This year’s summer vacation is off to a great start. With a severe lack of creativity, we’re dubbing this one “Summer of Fun 5”. We’ve yet to come up with a subtitle like…Singletrack Siestas or whatever. I guess I could come up with some Lampoon style subtitle, but then it might not make any sense whatsoever.
We started out by stopping at Mt. Baldy in Socorro, NM. We’ve always wanted to ride the South Baldy Trail, but we always were on pinner tires after suffering up the hillclimb. The climb up was much more pleasant than when being raced. The descent was quite fun, very off-camber, and rocky.
Our next stop was in Santa Fe where we camped at the Black Canyon Campground. It’s super close to good trails and we followed some random gps tracks I downloaded from motionbased. We ended up doing some great climbing and descending.
Day 3 took us to the Monarch Pass area where we paid to stay in a super lame campground off of the Colorado Trail. We rode the CT over to the highway where Jen and I parted and I continued up toward the Continental Divide. After climbing for an hour, I ran into some spitting rain/snow and decided to turn it back to camp.
We then spent 3 nights at Hartman Rocks. We rode the Growler course both directions during our 4 days of riding there. I also on-sighted Free Fall! I really wish I had helmet cammed that one for the guys in El Paso. We need to build trail like that. Hartman Rocks has plenty of great trails and the camping is fantastic as you can see from our camp spot. We showed up on a weekend and no one was camped anywhere nearby.
The weather is improving now so we headed up to the high country. This is our 3rd time in Crested Butte. Two nights up Brush Creek with rides on Strand Hill and Teocali Ridge should have us prepped for this weekend’s Mtn. States Cup. Jen and I are both racing SS. Hopefully it will be worth the $50 entry fee, but I doubt it. We both need the intensity and with our lack of motivation for “training”, it should pay off.
Our ride up Teocali was slow. We saw some elk, a huge sage grouse, and after Jen decided to turn back when she saw piles of snow in the woods, I ran up on this porcupine. He was almost completely yellow with his quills out.
We’re spending tonight in an RV park about a mile from Gunnison so we can do laundry, clean bikes, use lots of hot water in the shower, and do the internet thing.
Luna is doing really well and she’s better than she was the weeks before her surgery. She carried an eight foot long pole/log/stick about ¾ a mile up from Brush Creek all the way back to our camp. She’s regaining strength quickly and our consistency with glucosamine and fish oil has reduced her rice crispy joints to an occasional click. We’re hoping that her patchwork fur fills back in before we get home.
I’m digging the Chris King BB. I’ve dunked the bike more than a couple of times this week in some deep creek crossings. I’ve seen my share of mud as well. No creaks yet and I was getting creaks from the Exo BB’s with ceramic upgrades within a few days in dry conditions. Wish I’d just held out for another year before I spent all that money on the bearing removal kit and the the ceramic bearings.
Hopefully I will be able to update this in another week or so. I opted out on the skycard for the computer which is probably a good thing because there have been several camps without cell service.
