2008 Tuesday Night Ride - July 8, 2008 -- Colorado Creek
By Tom Clark
Ordinarily, when there is a really low turnout for a ride, I'm kinda bummed out about it. This time, it worked out really well. Four riders showed up at the start for this ride -- Dave James, Todd Redinius, Jose Rueter and myself. As it turned out, we stayed together very well, with no "regroup stops" necessary.
The ride starts at about 35 mile CHSR and follows the ridge to the east of Colorado Creek, encompassing Fourmile Creek. View a ride description here.
The first half mile or so of the trail is a mess, as usual. It is too soft of a terrain for heavy four-wheeler use, yet it is a popular four-wheeler trail. So, the trail degrades to the impassable point, and a new route is carved out. It degrades, and the process continues. It makes for entertaining riding, requiring a good deal of skill, but it is pretty eco-unfriendly. After a while, we got out of the boggy stuff, and started up the hills for real.
Someone (Jon Underwood, it turns out) has been working on the trail, putting in grade reversals, complete with drainage runouts. As a result, even though it rained hard for hours on end the previous night, there were almost no puddles. No gullying either. There's some flagging in the trees and some high-cut trees. We learned that Jon will be rerouting the lower portion of the trail, in hopes of going from the usual mess to something that is lasting. Pretty excellent. When we topped out on the hill and began the rolling terrain (down a ways, up a ways, etc), the grade reversals were a lot of fun. They were very easy to catch a lot of air off of, with good landings on the other side -- woooweeee!
At last we came to our first descent, just before the Stiles Creek cabin. It was root, wet, and treacherous, and nobody crashed. Last year, I crashed on top of Ben Barton, breaking my saddle and losing the truck key in the process. It was good to get through it this year without incident. We stopped near the cabin, which looked occupied. There was smoke coming from the firepit, and the window was ajar. More about that later.
More up and down. We stopped at a couple of high lookouts along the way, taking in the dramatic views. The low ceiling was reminiscent of south-east Alaska. Very cool. Dave kept a running tally for Jose -- "we've done a quarter of the distance, and about 5 percent of the work", and later, "we've done a third the distance, and 2 percent of the work." Nothing like some morale boosting statistics underway. Eventually, we did come to the top of the last climb. We heard a little more about how Jose's ass was killing him (he hadn't been on a bike since before he went up Denali), and we were off.
Jon Underwood hadn't yet worked on this portion of the trail. Actually, about three-quarters of it appeared untouched. Anyway, going down this hill contrasted sharply with the one we'd come up. Ye gods, there's some deep trenching. It made for a hugely entertaining descent, but it looks like hell. Todd and I were quite a ways out in front, going as fast as we felt was safe, given the wetish conditions. There were lots of dropoffs and narrow, raised ridges down the center of the trail. I was directly behind Todd when he suddenly went over his handlebars, schlumping to a skidding halt. He got up, shook himself off, limped once on his left side, and was off, grinning the whole time. Can't stop to inspect for injuries when there's fun to be had!
Very near the bottom we stopped to wait for the others to complete the downhill. OK, so we did regroup once. Nobody had any serious injuries to report, so we rode out through the bog, again marvelling at the deep trenches left by four-wheelers, yet grateful for the trail at the same time. It made for a very interesting ride out. Technical. At long last, we arrived at the gravel pit / pond thing. Todd and I were the first to arrive, and we got busy cleaning the bikes and ourselves. Todd put his bike through the power wash, riding into the pond to the point of submerging both tires. He came out pretty clean, so it had the desired effect.
Meanwhile Dave James and Jose had wheeled up, and were cleaning their bikes when Dave said "And here comes Geoff Orth." Sure enough, there he was riding down the embankment to the pond, grinning ear to ear. He'd finally caught us. He said that he'd heard us a few times, but never yelled out, thinking that he'd catch us, but since we didn't ever stop for a regroup (okay, one), there was little opportunity. Then he asked if we'd stopped at the cabin.
Out on the road (CHSR), we formed a paceline, and for once, it worked very well. Normally when we form such a line, somebody goes out too fast, and somebody is way too tired, and it breaks up into three or more groups. We held together nicely and clipped along, trading leads, probably going about 20 mph. About a quarter mile from the cars I did my usual sprint, breaking up the paceline and causing a commotion. Good fun.
We loaded bikes and got some snacks. As we were preparing to go, Geoff said, "I can still see her bopping away," and shook his head, grinning. Memorable ride. I think we climbed about 2100 feet or so, and rode over 20 miles. The really great thing about this ride is that except for the bit at the end, it is all trail. There's no subdivision roads or other breaking of the continuity. Great ride.