Mountain biking is hard...

[Veronica]

Finally got back on the bikes today, a super hard ride on Mt Diablo. We climbed 1400 feet in 2.2 miles - average grade of 13%, with some sections much steeper. It was also our first warm ride of the season with temps around 80 degrees. We've had rain this last week so the water crossings at the bottom of the trail were fun and wet.







The poppies are just amazing, huge swaths of orange on the hillside.



I would guess this shows about the last 1.5 miles of the climb. The photo is taken from the ridge on the other side which we climbed up and then went down. The descent was pretty technical, with lots of changing surfaces, some hard packed, some loose, very ripply with some steps.

A good day, but boy am I tired! I can't believe we've been off the bikes for almost a month. It's not like I haven't been doing anything, but there is no real substitute for hard riding.

Total mileage for the day was 13.28 with 1,950 feet of climbing.

Veronica

[Veronica]

We rode at Black Diamond yesterday, just 8 miles, but with 1250 feet of climbing. The trails are still really beat up from the cows. I got a new camera, so I played around with it a bit. I saw some white lupine but it wasn't clustered close enough to make a good picture. We've got lots of the purple variety, but not so much of the white.



That's the Sacramento/San Jouquin Delta in the far distance and windmills on the opposite shore. It's always windy here; the winds blow up the the river from San Francisco to Sacramento.




If you took the trail up behind Thom, you'd be at the ridge top. That section of trail is freakishly, stupid steep, instead of just stupid steep like everything else in the park.

It was a good day.

Veronica

[missjean]

That last photo looking down into the valley is so pretty. It looks so green and so warm - it's still cool & brown here in the NE.

[Veronica]

It was pretty warm - about 80 degrees. We should have gone out earlier, but we needed to do some yard work.


We were in Maine last weekend for my mom's 80th birthday. I do like the weather here better; it's a lot more predictable. I think it was 70 degrees last Saturday at my my sister's house and then they got snow a few days later. Crazy! Of course our summer days will go up into the 90s and sometimes even hotter, but we low humidity.


Veronica

[SheFly]

Yup - 70 in Maine, then snow, and then flooding! And it is mud season now . I've ridden my MTB a total of 3 times this year (if you don't count the fat bike, which doesn't really count). Need to get back out there, but it looks so much nicer out in Cali than here.

SheFly