Chaz and Megan brought over Kully, Chaz’s little brother, to go riding with my boys up Hyde Park canyon. It was a good time, I think my kids liked riding with somebody their age for once. Kully is riding that CRF80 really well even with the clutch, although he does like to shoot straight for the mud puddles.
I gotta admit, I was feeling pretty nervous to ride after getting beat up earlier in the week, I’d already wussed out of going up to ID to ride a poker run with Chaz (which ended up being too good for words I hear), but when Rich called on Friday night to see if anything was up, I decided to give it a shot. I’m glad I did, it ended up being a beautiful day and after a handful of vitamin-I and a few minutes in the saddle I started loosening up.
Conditions were fantastic. Apparently I missed the pic-of-the-day when Tunes went down in the pond in Gibson Basin, bummer. Ranger Dip still has a ton of fallen trees, we cut what we could with my little handsaw, but that trail really needs to have a chainsaw run through it. Some of the logs were fun, but it started being a pain after so many. It was fun to ride with a couple of guys I’ve never ridden with too. What started out as just Rich and me on Friday night at 9pm ended up being 7 guys ready to ride at 7am the next morning. Pretty cool what a couple of txt messages can turn up, thanks for the fun ride!
Crew: Rich, Nate, Zac, Brock, Josh, Ken, and me.
Full album here: http://picasaweb.google.com/alhill/20090628GladySLoop
Went on an after-work ride with just Tim and Chaz up Providence Canyon. The switchbacks up the ziggy trail were hairy, but conditions were really good and I was able to conquer the steep rocky climb on the first try for the first time ever. The views were awesome from on top and the riding was really good.
On the way up the canyon, Tim peeled off to the right at the bottom of the quarry and climbed straight up the slag pile over the top! On the way back down Chaz and I watched him drop back down off of it. He made it look so easy. Chaz dropped down but got out of the sweet spot hits some big ruts and just about ate it going way too fast at the bottom… he barely got stopped before climbing the mountain on the other side of the road… *whew* I saw what he did and made a mental note not do do that. I dropped in poorly, stalled it right at the top –> got crossed up to the one side, then the other –> was trying to find a graceful way off the bike when the next thing I knew I was flying in the air –> hit the ground, saw sky then dirt sky dirt sky –> tried to dig in the heels and elbows to get stopped… the ground was like cement with sharp rocks sprinkled on top. Thanks to Tim for rescuing my bike while I did the whole wind-knocked-out-of-me-seeing-stars-looped-out-routine. In the famous words of Tracy Jordan (referring to upper proving grounds), “I don’t care if i ever see that ledge [slagpile] again.” 🙂
Chaz and I took a buddy of mine up to give him a taste of trail riding on Chaz’s bike that he’s trying to sell. It had rained all day and the conditions were pretty greasy, but we took him up anyway. We brought him back alive and with a smile on his face, so I think it was a success.
We parked in Left-hand fork and rode Richards up from the south. The conditions were excellent, really good hookup and no dust at all. I usually get hung up on the little rock garden with the steep drop off to the left and the switchback with the root, but Chaz and I both cleaned them with no problems this time. Cart and Seep were really good, we stopped a handful of times to cut and clear out the logs going up to Banjo springs, so those trails are completely clean as of last week. Coming out of the meadow back down to Richards Chaz about got his leg taken off by a semi hidden log next to the trail, we went back and moved it out of the way too.
Whites had some pretty good mud ruts.
We tried to go towards Mt. Logan to see how far we could make it, there is still a lot of snow after the last ridgeline that drops you down to where 016 trail starts.
We rode back down Whites and up to the top of Richards before turning around and going all the way back down to LH. On the section between the top of Richards and the elbow, Chaz saw a wolf! He got a pretty good look at it too, it ran down the hill from the left, across the trail in front of him, and up the right. He says it was way too big to be a coyote! I missed it, but will definitely be keeping my eyes open, I’d love to see one out in the wild.
I forgot my camera on this ride, so I’ll have to add pictures after I get them from Chaz… *update* you can find Chaz’s pics here: http://picasaweb.google.com/alhill/RichardsCartSeepWhites
