Do you mountain bike alone?

[Aggie_Ama]

Rattlesnakes, rocky courses, poor cell phone coverage and horrible maps keep me from riding alone. Now sometimes I will go on without DH while he rides a technical section and the funny thing is I ride better. But I only ride better without DH, I ride great with some of the women I ride with. Truly bizarre.

My biggest fears are finally seeing a rattlesnake, then crashing. Since I was a child at least once a month I dream I am in a house (or elsewhere) surrounded by rattlers. For many years I was convinced I would die from meeting one but now I know the number of deaths each year is relatively low. Permanent disfigurement at the bite site is what I worry about, I saw someone who hard a gnarled hand from a rattler bite. Funny thing is I have seen more snakes (cottonmouths and bull snakes mostly) running than riding but I still like to run alone.

[Aggie_Ama]

I went alone this morning and it was great! It was a very busy trail, not super technical and there were a lot of riders but oddly I was alone on almost every part of the 13 miles of single track. It was like I was just behind or just ahead of all the other riders, nice and relaxing. No snakes just one small whitetail doe, a squirrel and some dogs. It is an off leash park, the dogs were particularly bratty today. If you are going to let your dog off leash make sure it isn't going to chase hikers and cyclists and that it will listen to you! Otherwise it was a very good ride, no wrecks and a lot of fun. I will go alone to this trail again. I still prefer on more technical ones to use the buddy system.

[tzvia]

My biggest fears are finally seeing a rattlesnake, then crashing...

That actually happened to me about 10 years ago! It was my most frightening moment MTBing alone. I was going up a long fire road climb in the summer heat, just zoned out. It was after an el-nino winter so it was really rutted except for the right side which was on the high side of the hillside, with a lot of dried foot tall grass. Just the right place for a rattler to doze off, but I was not thinking of that. I was really not thinking about anything except the smoothest part of the trail and the heat.

Next thing I knew, was this motion and scraping sound on my right about next to my front tire. Too late to do anything except pedal faster. Time then took a real dive. I had plenty of time to think about everything I was doing. Speed up, look back. What's that? Big mouth. BIG MOUTH gonna get caught in my rear spokes! Two sails. Not teeth. They look like skin sails. Missed me missed the bike pedal faster oh crap in a rut- down I go. Maybe a few seconds but forever. I sat up and realized that the rattler was a few feet behind my bike, which was between me and it. It was rattling away very loud. Now for the weird part. It then decided that it did not like being hemmed in on the high side, so it crossed the trail just behind my bike, maybe 10 feet from me as I sat there. The whole time it was rattling and turning it's head towards me. Very pissed off snake. I got a real good look at it- it was around 6~7 feet long- and very big in the middle. It curled up under a bush on the edge of low side and kept rattling. I got up and could not believe my luck, the rattler must have been spooked by me and was not in a good position to strike. Lucky me.

I had to wait for a while, about 10 minutes, hoping it would stop rattling and go away as the trail is used by horse riders and mtb'ers and I just didn't want to leave a pissed snake on the side of the road. Finally it stopped, and I thought it was ok so took one step towards my bike but it began rattling again! I was about 30 ft away by then, it was still pissed! I warned a few mtb'ers who came by and it rattled away as they passed. 20 more minutes later I finally left.