Back in 2008 I was traveling a great deal for work and could no longer lead or attend the weekly Tuesday @ Tolt night rides handing off the reins. A ride I had been leading since 2004, logging 50 Tuesday night rides a season throw in the Friday Riding Scared series my lights and I were getting a great workout. In place of these rides I was on an airliner heading to or from overseas or working late.

Heading into 2013 my schedule loosened up a bit and looking forward to finally getting in some weeknight rides and pushed to ride more often.

What I really enjoy about night rides are old trails that have gotten boring over the years, become new and exciting again at night. Your wild life encounters increase on night rides too, it is not uncommon to come across a large cat, bear, deer or many white mice. Where do these white mice coming from? Riding out at Tolt I see them all over the place is there some secret lab nearby that these mice escape from?

After a winter of riding trails in the dark the trails are less boring in the daylight for a bit. Everything looks different and not uncommon to find that you don’t recognize some of the landmarks in the daylight. Then the night riding season begins and you don’t recognize the landmarks at night.

In the past we would ride snow or typhoon no matter the weather we would be out there getting in some exercise. My ride no matter what attitude is less these days and not that interested in riding in really foul weather. Now if I look outside and see raining cats and dogs I’ll probably sit and spin on the Computrainer instead.

Time to read up on the latest trend for riding lights and pickup a backup set. My Niterider Moab light continues to work great, getting loaned out here and there a few times and used on a few rides through the Snoqulamie train tunnel on the John Wayne trail.

See everyone on the trails maybe even on a few night rides in the near future

 

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

I can’t believe how quickly this year has flown by and the amount of adventures we’ve had this year.

2012 had been a packed year of exploring new trails, repeats on familiar and revisited a few forgotten favorites. To wrap up the season after multiple trips to Oregon and crisscrossing Washington. Several of us wrapped up the summer with Erik’s Annual Mountain Bike trip held in Fruita, Colorado and wrapped up in Moab, Utah by riding The Whole Enchilada.

For everyone I rode with this year thanks for all the great adventures and looking forward to many more in 2013.

Keep safe this holiday season and see everyone on the trails.

Before signing off here, if you have not been to Got Singletrack! for while the site is now mobile friendly and auto scales to smaller screens. The focus now is riding with friends and usually we have something on the calendar every Sunday with night rides returning in January.

Not really ready to be riding in wet conditions a group of us drove to Wenatchee, WA several weeks back in search of Sun and Dry trails. This would be our third trip to Sage Hills this season with the low temps and recent fire did not expect any snake encounters. The lower trails we would be riding had recently reopened after a fire ran through the area in September.

The area now looks very different compared to our trip in May.  Very interesting riding at every turn where you can see the trail acted as a fire break. One side is all burn and the other showing green or recovery already. The trail was no loose at all and a few hikers and fellow Mountain Bikers out on the trail.

 

 

May 2012 rolling into Homestead

November 2012 – Rolling into Homestead

Rolling down Homestead was a little weird without all the vegetation. The trail is still hard packed only a few areas were soft.

Here is a video that was taken by another group around the same time coming down Homestead.

Looking forward to checking out the upper trails in the spring. For now that’s a wrap for 2012 dry riding now to start riding locally on the wet side.

Last year I just ran out of time to make an Orcas Trip happen, this year everything fell into place including great weather.

I drove down after work and stayed in a local hotel to avoid that 2hr early morning drive up to make the ferry.

That worked out great I got up had some breakfast then leisurely made my way to the ferry terminal. At 6:30 in the morning there were already a number of cars in line. The ferry would not leave for another hour and walked around enjoying the morning sunrise. Eddie rolled up about a half hour later.

Always enjoy the ferry ride to Orcas.

Arrived then drove to the Moran State Park where we met Brian then continued on to the Rangers cabins. Where we parked and would begin our ride.

We would take the road up to Mount Constitution then ride the  trails down. Loaded up the Garmin with my previous course for this ride. The Garmin would displayed a pacer of my previous results on this route that I would be virtually competing with. That and trying to hang on with Brian and Eddie should push me up this climb.

The was some traffic on the road, but not too bad.

About 2 or so miles into the climb you begin to have views to enjoy. Taking your mind off the climbing.

3 miles later from the last view point we reached the top and this big view

There is a tower at the top you can climb up. Here is a view from one of the openings as I climbed the tower.

Looking down from the tower

The view from the tower

After a short rest we hit the trail, stopping to take in the views along the way.

Big Views!

Looking down on Mountain Lake we would be riding by later today

Trails were perfect up top and a little dusty once we got to the bottom.

We kept a solid pace ran into some riders\hikers at the top. Once we cross the road and continued on we never saw soul again until the lake.

The section rolling along the lake is fun as always and did not see a soul until we had to climb away from the lake.

The trail ended and dumped us out to the road, rather then coast back to the Rangers Cabin. We searched for more singletrack and followed it for a bit working our way back to the Rangers cabins. Eventually arriving back to the truck. Great ride, perfect trail conditions and nearly had it to ourselves.

When we rolled back to the truck my virtual pacer was still a ways, guess we really pushed the pace. My legs were shot from the effort, loaded up said bye to Brian would be staying the weekend. Then hurried back to the ferry terminal. Only to find that the 3PM ferry does not run on Saturday, we would be waiting for the 5PM now.

Now that we had a lot of time to kill we walked up to a nearby INN for lunch. Great end to a Sunday.

The Whole Enchilada a ride I’ve been looking forward to for about a year.

It’s only the night before the fact we’ll be pedaling or walking next to our bikes at 11,156’ hits me. 35 Miles, 8000+/- Elevation Loss and around 2000 +/- gain. Do I have enough in my legs to do this ride and have fun….sure I do is what I tell myself. Take it easy and savor it all, yep that’s my plan.

The morning started cold and the WHE shuttle was a bit late leaving. A group from Germany were touring trails in Colorado for the last couple weeks. The battery was dead in their RV and delayed their arrival to the shuttle van. Once they arrived we were off. Great discussions with the group from Germany they rode WHE early in the week. This time they were going to ride Moon LIght Meadows.

The others in the van were locals and a few from Kansas would be riding WHE.

Up and Up we go.

The gang

 

Amazing to go from desert to tree’s.

Unload and pay our $25 for the shuttle.

Group photo….it was cold

COW!

Lots of cows on this ride

 

 

Another group shot….delaying before we tackle the climb behind us

There was some riding

Some hiking

The views were big!

Legs had it in me to pedal up this beast…the lungs were on fire

What a view and a nice looking trail that was a beast to climb up

I started the GPS late, so the mileage is off by over a half mile. The elevation is correct and we were all feeling it.

Success we made it to the top!

Others did the same

Heading over the top the trails felt like Washington. Steep, lots of roots and rocks.

About a 1/2 of the way down this section we started to catch up to riders. One group was stopped trying to come up with a field repair. They lost a bolt to one of suspension pivots and ended up using a multi tool and zip ties.

Heading through sections of buff trail with large rocks, probably the fastest I’ve ever gone through sections like this. The Remedy ate it all up and I was having a blast.

Many stream crossings on the upper sections, the water was COLD!

Rolling in Hazard County

These photos do not capture the vibrance of the sky or leaf colors.

Rolling into an unexpected view

Came around the corner to this view

We followed some road for a bit to the next trail head. Looking back at Burro Pass you can see it to the left in the distance.

Cows!

Trail started off rolling then became much steeper

Rolling out of the trees

Starting to see the desert coming into focus. This section was fast and super rocky as it rolled down to the Kokopelli ride.

The 2nd or 3rd time this week we’ve been on parts of this trail. From this point we would be on the road for a bit then back onto trail again

Each sign had a notice of the WHE Enduro that would be occurring in two weeks.

Out of the trees

Slick Rock time

Maybe I hadn’t eaten enough, but I really felt mentally tired about this point. Not bonk as the legs were doing find just making silly mistakes and really slow to react to my environment.  Maybe that was a bonk either way once I started to keep on top of getting calories into me I started to feel better.

The notch that 1st part not fun at all then became a rolling trail. Much of what we hit after this did not look familiar to my last visit.

Big Views

Covered in dust.

Views at every turn

Fun section of rock and trail

It felt like the ride would never end we had our fill of the slick rock today, but still a long ways to go yet.

Finally reached singletrack once more

The Colorado River we are getting very close well four miles closer to the road now

This section has it all exposure, features and views

Big views all the way to the end.

From this point our group started to stretch out Ken out 1st and heading to get the truck followed by Milt and then myself. Peggy went down by the river and waited for us.

For myself I still had energy to burn and wanted to see how quickly I could get to the Moab Campground. That is where we stayed on our last trip and recall just riding Porcupine Rim a little 15 mile ride that the spin back to Moab and the campground kicked my tail. This time was a different story I was in the big ring and flying down the road. Rolling into Moab still with energy left, but very thirsty and hungry. 10 minutes later I was in my truck with Milt, Ken and we drove back to the trail head to pickup Peggy.  Then back to the Condo to clean up and back into town for Dinner.

The Whole Enchilada – 38.16 miles, 8,390’ elevation loss and 2,166’ elevation gain. A big day and a great way to wrap up Erik’s Annual Mountain Bike Trip.

Photo Credit: Erik, Ken, Milt, Peggy