Weekend MTB Rides

[katherine]

With the kiddos camping with their grandparents I rose to the occasion, and may have overdone it (just a little bit). I did 70mls of the Arizona Trail in the Flagstaff area, which is really gorgeous. Lots of aspens and ferns, elk, the tiniest chipmunks I've ever seen and a gazillion butterflies.
Gotta say, I'm pretty darn exhausted today (I'd post pics, but for the life of me can't figure out how)

[Artista]

With the kiddos camping with their grandparents I rose to the occasion, and may have overdone it (just a little bit). I did 70mls of the Arizona Trail in the Flagstaff area, which is really gorgeous. Lots of aspens and ferns, elk, the tiniest chipmunks I've ever seen and a gazillion butterflies.
Gotta say, I'm pretty darn exhausted today (I'd post pics, but for the life of me can't figure out how)

70 miles on a mountain bike is darned impressive!

[indysteel]

Weeeeeeee! DH and I rode 17 miles today with six friends at Versailles State Park I'm southeastern Indiana. While several in the group were familiar with the trails, and one guy was very familiar (and a great guide for us), DH and I had never ridden them. What a blast!!! They were challenging in parts, but it was mostly flowy singletrack. The hardest section is called Cliffside. As the name implies, there was a streep dropoff. That combined with an off camber trail made it pretty scary. Our "guide" suggested some us walk...so I did. The other hard section is called Creekside. It's about 3/4 mile of nothing but rocks. I was behind my friend, Kim, and I just followed her lead. Fairly constant pedal pressure. Weight off the front. And I did it just fine, along with some rocky hoglike. My climbing technique is getting much better in terms of getting on the nose of my saddle and making smart gear choices.

I really started to appreciate the adages I hear quite often to trust my bike and to trust the trail. It was just a really good learning experience, in part because our friend, Scott, often coached us through some tricky parts. He lives in Cincinnati, so I hope to meet up with him at this park again. He and his buddies--two of whom are certified instructors--often ride in Brown County, which is our usual spot.

Anyway, I had a great day on the bike. I'm all smiles!

[Catrin]

So glad you had such a great time there Indysteel! I've seen a portion of those trails but not much of them.

I returned to my usual trail today and wound up riding it 3 times out and back - which translates to about 15 miles, perhaps slightly under. The first time was with a new riding buddy and that went well. There were, however strong storms here yesterday and on that first ride out/back ride we had to deal with several downed trees. By the time I returned after lunch they had been removed

Lots of sticks and brush on the trail and a couple of times a long branch wound up in my wheel spokes but I stopped immediately, no damage done. Great ride, and the mid-80 temps were just awesome! My partner had to return to town after our first out/back but it was far too nice a day to call it quits before 12, so I pulled out my lunch cooler for lunch and headed back to the trail

[indysteel]

Sounds like a good day! I hope you're feeling more positive after today's ride!

[Catrin]

Sounds like a good day! I hope you're feeling more positive after today's ride!

It was a great day, and yes, I am feeling much more positive. Now I am in a position that I can get out more often to the trails I will be doing so I just haven't been able to get to the trails very often this summer because of this and that injury - which does make it difficult to progress.

[luv2climb]

I've been a bad girl! I haven't gone on a mtb ride since my Fleming Meadows ride in April. The encounter with the equestrian kind of turned me off to mountain biking for a while and I concentrated on road cycling instead, with plenty of climbing, of course.

I thought my recent San Francisco steep climbs on my folding bike would prepare me for steep mtb climbs, but as always the mtb stuff is more difficult than any road climb. The good thing is, for some odd reason I climb better at high altitude. I have no idea why but it's always been that way ever since I got serious about cycling in the early 90s.

As a result, I didn't suffer as much on climbs as I usually do on mtb rides. Even though I love to suffer, it's good that I didn't suffer too bad on climbs on this ride. I needed plenty of energy to navigate my hardtail Trek Wahoo through the incredibly technical singletrack on this famous trail.

This is in the Tahoe-Donner area of the Sierras, near Truckee, CA. I had a bit of trouble finding the trailhead at first. I climbed on pavement on Donner Pass Road from I-80 to the summit. While descending that road I finally found the dirt road turn-off to the snow laboratory. It was a long dirt road climb to the actual trailhead.

This may be the hardest mtb ride I've ever done. I think I set a personal record for dabs, stall-outs, and hike-a-bikes, both up and down! . Most hike-a-bike sections were very short, except for the stairs. There's no way in hell I was about to attempt those on a hardtail!

I rode more conservatively than I normally would, but this was my first ride on this trail. Also, I'd rather ride out of there on my bike, not in a helicopter. The owner of the store I bought snacks at after my ride told me that there have been people helicoptered out of there after they attempted stuff that was beyond their ability and got injured.

Hole-In-The-Ground by freighttraininguphill at Garmin Connect - Details

In spite of my non-daring ride, I did manage to find enough footage for a video.

As with all my videos, this one is 100% natural sound. This means the sounds of effort are clearly audible on climbs and technical sections, so be forewarned!

Hole-In-The-Ground MTB ride - YouTube

I rode the trail in a counterclockwise direction. Here's the start of the singletrack.


Hole-In-The-Ground trailhead (counterclockwise) by freighttraininguphill, on Flickr

Views from near the top of Andesite Peak. Normally I try not to stop on climbs, but this view was just too good to pass up!


view from Andesite Peak by freighttraininguphill, on Flickr

view from Andesite Peak 2 by freighttraininguphill, on Flickr

End of the singletrack, right before the dirt road.


Hole-In-The Ground trailhead (clockwise) by freighttraininguphill, on Flickr

The following weekend I checked out another trail. This one was much mellower though. It's the Sly Park trail that goes around Jenkinson Lake, near Mormon Emigrant Trail (Iron Mountain Road).

After pushing my bike up a short unrideable section, I got stung on the back of the leg by a yellowjacket when I sat back down. It must have landed on my shorts or saddle while I was off the bike.

Twice when I yielded to hikers, they noticed the cameras and commented.

This loop doesn't have a lot of climbing, so I added some by exploring other legal trails after I was finished.

Here's video of the Sly Park loop. It's the quieter helmet cam footage this time. The chest-mounted GoPro recorded the entire ride with no sound, so that footage was useless. I formatted the memory card and the camera has worked fine ever since.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlmtc4sZ62E

Here's a nice steep fire road I found that leads to one of the dams at Mormon Emigrant Trail.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTwOsqVzRI8

[limewave]

We camped at a park South West of us and had ample opportunity to mountain bike Saturday and Sunday. These trails are well maintained and have some fun technical sections There is one section of big whoop-de-doos that I had forgotten about--selective memory I guess. They are very 'rideable' but I'm not used to them and my heart managed to lodge itself in my throat during that section!

I did most of my mountain biking with the kids. The trails at this park have lots of loops so you can easily add sections or take short cuts. There's a nice 1-mile section rated "difficult" that is relatively flat other than the whoop-de-doos that has some log piles and other small technical features. The kids LOVE riding this section--they call it the roller-coasters. We'd ride it over and over and over again. The funny thing is how great these kids are at the technical stuff but they just don't have the strength and endurance to ride other sections that are "easier" but have more climbing.

I was also able to introduce my 8 year old niece to trail riding. She told me that this was her Second Favorite trip of all time and that mountain biking is her new FAVORITE sport! Mission accomplished!

Oh, and we all stayed up very late to watch the meteor shower Saturday night. We saw quite a few small ones and one that was absolutely brilliant!

[Catrin]

Sounds like fun Limewave!

[Artista]

Dang, Limewave. Wish I was there. Sounds like fun.

I'm really intrigued by yours and Catrin's stories of camping and mtb'ing. I love the idea of camping but I'm not so sure that I love the actual camping part.

[Catrin]

Dang, Limewave. Wish I was there. Sounds like fun.

I'm really intrigued by yours and Catrin's stories of camping and mtb'ing. I love the idea of camping but I'm not so sure that I love the actual camping part.

I seriously that that at my age I would hate it. However, last year I really wanted to attend a couple of events and I couldn't afford a hotel room...but could score free camping. Some good friends loaned me camping equipment so I could try it out, and thankfully the owners of the tent were also camping that weekend so they pitched it and took it down.

I hate sleeping on the ground, but I have a cot which changes the equation, the camping part is nice and relaxing, I am very glad I started doing it!

[Artista]

It's not the sleeping on the ground part that bothers me. It's the peeing in my shoes part, being eaten by a bear in my sleep part, and not having any camping gear part that bothers me.

I assume that most "civilized" camp grounds have outhouses these days so that takes care of the peeing in the shoes thing. We camped a lot when we were kids and never even saw a bear so the risk of being eaten is probably pretty small. I don't know anyone to borrow camping gear from so we'd have to spend a fair amount of money on gear just to take one camping trip to see if we like camping as adults.

Still, it sounds glorious to get up in the morning, cook breakfast on a camp stove, head out to the trail, come back to camp for lunch, ride again, return to camp for dinner, admire the stars, sleep in the pines, and then rinse and repeat. Maybe we'll try it next summer. Then again, we may just spend a few weekends in a hotel in Fruita instead. We're planning a Fruita mtb trip this fall. I'm soooo excited.

[Giulianna23]

Did around 10 miles Saturday with my son. Discovered other interesting routes at the trail. It was Fun!..

[Becky]

I rode 16 miles after work on Friday with my friend K. This is the first time that she and I have been able to ride together, and we had a blast! She's not particularly fast, but man, she has skills! I aim to ride like that someday.

Sunday's ride was a fairly short but intense ride. DH, K, and I went to a Niner Bikes demo. I got to ride a Jet 9 RDO and a RIP 9 on a ~5 mile loop. No computer on my demos, but I'm guessing that I did somewhere around 8 miles. The Jet made me hammer...it wouldn't let me ride slow.

I am now hopelessly in love with the Jet 9 RDO...and desperately wondering how I can come up with that much coin. Even the alloy version would require that I sell body parts. (Anyone want to buy a 4" FS bike with 26" wheels?)

Fantastic weekend

[Catrin]

Had a great time this weekend! Rode my favorite trails, just focused on having fun and stopping to smell the flowers...metaphorically speaking as there weren't any flowers Camping with 100 other mountain bikers is always a great experience - but this time we were sharing the campground with a LOT of boy scouts - neither group were aware the other was coming.

I've decided to just focus on having fun on the trails, and have given myself permission to stop when I want and to go as slow - or as fast - as my body feels like that day. I don't HAVE to continually push myself to increase my technical skills - with my new approach I will certainly improve but it might take a little longer. I am fine with that

It is a balance between my tendency to keep pushing myself too hard and the reality of not being able to take another hit to my neck like I took last fall. Doesn't mean I won't ever fall again, of course, and that was a freak fall to begin with. Just trying to balance things out so I can keep having fun on the mountain bike trails. My neck just isn't the same and I need to keep that in my equation.

All of that being said, I was able ride my favorite trail entirely in the middle ring the other day - only the second time I've been able to do that!