as numerous short grunts. Navigating wasn’t too bad, we a couple “bonus mile” sections as the map was not always totally accurate. We got sprinkled on a couple times but nothing that would even settle the dust, the storms stayed out on the ridges. No idea on the total amount of climbing but we did 21 miles, 2:45 of moving time and we were out there close to 4 hours total.

Saturday

2008-08-10T06:55:00.000-07:00

Saturday

Well today ended up as a day off. Back track to our first ride when Paul went down near the end of the first “half” of the 401 trail. He was hurting but initially just thought it was a bruised rib, maybe cracked, but all else seemed OK. The next day, Thursday, he was in pain but still not too bad, I think he even took a spin into town while we did our ride. By that evening he was not doing any better and maybe a bit worse but we chocked it up to chest bruising getting worse before it gets better. By Friday morning he did not look good and spent most of the day sitting at the table with his head propped up on pillows or sleeping back in howie’s bed, no chance at going anywhere. Friday evening when he tried to lay down to go to bed it became pretty obvious that there were bigger issues as it was very painful to lie down and he was having a really hard time breathing in that position. With the Madness’ help (he’s a national guard/army medic) it was determined that there could be real issues and a trip to the ER was probably in order. So howie took paul over and sure enough his left lung was pretty much collapsed. Paul spent the night at the hospital and they put a small chest tube in to drain and then allow the lung to reinflate. He was discharged the next morning, Saturday, still with his chest tube in and a prescription for some good pain meds. So with all that and a bad weather forecast the plan for a potential epic ride was scrapped in favor of doing the local Hartman Rocks. As the day worn on, nobody seemed real motivated to make the ride happen so we ended up just having a relaxing day of napping and listening to comedy routines that the boys had on their Ipods. Paul is doing a lot better, and even jokes about his “udder,” as the chest tube drainage bag is covered with a latex surgical glove and hangs just below his shirt. Turns out it was probably a good thing that we did not head up for the big ride as I talked with a neighbor here that was up there fishing and said it poured in the afternoon.

On another note from the campground, everybody seems to have dogs, not just here, but most of the other places as well. There are two golden retrievers that have been routinely taking their owners for a walk around the campground here, one of which is always carrying a stuffed duck (dog, not owner), kind of like a little kid carrying a blanket or something, very cute.

Today we head out towards Taylor Reservoir for the ride that we were going to do yesterday. Wish us luck!

Monarch Crest to Agate Creek

2008-08-08T20:33:00.000-07:00

First off a correction, I knew I would screw it up, its daywalker, not tripper, sorry about that. Anyways the ride today was a shuttle on Monarch Crest trail descending Agate Creek trail to the waiting car. Monarch Crest trail is actually part of the Continental Divide trail starting at 11,200 feet. It was chilly, about 50 degrees at the start. The first part starts out on a jeep trail, then a bit of single track then a rather tough jeep trail climb up to the start of the single track after a mile and change. The disappointing factor was that we were basically riding in a cloud and although there were potential views for miles and miles, I pegged the visibility at about 100 yards, David said 200, so the truth probably lay in between.
It was still pretty wild, the Madness remarked it must be what riding in

Scotland

would be like.

The crest portion was about 7 miles and after about 6, the clouds lifted a bit for some decent views.

We started down Agate Creek trail with 10 more miles of single track and close to 3000 feet of descending in front of us. It was a bit on the tough side as there were plenty of rocks and roots, most of which were wet, and even if they were not, your tires probably were. After a few miles the boys had to take a break to rest their hands then on we went. Things started to level out a bit but still definitely down hill. At some point we started in with the creek crossings and I was ridiculed ferociously for the rest of the ride for walking across one, trying to keep my feet dry for a while, it was still pretty chilly out. We kept working our way down along the creek, mostly on really nice single track, a few puddles, and a couple of nasty rutted out sections. David and I heard something happen behind us and turned around to see Alex doubled over on the bike. Turns out the seatpost clamp cracked off the top of the carbon fiber seatpost and when Alex went to sit down, the seat gave way. Enough said. We took the seat post out and howie and Alex switched bikes. There was a bailout trail to the road a mile or so down which howie walked the bike out on and then took the road down to the shuttle car. The four of us continued down along the creek, crossing too many times to count. We got to one crossing and upon further examination all came to the conclusion that it would be better to walk than ride. It looked mostly ridable but there was one spot with some white water that we could just not determine how deep it was and if you buried your front tire in it, it would get really ugly. There was one other crossing that David tried that got a bit deeper than he anticipated about 2/3 of the way across, he just about lost the bike when he got stopped. We continued to freeze our feet with a few more crossings, a few technical sections that David did very well on, then back up out of the creek drainage eventually back to the shuttle car.

Reno, Flag, Bear, Deadman

2008-08-08T05:28:00.000-07:00

That was the ride for today. It’s a good thing the boys are here, I’ve learned a lot. First I’m part ginger, that is fairskined and redhead and since I go out in the sun I’m also a daytripper, at least I think that’s the right terminology. I’ve also learned that being called a shot caller is a bad thing but being called a baller is a good thing. Ive given up on trying to figure out all their x-box game speak. Howie and I had done this ride last year with a bit of an addition. It started with a 1600 foot climb up a dirt road for a bit over 5 miles up to the Reno divide. It was rather chilly there, waiting for the madness to get up so we put on our jackets as we ate some of our fluff sandwiches. I broke another spoke on the way up for no good reason, note to self, get wheel rebuilt when I get home.
I hooked up the helmet cam and down we went, first through and along a nice alpine meadow on very sweet buff single track. There’s a few muddy spots from the motor cycles but over all a great great piece of track. I came upon david and alex stopped just up from a small tributary crossing, david with his chain in his hand, generally not a good sign. It was a pretty quick fix as I had some extra quick links, the only issue was that things were a little sandy and the link was resisting going back together. The trail took a right and headed down a rather narrow creek valley with some cool beaver dams although you couldn’t pay too much attention to them or you might be in one pretty quick. We stopped where flag creek ran into the creek we were following.

Crossing the creek got the boys feet soaked however I took a bit of an alternate crossing and remained dry. We then climbed back up about 1000 feet again along the creek then as it opened up into a larger meadow. Near the top a road crossed and we took that up a bit, maybe a half mile or so to the top of Bear Creek trail. We ran into some motorcycles that weren’t sure of their route but pretty quickly we found out they were going the same way were as we heard their roar closing on us quickly.

The trail followed the same amazing pattern, starting in a large meadow then necking down into a narrow creek valley eventually leading us to our final climb, again up another creek valley, but this time it never really opened up. More beaver dams, this time we could spend a little more time checking them out as we were mostly in granny gear working our way up.

About 800 feet of vertical later we were at the top of the ridge heading back down the 1000 feet on 27 single track switchback (we counted as we watched the helmet cam footage), really fun but a little rutted out from the motos again. Howie and I were quite thankful of the time spent in the gym exercising our fore arms and triceps as the other had to take a break or two to rest their arms and/or hands. Across the bridge and we were back at the truck. Total ride was 20 miles and at least 3500 feet of climbing, almost all about 10,000 feet. We escaped another ride without getting rained on when it looked really nasty as we drove out along cement creek.

401

2008-08-06T18:19:00.001-07:00

Well the campground here in Gunnison CO is most excellent. There are lots of tall trees for shade and things are a little more spread out than most of the RV parks we have been too. Its only 2.5 miles from town so its not even a bad bike ride in. The mosquitoes are a bit of a pain but that seems pretty much par for the course with camping out here.

The cast of characters now stands still with Howie and I, along with his son David and new additions Paul, howie’s brother in law, Alex, howie’s nephew (Paul’s son), and the Meeker Madness, who we actually were on the original RV tour of Colorado a number of years ago with.

The ride today was the Crested Butte Classic know as 401. Its starts past Crested Butte, up a dirt road about 8 miles just outside a place know as Gothic which from the signs and all the people crawling around the meadows is some sort of biological study center with a dozen or so small buildings that I would assume house the researchers. At that point we were at about 9600 feet. Once on the bikes we continued up the dirt road about 5 miles and 1000 feet of climbing or so to Schofield Pass at the top of the valley. The trail starts there and climbs up another 500 feet or so over the next couple miles, with the first mile being pretty steep.

After the climb you head back down the valley on bench cut single track with amazing views of the valley all the way back to Mt Crested Butte. After 3 or 4 miles of that fun you get back down close to the road then head back up away from the road then back down for another 4 miles, ending up where you parked. Total is only about 14 miles, but a good ride for all the new guys’ first day at altitude.

Leaving Durango

2008-08-05T14:45:00.000-07:00

Well today we said good by to Durango, Pooh Bear, and Princess. Our schedule had us heading to Grand Junction CO to pick up Howie’s son David at the airport there. Pooh was scheduled out as well and some things came up back at home that necessitated Princess catching a flight back as well. This was the one day of driving that I had been dreading since I first heard the itinerary. It involved heading over the mountains from Durango in Ouray. We had done this drive a number of years ago in a Winnebago type RV and I just remember it being scary, to the point I couldn’t really watch out the front (I wasn’t driving). This time I didn’t have that choice. Actually for the most part it wasn’t too bad. Its really just a matter of paying attention to those yellow signs that warn of turns and give suggested speeds that nobody in cars ever pays attention to. The only real issue was when we ran into a paving crew. They had their traffic cones all the way into our lane and at a few points there was nothing but air on the other side of the white edge line. It was a tight squeeze. We made it down, back into the high desert, going through Montrose then on to the RV park in Fruita, just past Grand Junction. I set up camp as Howie went to retrieve David from the airport. We then went out to ride a bit at the 18 road trails. We were the only ones silly enough to be there since it was 97 degrees. It really wasn’t that bad as it was pretty cloudy and there was a bit of a breeze and of course no humidity. We did the loop up Prime Cut and around and down Chutes and Ladders.

Back at the parking lot we headed up Kessel run to frontside then down Zippity Do Da. By the time we got to zippity the nice breeze had turned into a really strong wind, just in time for us to head out across the very exposed spines. We got about half way through zippity and decided to bail out and take Kessel run as we were about getting blown off the trail and Kessel was down in the wash so it was fairly protected from the wind, plus it was a blast bombing down it, up and down crossing the wash. We covered about 14 miles and were out there a couple hours.

Tomorrow its off to Gunnison to ride Crested Butte with Howie’s brother in law, Paul and his nephew Alex as well as a special guest appearance by the Meeker Madness. Well actually we don’t plan on actually riding tomorrow unless its something right in Gunnison at Hartman rocks.

Critter count went up by one when David spied this really cool looking lizard

The Almost Epic

2008-08-04T20:48:00.000-07:00

Over the past few years I have gone from closely inspecting every ride map and elevation chart as I was the slowest/weakest rider of the group to not necessarily caring so much as my strength has increased and I’m at least sort of “mid pack.” Today was one of those days that I just stayed outta the planning. Pooh had this loop in mind the other day and we actually ran into two ladies at the coal bank pass that Pooh asked about the ride. They said it was one of their favorites and actually clued us into a piece of single track that could replace a section of road that we were planning on doing that was not on the map. For the PG blog, we’ll refer to it as the ladies trail. The loop starts at the same trail head that the Hermosa creek ride starts, Hermosa Park. The difference was we headed up the creek instead of down, this time on a nice dirt road. Howie rallied from his bruises and Princess recovered enough from his sunburn, so the whole crew was back in action. The first couple miles was pretty flat along some nice back country camping areas. I was keeping an eye on the GPS and saw that we came upon an intersection but nothing was apparent until I saw an old mining road behind us. I was pretty sure that it was what I saw on the GPS. Turns out I was wrong and it was actually the end of the “ladies trail.” A few hundred yards up the road we ran into what I actually saw on the GPS and we continued up our climb to the right. The next 6 miles or so were a reasonable climb, as I was in my middle ring for all of it. Princess yelled up to us and we turned around at one point as Howie was having some issues. Seems like he felt like his rear cog was coming loose and I had heard something amiss earlier when I passed him. We all agreed it seemed loose but nobody had a cassette lock ring tool. We tried to use howie’s leatherman’s pliers stuck into two of the spline spots to tighten it, nothing. At that point we found what seemed to be fishing line in there. We tried to loosen it, same method with the leatherman and princess holding the cassette. After a valiant attempt but ending in a shriek and princess letting go and a second attempt, same ending, it was deemed that was not gonna work. Princess came up with the ingenious idea of pulling off his chain and using it as a chain whip, wrapping it around the cassette then around the rim and tire. Worked perfectly and Pooh with his bear strength took to the leatherman, snapping the pliers end. There was really not a lot else we could try so Howie decided he could live with the issue. It got steep about 8 miles in, dropping me to my granny ring and oscillating between struggling with riding and thoughts of hopping off and walking. Pooh Bear managed to climb up through a heck of a steep section that finally took me off the bike for a couple hundred yards. We passed through an old mine area, and then rode up the last half mile.

Total of about nine miles later and about 2100 feet of climbing, we reached the Colorado Trail. There was a nice little alpine lake where we took a quick brake but due to flies and mosquitoes we got back to riding, up the trail another few hundred feet of climbing over the next mile, through some nice forest the along some nice bench cut that gave some great views of the valley that we rode up and beyond. The single track was great for the next few miles up and down finally going over the ridge away from the valley we rode up. There was a big snow field just off the trail so we had to go check it out. Pooh, Princess, and I had a heck of a snow ball fight in August, go figure. We finally called it quits as the snow in august is still really darn cold and exerting your self to throw snowballs at 11000 feet is more than you can imagine.

A couple locals passed us as we were just getting back to our bikes. We were up and down within a 100 vertical feet for the next mile on some really nice single track, just on our side of the ridge. We ran into a couple motorcycle riders where a road intersected with the trail, they where pretty cool. The trail followed the old road bed for a mile or so before going back to single track and moving back to the Hermosa creek side of the ridge. Again more exposed single track with beautiful views. It started up again and we saw it head up over the ridge.
We were hoping that this was the “big” climb but if we had really thought about it we would have realized that the big climb would be back the other way. At the top of this “pass” we ran into the locals that passed us earlier and let us know that we would go down a bit then up the real climb, about another hour of riding before we got to head back down towards the vehicle.

At this point there was seriously crappy weather all the way round us but so for now we were staying dry. Neither local had ridden the “ladies trail” but at least one of them had heard of it. The other option if we missed it was to go down to Corral Draw and hit the Hermosa creek trail a few miles down and ride back up to the truck. We got to the point where we saw where what we had to get over and I just about cried. It really wasn’t that bad and the folks from the Colorado Trail Assoc. had just done a bunch of trail work on that bench cut. Pooh Bear with is bear like climbing ability cleaned the whole climb. I on the other had did ok but walked a bit. We took a few pictures at the top while the local took off down the other side. The three of took off down while howie grabbed some pictures of us heading down. It was a bit sketchy as it was somewhat steep and the slope of the trail was a little off camber, sloping out and was a little on the loose side as it was very exposed and dried out. We made it down then watched howie on his decent. At that point is flattened out a bit was less exposed, heading down through the forest. It was a great run, waiting up for howie at a couple points. It was getting dark due to the storm clouds and we decided at one point to put on jackets and for those of us with pack covers, those as well. It started raining a little bit right after that soon turning to hail. Pooh Bear assured us that hail was actually a good sign as that meant the heavy rain was already past or something. Turned out for the time being he was right. It cleared up to some degree and we hit the road at Hotel Draw that we could take back down but the “ladies trail” was bit beyond. As we were debating and looking at the map, it stared to rain a bit so we decided to do the safe thing and head down the road. Just after that the heavens opened up and oh did it rain. It rained cats and dogs for the next few miles down the road. And boy did it get colder. We intersected with the road we came up on continuing to head down it and across Hermosa Creek, which at this point was MUCH wider than when we had crossed it earlier but not a big deal. It had pretty much stopped raining by this time and the last couple miles were rain free and it had never rained at the truck. We got cleaned up as best we could in the creek and headed out before it did start raining at the truck. Our initial plan was to stop at the pizza place at Hermosa but they were closed at it was Sunday. We made due with left over brats, hamburgers, and some chicken along with fresh corn we picked up in town.

An Epic ride is a rather personal thing, really depends on your fitness, skill, and preparedness. It also tends incorporate things like mechanical issues, weather, etc. Taking all that into account, this was almost an epic, as it had all the makings for one but we really were not that spent at the end, although Princess was really darn cold.

Back to Coal Bank Pass

2008-08-02T20:09:00.000-07:00

Well the plan today was to do the larger loop that we didn’t do with Phil yesterday. We got an earlier start and Scott came along as our shuttle partner. Princess’ sunburn still made having a pack on too painful so he bailed. The ride started off well, we were all climbing ok, must finally be getting somewhat acclimated to the altitude. About a mile and half into the climb we were waiting for Howie at a little alpine lake. He finally rolls up and turns out he took a little spill off the trail and had a good size goose egg on his shin and his thigh was a bit bruised. We decided the smart thing was for him not to push it so he and I went back down to the truck while Scott and Pooh Bear ended up doing the loop we did yesterday.

They were back by 1:00 and Pooh was still itchin to ride some more so we went over to the dry fork trailhead and basically caught the same loop we did from the Junction Creek trailhead just less climbing to get to the loop and we did it the other way around so it really felt like a different ride. All good fun.

Sorry no pictures from today

Coal Bank Pass

2008-08-02T20:02:00.000-07:00

As usual, the ride was not quite as planned originally, but it was actually a fair piece shorter than depicted. Princess decided to bail on the ride since he got a bit too much sun the day before while on the river tubing, it was painful just too look at the sunburn. Actually the death march was changed as it incorporated most of our first ride from Molas Pass and once Phil heard how mucky the last few miles of that part was, he was in agreement that we should alter the plan. We stopped short at Coal Bank Pass and headed up to Engineer trail from there rather than all the way from the Colorado Trail. It was still tough climbing for the first few miles but mostly ridable although we ran into a girl that pooh bear talked to on a rail trail the first day he was in town (he recognized her, but it took some prompting before she remembered him, we didn’t let that go unnoticed). Anyways she assured us that it would be tough for us due to the rocks ahead. There was one spot that I don’t think anybody cleaned but it wasn’t too bad. We broke out into some really beautiful vistas including that of Engineer Peak.

From the intersection with the Engineer trail it was more or less downhill back to the Phil’s Subaru for the shuttle back up to the truck at Coal Bank Pass. It was a great ride, nice single track through meadows, pine forests, and aspen groves.

We dumped out on a gravel road and Phil found a less used trail back up the ridge a bit and then down rather than a straight shot back on a gravel road.

It was only 12 miles and change with about 1400 feet of climbing although it was all above 10,000 feet. The ride only lasted about 2.5 hours but it was a great time as we descended 3100 feet total.

On a more important note, I did find some Moose Drool Brown Ale that I had first really appreciated about 4 years ago on our trip to Sun Valley ID. There has also been a few beers from the Deschutes Brewery in Bend OR that have found their way back to the camper. If you see Pooh when he gets back ask him about which chain rings go on what cranks and in what direction.

Currently Pooh and Howie have the map and are trying to figure out tomorrow’s ride. There was some statement about adding in an extra 20 mile loop that caught my ear, but Im doing my best to ignore them so I can still sleep tonight and not worry too much about ending up dead on the trail from exposure….

Hermosa Creek

2008-07-31T17:41:00.001-07:00

Yesterday’s ride was the famous Hermosa Creek ride, just north of Durango. Howie and I had also done this one when we were here about 5 years ago. The trick to this ride is it’s a shuttle, that is you drop one car at the bottom and drive up to the top. We had talked to another guy here at the RV park, Scott, that was interested in doing this with us and had already talked to a guy, Phil, at one of the bike shops in town about doing it as well. We met Phil at the shuttle drop point and head up the mountain. Phil is just a young pup, 22, originally from New Hampshire but has lived here for 4 years and talks like he’s a surfer dude from southern California. He also rides a single speed. We were not worried about him slowing us down. The ride starts in a large meadow at about 8850 feet. The first five miles is a pretty fast ride along the creek on a very old double track road bed. Basically the only thing to slow you down are some very large mud puddles that don’t slow everybody down, you can tell by looking at jerseys at the end who slows and who doesn’t. At about the 5 mile point we cross the creek on a nice bridge.

The track narrows a bit for another couple miles then turns to true bench cut single track running above the creek basically for the rest of the 20 miles. This was the first time on any sort of “exposed” single track for Scott and had him a little wigged out at first but with a little encouragement and some time getting used to it, he was doing really well by the end. We were down as far as 7500 feet before the last climb out up to about 8000 where the trail ended and we cruised down the dirt then paved road to the shuttle vehicle three and half hours later. Even with the shuttle we still did about 1500 feet of climbing. Conveniently enough there was a pizza shop right there that actually cooked your pizza before giving it to ya, so Pooh, princess and I chowed down on some while we waited for the truck to return, probably took them an hour. It was at least as great as Howie and I remembered and actually a fair piece easier, I know in my case its because im in much better shape now than 5 years ago. Looks like we may be hooking up with Phil for a big shuttle ride on Friday.

Princess and Pooh had picked up some innertubes the day before and wanted to go float the river, so papa bear took them down into town and dropped them off, the plan being we would pick them up on our way to go into town for dinner a few hours later. We found a parking spot a block or so from the street our Mexican place was on and walked to the street. We were only a couple blocks from one end of town so the odds were that the place was to our right, more into town so we headed that way. After 6 or 8 blocks we pretty much ran outta the retail district, asked a local and he said, yea, its at the other end of town, we should have gone left. No worries, it was a beautiful evening so we headed back and sure enough, there was Gazpacho’s. Really good food.

Today is a day off, more river floating and since we had time in the morning, Pooh made us all really good French toast.

Colorado Trail starting at Junction Creek

2008-07-29T17:54:00.000-07:00

Well today’s ride was again on part of the Colorado Trail, this time we started at one of its end points, Junction Creek on the edge of Durango. The ride as written in the book takes you out the trail about 7 miles then does a loop with Dry Fork trail and Hoffheins trail for a total of about 16 miles and maybe 2200 feet of climbing. The first few miles are along junction creek heading up at a reasonable grade. It’s a well worn, popular trail near the beginning with lots of hikers, dogs, etc. We crossed the creek on an actual bridge no less, then started working our way out of the creek drainage on some nice long switchback trails. It was easier climbing as the trail started at “only” 7000 feet and worked our way up to 8000 at the end of the switch backs. The law of averages started catching up to us as we had very few mechanical issues on the trip till now. I broke a spoke, no big deal, and about 100 yards later Pooh broke his chain, another quick fix and we were back climbing. There was a nice view at Gudy’s Rest.

The ride directions have an elevation profile that showed things flatting out a bit for the next couple miles. What it failed to show was that it was really a series of rather steep climbs with flat sections in between them. But the flats were nice, great trail through pine forest. We arrived at the junction with Dry Fork at the same time a couple did, they had climbed up Dry Fork and were going the way we came. After a chat with them we decided that 16 miles was just not enough pain so we headed out to do an out n back on more of the Colorado Trail. It was a pretty tough granny gear climb for the next couple miles but we rode it all.

We ran into a big deadfall and decided to push on a bit further as the climb thus far really did not result in any good views. It quickly flattened out to the point where we were in the middle ring for a couple miles and not panting like an overheated dog.

There was a bit of steep pitch that we decided to head up and it resulted in a nice view, topping out at 9600 feet. The trail started down from there so we decided to head back.

Other than the flies that would congregate around anybody standing around for more than a few minutes, it was a great spot to eat our fluffer nutter sandwiches.

The return trip to Dry Fork was a blast and MUCH quicker than the ride up.

The ride down Dry Fork was almost as fun but we got into some scrub brush that limited sight lines as well threatened to grab your handlebars. We ran into a few people climbing, but not an issue. We hit Hoffheins trail and started climbing the 400 feet back up to the Colorado trail. We made the comment that it was all down hill from there, but darn it if we didn’t have to do a little more climbing right off the bat. Soon we did hit the down hill and down we went. I was riding a little over my head trying to keep up with Princess and Pooh Bear for video sake and took a little tumble but no major damage. We arrived down at the creek, crossed over the bridge, then back down the trail along the creek. We needed to control speed as the closer we got to the end of the trail as there were a bunch of hikers, kids, and dogs. We also passed a serious hiker again that we had seen as we were doing the out n back, he was just finishing up hiking the whole trail from Denver, 450 miles in 30 days, very impressive. Our total for the day was 23 miles and change and 3300 feet of climbing.

For those of you that are still here, a few notes from the rest of the story. Last night the campground must have been hosting some kind of Karaoke thing at their big tent about 50 yards away from us cause there we all kinds of bad singing wafting across to us all evening. We met a guy that also mountain bikes but is here with the family so he’s pretty limited in how much he can ride, about 2 hours (anymore than that and he said he would have to bunk with us for the night), but he was planning a big ride tomorrow, the same one we wanted to do Hermosa Creek, but it requires a shuttle vehicle. We were going to rent a car to do it but hopefully tonight we will be able to work things out with him that he would come with us and use his vehicle along with the Beast. After the ride, we got cleaned up and the boys headed into town, Howie had to hit the bike shop, post office, and grocery. While he was doing the post office run, princess and pooh bear spied a pizza place and thought they would grab a slice to tide them over till dinner. Well the place didn’t serve slices so they ordered a small pizza. Turns out this is one unique pizza parlor, they don’t actually cook it, they send it home with you pre-made for you to cook. I wish I could have seen pooh’s face when they handed him the saran covered uncooked pizza. They figured what the heck, they paid for it, lets bring it home and cook it up at the RV, and it was quite tasty. This may be too much info, but Princess also declared that he was named the third largest air polluter behind autos and fossil fuel powered electrical plants in Colorado, and was getting no resistance from the rest of us. It’s a gorgeous evening, no rain this afternoon at least here at the campground. Its still darn warm in the sun but in the shade it is very comfortable thanks to the lack of humidity at least compared to PA. Princeess talked to our new neighbor that pulled in and they made the comment that they though it was quite humid here, at least compared to Phoenix where they are from. Just goes to show, everything is relative.

The Return to Molas Pass

2008-07-28T19:24:00.000-07:00

Well the trip from Taos up to Durango was pretty uneventful, pretty much all two lane roads with a few ups n downs over mountains but the weather played nice. As mentioned we didn’t have any plans to ride, just catch up on a little bike maintenance and princess and I did laundry. Pooh Bear flew in the night before, stayed at a hotel, and cruised around town on his bike and then met us out here at the campground once we got here. The campground is about 2 miles up 550 from Durango, beautiful red rock cliff on either side of us and the narrow gauge railroad that takes tourists up to Silverton passes just on the other side of the road.

The ride today was Howie and my return to the Colorado trail at Molas Pass, the crossing between Durango and Ouray. The ride starts at 10,900 feet so we were sucking wind right from the start. The first couple miles is a bit of grunt climb but with amazing views including a beautiful alpine lake and vistas as far as the eye can see.

Now at about 11,600 feet the trail stays within a couple contour lines, weaving around the ridges and across streams fed from the melting snow. The wildflowers were everywhere and what I think is called tobacco cabbage or something like that was so thick in places you were brushing it with both grips. For the most part the trail is really great single track although there were spots where it is getting rutted and you actually have a hard time peddling without catching on the sides of the rut. Most of the track was pretty smooth but there were plenty of rocks and quick ups to keep you on your toes.

There were also a number of very soft, muddy spots from the melting snow. Our plan was to head out 12 miles then head back. We got a little later start than we had hoped but were still on the trail by about 9am. This was a bit problematic as the afternoon thunderstorms started to build while we were still on our way out. We reached the 11 mile point and were faced with crossing a pretty good size patch of snow so we decided to turn around at that point. This is what it looked like back towards where we were heading

We really lucked out. The sky stayed pretty clear over our heads all the way back but I was able to see about where we needed to end up and made the comment that I was pretty darn sure the truck was getting rained on while we were still about 6 miles out. Sure enough the last mile or so had definitely gotten rain but had moved out by the time we got there so we never did get rained on other than a few sprinkles. 22 miles and about 3300 feet of climbing later we were back at Molas Pass.

As for the critter count, nothing too exciting, a mule deer on the drive up and some kind of western ground hog looking thing on the trail.

Injury report, princess got stuck in some mud and I was a little to close behind and ended up falling over into the mud when I couldn't get unclipped quite in time and skinned up my shin a little bit, but just a slight flesh wound.

A Dissapointing Day

2008-07-26T18:58:00.000-07:00

Well we had a nice day in the woods, however the ride was disappointing. The guide book gave us high hopes and Rey at Gearing Up confirmed it was a very scenic ride. The ride as we were going to do it was an out and back to Goose Lake along Goose Creek. It started out OK although we were dogging a lot of horse poop. We were able to ride most of the trail all be it in the little chain ring with a few short hike-a-bike sections for the first couple of miles. Watching the GPS I was getting a little worried as we were not gaining that much altitude and I was figuring things had to get steeper later on in the ride. I was correct. Its always nice to ride in a stream valley/canyon, shady, cool, the sound of running water, but this one was pretty beat up by the horses, especially any of the softer areas and there were a fair number with all the rain the area has had lately. After about 2.5 of the 6 mile, 3000 foot climb, the hike-a-bike was more prevalent than actually riding. We got up well over the 11,000 foot mark and actually ran into a leftover snow drift and mosquitoes at the same time. At about 11,600 we finally hit Goose Lake. There were a lot of exposed tree roots on the way up and things were still really wet in there so three of had the idea that it was going to be really dangerous trying to descend back down the single track so we were considering going back down the road instead. I figured princess would balk at that idea but he ended up having some brake issues and came up with the road idea on his own.

The lake was really beautiful and seems to be a popular destination for the ATV’s as there were a bunch of them parked in the lot along with some jeeps. We ate our fluffer nutter sandwiches and howie took pictures. We then headed down the dirt road trying to not to get run over by the ATV’s flying around.

We needed to get back into town early enough to get Rich to the greyhound station so he could get back to Albuquerque for his flight tomorrow. I kid you not, the bus station is actually a pawn shop that doubles as the bus station, we should have gotten a picture of that sign. Well the “bus station” wasn’t actually open for Rich to get his will call ticket and the bus ended up about 50 minutes late but it all worked out and hopefully Rich will be back in the great commonwealth of PA tomorrow sometime.

Tomorrow is a day off from riding, well deserved and needed as we travel up to Durango CO.

South Boundary Trail

2008-07-25T14:57:00.001-07:00

The ride today was the famous South Boundary Trail. It was on the same ridge more or less as the ride we tried to do yesterday so I was a little nervous about the navigation. It involves a shuttle, that is we paid the owner of one of the local bike shops, Gearing Up, to drive us around and up to the trailhead at about 9800 feet. Since he needs to open the shop at 9 or whenever he does, we had to meet him at the shop at 6:45am so he could get back in time. Princess was not particularly happy with that timing but managed to have his butt in the truck at the appointed time. Rey was great, really nice guy and gave us a number of tips about the trail as well as an overview of the whole bike scene in the area, the forest service issues etc. So about an hour after we dropped the truck at the end of the trail, we started out on trail 164. That was at an elevation of about 9800 feet and we still had almost 1000 feet to climb before we started across and down.

Not that there was no more climbing, but for the most part it was rolling between 10400 and 9500 for about 17 miles. It was a combination of extremely sweet single track and some jeep trail. The trails ranged from winding through alpine meadows with wild flowers to sweet bench cut trail through pine and aspen trees.

With the rain they have been getting in the area the trail is in mint condition, not a bit of dust anywhere and for the most part just a nice bit of tackiness to help keep the rubber side down. For the most part it was pretty well signed but the gps track I had downloaded did come in handy a couple times. I think we did a bit of bonus millage as we followed the 164 trail signs rather than at least one set of directions and the gps track but managed to get back around to where we were supposed to be. We ran into some cows a few times and saw a few mule deer that could hardly be bothered by us. After about 18 miles we started to head down and the trail got more technical, loose rocks , switchbacks, and steeper trails as we descended from the 9000 foot range back down to 7000 feet. 21.5 miles and 4.5 hours later the muscles in our faces were a little fatigued from grinning so much.

The Adventure

2008-07-24T17:17:00.000-07:00

We broke camp and headed up to Taos, NM this morning, i was impressed we were able, with some prework the evening before to get pulled out within about an hour of getting up. The drive up was uneventful as howie managed to find a detour around Santa Fe rather than making me drive the rig through town.
the ride was to be the Elliot Barker Trail. We only had a map, no actual ride description, first mistake. Princess made the right decision and stayed back at the camper. First we stopped at a bike shop on the way to the trail head to reserve our shuttle for tomorrow to do the South Boundary Trail, really has nothing to do with the ride. So up we drove to the pass above Taos at about 9100 feet. There were no real trail markers at all, first bad sign. We took what had to be the correct trail and it went up over some humps that looked like they would be fun coming back. We pushed the bikes a bit but nothing too bad. Then a bit of a down hill where we ran into a couple hikers at a T intersection. From our map we needed to go right but the hikers said the trail that way just went up to the meadow and quit. Well from yesterday we learned our lesson about listing to hikers so we headed right. They were right in a sense that the trail did seem to disappear in the meadow but we found a gate and a sign post that sent us in the right direction. Another bit of uphill and a bit of pushing followed by another downhill. At this point we had about three miles under our belts. We came out to a power line cut and had a decision to make, go to the left on what appeared to be trail but cross the NO TRESSPASSING sign or go to the right on a bit wider trail. We decided not to be scoff laws, and figured this was a pretty well known trail that would not need to have trespassing as part of it. We were wrong. After heading down what was now a definite old road, the GPS confirmed that we were not heading where we should be. We consulted the map, figured where we must be and hatched a new plan. Right on cue we found the next old road we needed to take, fewwww, at least we confirmed where we were. Another left on a pretty good looking dirt road and we were golden, that is right up until we ran into a HUGE gate with no trespassing signs all over it. On to plan B. Rich spotted a singletrack just before the gate so we ended up heading up that. The sign post was missing its board directing us on our travels, but we felt better that at least there used to be a sign there. Im not sure how long we hiked up that thing but it was a while. We finally crested the mountain and found another trail sign that had a number 1 on it but not much useful information. We followed the single track across the ridge until it T'd into a double track, old road type thing. We chose to keep heading back towards where the truck was parked. More climbing on more old dirt roads, continuing to head towards the truck when faced with a direction choice. We ended up heading down on one of these and ended up spying a nice looking dirt road and headed for that. There was a house up there with a couple people out and Rich went to see about the best way to get back to the truck. My fears were confirmed, somehow we went over the ridge, missing the trail we where supposed to be on. The only real way back was to go all the way down through this development and take the road back up to the truck. Normally, not a big deal but there were storm clouds with lightning in the area and the road up was very twisty with no shoulder. The nice lady at the house we got directions at was heading out and offered to lead us down through the maze of roads to the main highway. At the bottom she then offered to take us back up to the truck, the SUV even had a bike rack on it. We graciously took her up on her most generous offer.
Sorry no pictures today

Winsor Trail - day three

2008-07-23T21:14:00.001-07:00

Princess is not a morning person. For all you that know him, you probably have at least an inkling of that but until you are there when he wakes up, you really can’t understand. He looks like somebody that had way too much to drink and way too little sleep the night before, but he may have had at most two beers and by the time he got up, at least 7 hours of sleep. Luckily his disposition isn’t as bad as he looks and eventually he comes around.

On to the important part, the ride. Today was the Winsor trail, it’s actually the main trail in a network of single track just outside Santa Fe. The plan as written is to do an out and back, climbing from about 7200 to 10300 feet in about 10 miles, sound familiar? The big difference between today and yesterday is singletrack, the whole climb was singletrack, WOOHOO!

The grade was also a little more consistent so we were able to ride almost all of it, with the only extended hike-a-bike near the top, maybe a quarter mile at most. We did spend a good deal of time in granny or near granny though. The track was for the part in really good shape, a mix of dirt and decomposed granite, it reminded me of the trails in Tahoe. The other interesting part of the first 5 miles were the stream crossings, according to princess, 16 of them. The first one I dismounted and took the log “bridge” not wanting to wash the lube off my chain that early. After hitting the next one within a few minutes I quickly realized we just needed to ride them, so we all had wet shoes and socks, but no big deal at all. Princess had the first mechanical of the trip, a cut in his tire that was too big for the Stan’s sealant to heal. Luckily he has good friends that let him have their tube since he didn’t have one with him. The trails are not dusty at all so we have not had any issues with lack of lube on the chains which can be a problem out west. The climb ended up taking about 3.5 hours and the fluffer nutter sandwiches tasted like prime rib at that point. We checked out a really nice vista point, again showing where we had been and where we were going back to, along way below us.

So down we went, video camera on, me trying to keep up with princess and Rich. It was a LOT of fun. The trail just begged to be ridden hard and fast so you had to temper that with your desire not to get hurt too badly. We hit the road crossing and almost ran into a VERY large bull dozer grading the road, luckily we heard it before we saw it and didn’t drop on to the road right in front of it. We waited for Howie to catch up and then down some more. Princess didn’t trust his will not to get hurt so he let Rich go first to try and keep himself from doing anything too stupid, musta worked as he ended the ride pretty much unscathed, and there was plenty of potential for disaster.

We went “off book” about half way down, taking a detour that Mike Mucker had told us about. Howie and I looked at the map at the top of the climb and determined that there would not be much climbing on the detour. The altitude must have gotten to us or the map was not real accurate because we ended up with a healthy little climb and we took Mucker’s name in vain more than once. But the downhill payoff back to the main trail made it all worth while and we forgave Mike. Of course, not learning our lesson, we started out on another detour of Mike’s, this time we were all pretty much just down to our water bottles, killing off the 100 oz of water we had in our packs. After we started up another climb that wasn’t supposed to be there we ran into a couple hikers that assured us that we could not get back to Winsor trail the way we were going. The trail up ahead looked a bit ugly and steep and again, we were close to being outta water so we actually did the smart thing and head back down what we came up back to the main trail. Those last 4 miles or so were a blast and went way too quickly. Total millage was about 24 and I would estimate about 3500 feet of climbing. All agreed, a great great ride.

First Couple Days

2008-07-22T13:59:00.000-07:00

Well we made it out to New Mexico, took two days of 14.5 hours of driving but got here late Sunday nite. Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois were as boring as I remember. There are actually a few hills in Missouri along I-44 going towards Tulsa, that was a bit of surprise. There is also almost nothing between Oklahoma City and Amarillo TX. We passed by the restaurant with the worlds largest rocking chair and also went by the largest cross in the western hemisphere. Oh boy. We pulled into the campground outside of Santa Fe Monday morning and got things set up a bit then headed down to Albuquerque to pick up Rich at his friends place that he spent the weekend at. We head out of town just a bit to what is said is Albuquerque's premier ride, Otero Canyon. It was a nice ride, only about a thousand feet of climbing so it didn't totally kill us lowlanders, I think it started around 7200 feet above sea level. It was all pretty much in the scrubby woods without many scenic vistas but the downhill (you actually do it twice) was in pretty good shape and fun. Total of about 15 miles. We lucked out and missed the rain that was pretty much all over Albuquerque. A quick stop at the grocery store and back the hour to the campground. We pretty much picked up where we left off, some really great burgers and howie's cheesie potatoes.

Day two was more normal, we got up around 6:30 and started getting things together, cereal for breakfast and once we pried Princess outta bed we were headed to the trailhead by about 9am. This ride is supposed to be one of the primo ride in the Santa Fe area, Glorietta Baldy, so named for where it starts and Mt Baldy where it tops out. We actually parked and started from this massive Baptist retreat "city" for lack of a better work. A couple miles down the paved road and we started up the dirt road, and up and up and up. The total climb was about 11 miles, from 7200 to 10200 feet with a few ups and downs in there so we musta climbed at least 3500 feet. The last mile or so had at least the three of us, kevin, rich, and princess walking our bikes. Howie was out in front far enough that Im not sure how much he walked but was very impressive on how much he did ride. I don't think the climb would have been as bad had we been more acclimated to the altitude, but basically it sucked. We finally reached the summit after about 2.5 hours of climbing.

You can see the retreat center down below us in the center of the picture

This was our first view of single track, FINALLY. The track was a bit on the loose side and had some challenging switchbacks to start. It degraded into an old almost fall line hiking trail that was really loose with babyhead size rocks. It alternated between what I would call decent sustainable trail and this loose mess for the next mile or so. There were some nice sections and the last half mile or so was really fun, some mini slickrock riding at points. We had a little bit of navigating to get around some barbed wire fence at the bottom but made it out to the road that would take us back to the truck. There was a bit of debate on whether the heinous climb was worth 5 miles of that type of single track and the majority seemed to feel probably not. But it was still a good ride.