New Trail Love

Most of my rides start right out my door. The road possibilities are endless and I can get to awesome trails quite quickly with very little pavement. It is good for me to ride some pavement as there are some paved sections at Leadville. Lately though, about every two weeks my friend and I have been going on adventures. We pack up the bikes and hit the road in search of new (well, new to us) trails to ride and explore. Our most recent escapade took us to 20 miles of super sweet single track.

That brown zigzag on the hill side was the start of our trail

The guidebooks and website that we referenced raved about this trail and we weren't disappointed. The descriptions also mentioned that on the aerobic scale this trail was rated strenuous. That sounded perfect for someone (me) training for an endurance mountain bike event. Lucky for me, my friend the downhill diva needed no encouraging, she loves a good workout. This trail had a technical rating of 4+ ( the scale only goes to 5).  Whoops, missed that little detail!

Absolutely stunning scenery

It was a great day for riding. There was only one other car at the trail head so we basically had the trail to ourselves from the start. The beauty of being able to go mid week. We were cruising along and passed a few trail markers that had mileage marked on them. Neither of us had a computer so we really had no idea how far we were at any given point. It was 10.5 miles to the top and then turn around and come back.

The trail ahead

At one point on our ride the trail markers started going the wrong direction. We saw one that said 7 and the next one said 5. We hadn't taken any turns and hadn't passed other trails. Good thing we both like to explore the unknown, because at this point it was pretty much unknown. The directions we had with us made no sense. When you take one trail in one direction you always know the way back so we weren't at risk of getting lost.

My new tires were super fast on the hard pack and climbing. They didn't quite grip the same on banked corners as my old tires did and took some adjustment. Of course, as always, I learned the hard way.

My bike and I went down a ravine, head first!

We eventually reached the top end of the trail in 2.5 hours turned around and headed home. It took 4, yes 4, hours to ride just over 20 miles. (of course the guidebook also said it was a four hour ride, but I must have thought that meant if you were fat and slow). I did some math and I am going to have to pick it up if I want to ride 100 miles (104, actually) in under 12 hours. Just more proof that I am in over my head. I did fall in love with this new trail. You could even say, I fell head over wheels!!