Tuesday Nite Smoke Recap

Last night, hoping to escape the fire smog belched forth from the Boulder/Fourmile Fire, we headed west and up to Miller Rock. It didn't help. We parked by Raymond only to see the smoke haze settling down into the canyons surrounding us. Despite the risk to our lungs, we opted to ride to the top of Miller Rock to see if we could see any fire activity from there. Miller Rock is one of the best views in this part of the front rage. 100 degree panoram from the Front Range to the Continental Divide. I was looking forward to the view.

It's a long technical jeep road climb up. Chad was rockin' on the ss, as usual.



Long and steep. And sorta technical. And long and steep.

The view from the top of the rock.
At the time, I thought the view was kind of a bust. No flames, no orange, nothing. That's a good thing, though. The smoke settling provides a far off serene sense compared to the raging blaze below. It was definitely a unique experience.

Tuesday Ride 9/7

5:30pm at the shop and we'll head up to Raymond. We've ridden Miller Rock a few times this year but still haven't been on Cerain St. Vrain. Seems like it was only a couple weeks ago when Lee led us on that wack night time adventure, eh?

Labor Day Ride!

I got a rare opportunity to get out of town with Chad and Jeremy today. Destination = long climb and long steep tech.. I look forward to Mondays of 3 day weekends. Typically my Mondays are solo affairs but when everyone else is off, too, I get that group ride thing in that most folk can do on Sat or Sunday. It was good to ride with good buds.

The climb up was pretty uneventful. Lots of dirt road. Lots of jeep road. LOTS of rocks. Then the view. Then the descent. I can't honestly think of the last thing I rode that was this consistently technical for it's entire route. Kinda like Crosier but without any of the smooth parts and not near as long.


Some of it was a blur.
And some of it required pretty extreme focus.

"You ok Chad?" "Oh. Yeah. I'm fine. I didn't wreck."
The rest of the descent was great - more insanely rocky and technical switchedback descent. Sooo good. The rest of the ride, on the other hand though, was kind of a bust due to unforseen circumstance concerning the location where the trail dumped us out. Fortunately, we were able to make it work and made it back to fresh beers at the truck.

Colorado. September. Get some!

Love me some Lyons, CO

Mary and the kids were at a friends house after work tonight.   That doesn't happen too often so, instead of rushing home, I took the long way via singlespeed.

I rode from the shop and headed towards the high school for a little Lyons getto singletrack action.  Even though it's short (really short), it's very sweet.  Beautiful, hardpacked, and narrow.   Fun and twisty.  Sure, it only takes 10 minutes, but it's worth it.  Kinda like that last drink of a cold beer on a hot day.  Not much, but super satisfying.

The high school was packed with fans, too.  It was cool to see all the pumped up Lyons fans.  From there, I hit up some more bike paths and took a buncho laps on the pump track.  It was serendipitous.   Flowing in a Zen state on the rollers and berms was just what the good Dr. ordered. 

Next stop was downtown.   The Outlaw and Tacos Don were packed with Friday nighters.  OB was hectic as usual.  There was live music outside at the Stone Cup.  Ma's Pizza was rockin.   The only thing missing was Chubway, but that'll be here soon enough.

I spent the rest of the ride pedaling towards home completely blissed out on this kickass town. Love me some Lyons, CO.  Can't wait to do the same thing tomorrow.    Ahhhhh.  Sometimes the short rides can open your senses the most.

Tuesday Ride, Aug 31

Even though it's still August, the days are getting short, short, short. As such, this Tuesday's ride will be LIGHTS REQUIRED!

We will meet at the bike shop at 5:30pm and will travel once again to the Peaceful Valley Universe (becuase we love it so much). We'll be doing the Sourdough/Wapiti loop.

It'll be tough. Tech level is challenging but not extreme. The last hour or so will be in the dark.

2nd Annual Peaceful Tour of the Dick recap

I had been spying a route on the map for several years and I finally had the gumption to lead a group ride on it last year. The first ever Peaceful Tour of the Dick. The route was awesome. Even though it was only 30ish miles, it was definitely a tough all day route. Good stuff.

We did it again today. We just polished off the 2nd Annual Peaceful Tour of the Dick. A few thought it may be more than they could bite off but everyone but a couple folks managed to see it thru to the end. And what a great ride it was.

After meeting at the shop and getting everyone organized, riders took off between 10:30 and 11am. We had a solid crew. Pedaling south on Sourdough out of Peaceful Valley is never an easy task. After passing Beaver Reservoir, we were getting into our groove.







We had a quick snack break basking in the views of the Indian Peaks.





After some more tech and some more climbing and a very small amount of descending, we found ourselves at Brainard Lake Road. Somebody from Eldora was up there.

Eldora's marketing dept is obviously confused, especially since there are no gravity trails at Eldora and they do not allow bike use in the summer. What gives?


A little later and it was time for Lunch just before embarking on Little Raven. We had views...

Entertainment...


Views...

And fresh natural raspberries.




What could be better? More riding? Fortunately, Little Raven never dissapoints.



Neither do big ass bull moose. I called out to Bullwinkle but he didn't respond. Come to think of it, I didn't see Squirrel either.


After circumnavigating Brainard Lake, we hit the new South St Vrain reroute. Even though we had been riding the trail for years, it passed thru a small chunk of the Indian Peaks Wilderness. The USFS ranger district in these parts are our friends. Thanks to them, it's all legal and ready to roll after a short reroute of the offending section of trail. It's good.


And the traditional, old, "Upper SSV" is always a challenge.



The lower section is pretty good, too.



After popping out onto the highway at the bottom of SSV, we had a 3-4 mile dirt road climb ahead of us. That one was a real deal breaker. A few of us pulled out to go back to Peaceful Valley. The rest of us pushed on up Coney Flats Road. Coney Flats isn't, by the way. About 1/2way up Coney Flats, you come to a section where you can take a no motorized route or the jeep road. Both come out at the same place. Never knowing which was faster before, we decided to send folks in both directions to ascertain the outcome of max efficiency. Chris, and I, along with a few others, took the pedestrian only route. It was good. It was more direct but definitely tougher. I told Chris that it was good that we took this route, otherwise, it would be a Redstone ride without at least a little hike a bike.


I've got a reputation to uphold :) It's not mountain biking unless you're hiking.

There were some fun bits, too. It wasn't entirely a slog.
Back on Coney Flats road for one last fun jeep road descent.



Then onwards toward the cherry on top, Buchanan Pass trail.



Notice the smile :)


No more pics of the ride. I was done by then and too tired for more snapping. I had to focus on riding. We'd been out just over 6 hours at this point so focus was key.

We wrapped up just under 6.5 hours. We took about an hour off of last years time and we even had a bigger crew this year - right around 18 riders give or take. We dropped off a few and picked up a few. Ride time was just over 4 hours with the rest of the time dedicated to lunch, snacking, fixing flats, etc. I think we got in around 4500 feet of climbing. That doesn't sound too bad until you factor in the rocks. Damn rocks. I'm frickin tired now. Good night. And thanks for coming out y'alls!

Trail Work Tuesday Niter 8/24!!!

Next week, 8/24, will be our second trailwork nite of the year. We'll be working on Hall Ranch this time around. You all know the "new" dangerous section near the bottom of Bitterbrush trail right by the bathrooms. We'll be reworking that. Bottom line is that it's a poorly designed, north facing, section of trail. We will be doing some berm and drainage work to hopefully get rid of the loosey off camber stuff.

I went over that section of trail today, in person, with the caretaker of Hall as well as the trailwork coordinator for Boulder County. Long term wise, we're going to try to reroute that entire section, and move it to the other side of the hill so the trail will be southfacing, less steep, and more sustainable. That's long term, though, because that requires more people to sign off than a day of trailwork.

Bottom line is that whatever we do next week will still probably be suboptimal, but we ARE working on a long term, 4 season fix for this small section of trail.

Couple a things

First off, is anyone up for a big big big ride? Check the Nederland HalfAss 100. 2 distinct 50 mile loops o fun.

If that's not your cup of tea, we haven't yet lined up our annual Peaceful Tour of the Dick yet. How does Sunday 8/29 sound? It'll be an all dayer. Meetup at 8am?

And this Tuesday, how about Jtown? Bring lights if you have them. Bike shop at 5:30p.

Backyard Bikepacking

Colorado trail race fever. Peter and I headed out on a backyard bikepacking mission this past weekend. We were both fully loaded for self support. 2 days 1 night, but cheated by staying at the Guinn Mtn Hut near Rollins Pass. All said and done 105 miles annd 16000+ft of climbing. Yeah I know staying at the hut is not really bikepacking. That's the problem with doing this stuff in your backyard. You know all the stops to sleep, eat, and rest. Along the way we hit Sundance in Ned, and the Millsite in Ward. Damn that pizza was good. Went thru a ton of water, but the beauty of this route is there are plenty of water sources along the way. It was pump filter vs. steripen. The pump filter won overall but steripen tastes great. We used upper jenny creek and Four Mile Creek along Sourdough among others. Upper Jenny Creek right where the Guinn Mtn trail ends had the best water. We had a great time and what better way to sort out your gear for a big bike packing mission such as the Colorado trail one day.


Had my 40 F sleeping bag and a hennesy hammock strapped to my bars and duc. Another benefit of the duc 32 fork- additional surface area for strapping gear up front. Hammock fit nicely I thought. Approx. 4 lbs. of gear on front and 25 lbs. on my back. It takes some getting use to the additional momentum (energy) required to make it thru dab free up technical trail. I found my set-up enjoyable on the descents. Even with the carrying most of the weight on my back I experienced no back issues. However, my ass was sore at the end of day 2. Unsure if it was weight in pack compunded by tires that were inflated to 45 psi for all the climbing on day 1?

Here's Peter descending in Ned. These trails were open due to the Xterra triathlon being held at Eldora this weekend utilizing the Eldora XC ski trails. As you can see Peter had a similar strategy - some weight up front but most weight was carried on back. Peter even brought a pot in there which we used to cook some oatmeal day 2 morn.


My water purification treatment center. I found Peter's water filtration pump to be superior. Although the steripen scores points on size , weight, and quality taste. The time required to make up 2L was excessive. The time that Peter could make 2L of water I had only completed 0.5L with my steripen.

Near the top of Guinn Mtn.

Guinn mtn hut deck. The hut only requires a donation for usage either volunteer time or money. We left $5.

Kickin back after a long day in the saddle.

Woke up made a huge pot of oatmeal for breakfast. Started the long way back home down Guinn Mtn Trail. All the Tuesday night redstoners would have loved this trail albeit short.

Top of caribou 505. I was pleasantly surprised, the climb up 505 was not as bad as I remembered. Even with slightly fatigued legs my Turner 29er sultan powered thru the steep babyhead sections.

Day 1:Boulder>Flagstaff>Magnolia>Ned Trails>Guinn Mtn

Day 2: Guinn Mtn Trail>Jenny Creek>Caribou 505>Sourdough>Jamestown Massacre>Boulder

This was a fun loop and not the original route we set out to accomplish. Now knowing about the Guinn Mtn Hut we see additional possibilities for multi-day rides while carrying minimal gear.
We look forward to riding up to the hut again. Thank you hutmeister.