The Milcreek Endurance 12

I completed my first endurance event of the year on Saturday. It began with a high quality, cook it yourself, event sponsored pancake, coffee and bacon breakfast at 8AM. The event began at 9AM sharp when I opened the garage door and pulled out the ladder to climb on my roof and get the swamp cooler rolling. Next was the all important snow tire removal. If you mess up this stage of the event your whole day can crash and burn (literally). After that was the tag team section where Rhonda and I washed every window and screen on our house. My favorite part of the event was next where I fired up the sprinklers and tracked down all the leaks. After a succesful sprinkler stage and a short stop at the kitchen table feed zone I moved on to the spectator friendly pool opening stage. The fans love placing bets on whether I'll fall in or not while removing the outlet plugs. The last lap was the digging and planting stage. This years event had the always popular one tree, four bushes and a flat of annuals all ready for me. I finished planting the last bush right at the end of the bell lap for a successful finish to the 12 hour event shortly after 9PM. I celebrated my successful finish with a large glass of 7 and 7, chips and salsa and disc 6 of Battlestar Galactica season 3.

Hit the Home Depot last night.

To the tune of $250. Looks like this will end all hope of racing this weekend. I'll get over it. I've already registered for three out of the next four Icups so I'll have plenty of beatdowns coming my way soon.

I'm 29 again and lovin' it!

I was back on my Salsa 29'er for the first time in a week last night and it was most excellent. I took my Blur to Fruita and yearned for the Salsa all weekend. I love my Blur and all and we have many fond memories together but the Salsa feels like it was made for me and all the stars align when I'm riding it. I got off of work too late to make it up to the Soldier Hollow race last night (I'm sure that will be the theme on Wednesday nights all summer) so I rode Pipeline from my house. Pipeline is open all the way up but if you are one of those unfortunate souls who need to ride pavement to the top forget it. The road is still buried in snow and will be for at least a couple more weeks. The good news is without the Shuttle Monkeys riding the trail the switchbacks just past elbow fork are still going to be buff for awhile. It feels like my climbing legs are starting to come around and I'm dying for some high alpine riding but I'm afraid that isn't going to be happening until at least late June.

Fruita Day 3

No trip is ever perfect no matter how much you want it to be and this trip to Fruita was no exception. After ending "the day that kicked ass" at the Iron Man movie we drove back to our campsite needing a good nights sleep. As we were driving back a wind storm kicked up which pretty much ruined any possibility of a getting much sleep in the tent. We crawled out of the tent at dawn not the least bit rested and packed everything up for our final ride and drive home. We ate breakfast and headed to the Tabeguache or "lunch loops" area. I have always wanted to ride this area which is Grand Junction's version of the BST, but it never seemed to work out. One time I got the flu midway through a Fruita trip and couldn't ride and two other times I got rained out. Since this trip was kinda last minute I didn't have much of an opportunity to plan our ride for the day so I figured I would just look at the map when we got to the trailhead and make a plan from there. Bad idea. I saw a couple of trails that sparked my interest. One was the Ribbon which my friend Ian had ridden before and said was fun and the other was Andy's trail which had a cool name;-) We started off climbing Eagle's trail which was do-able but pretty difficult on tired legs. I later found out this was mostly used as a downhill trail. From Eagles's we cut off on Andy's. After a couple miles on Andy's it became too steep to ride. We seemed close to the top so we chose to walk the last little bit. It ended up being a 3/4 mile hike. At the top I saw the trail turned into a hike a bike portage down to the ravine below. I should have turned back here but I saw the junction to the Ribbon trail far below so we continued hiking. I later learned that we rode this trail backwards as well. We carried our bikes down to the trail junction and headed up the Ribbon. From my crappy map it looked like we were at the high point of the Ribbon trail and it would be a downhill romp to a paved road. We could then take pavement back to the car since it was getting late and threatening rain. Wrong! We were at the bottom of yet another trail that is generally ridden downhill only. By the time I realized this we were halfway up the trail and we decided just to ride it out and use this as a learning experience. From where we started the Ribbon it gained 1500 ft of net elevation in three miles of technical slickrock with more like 2000 ft of total climbing. This was not fun on tired legs from three days of big miles on rough trails. We finished the trail way later than we wanted and were forced to blow the elevation we gained riding pavement with a 30 mph cross wind. Lovely! The good news was the scenery was amazing. It was some of the prettiest riding I have ever done. I also think the trails have a lot of potential to be fun if ridden the proper way (although I don't think Andy's trail would be worth it any way you ride it, too much hike a bike). As always click the pics for the blowup.

View from Andy's Trail

More Andy's Trail
Wide open slickrock field on The Ribbon with Rhonda in the distance.

Fruita day 2

AKA: The Day That Kicked Ass

Woke up Sunday AM, loaded up our stuff and headed to Aspen Street Coffee shop in Fruita where the coffee kicks ass. We sat at an outside table sipped our coffee and ate Natures Path Organic Cherry Pomegran toaster pastries because the weather kicked ass and those pop tarts kick serious ass. After breakfast we headed north on 18 road to the bookcliffs area. We started our day with the classic, Prime Cut to Joes Ridge. Prime Cut is a kick ass middle ring climb rolling in and out of a wash through the juniper trees. Joe's Ridge is a buff, fast and yes, kick ass downhill with some nice steep pitches. Next we climbed Western Zippity with a descent down Zippity Doo Da. Western Zip is another really fun fast climb with great scenery and Zippity Do Da is like Bearclaw Poppy in St George on steroids, oh and of course all narrow singletrack. We finished the day climbing back up Prime Cut to Chutes and Ladders finally screaming back to the parking lot on Vegetarian. Cleaned up a bit and headed to Grand Junction to catch happy hour at the Rockslide Brewery where the food and the beer both kick ass. Finished our day at the Megaplex where we caught Iron Man. I think you know where this is heading. That movie kicks ass and was the perfect ending to the day that "kicked ass"

Click the pics for the blow-up view to get a real feel for the quality singltrack rolling away as far as the eye can see.

Looking Down Joes Ridge

Joes Ridge

Western Zip Climb
Zippity Doo Da
Zippity Descent

(kind of a crappy picture, it's much steeper than this makes it look)
Vegetarian

Fruita Day 1

Fruita is a very interesting place for riding. While you're there you can't believe how much much fun it is and once you've left your mind can no longer comprehend it. Within a week of getting back I subconsciously begin to dumb the trails down because I think to myself that no place can possibly be that much fun. Once your back in Fruita and rolling on the BEST singletrack on the planet you realize not only is it as fun as you remember, it's funner!

We left Salt Lake a little later than I wanted to on Saturday but we still got to Fruita around 1:30 pm. We drove up to the Colorado National Monument, set up camp, suited up and headed to the Kokopelli loops trailhead by the Colorado river. We were in the saddle by 3 pm with the goal of hitting most of the loops before dark. We rode Rustlers, Mary's, Steve's, Lions, Troybuilt and Mack Ridge and were back to the car a little after 8pm. 30+ miles total, 90% singletrack. These trails have a mix of pretty much everything. Slickrock, broken slickrock, ledges, switchbacks, steep climbs and descents, big ring swoopy hardpack, exposed sideslopes, tricky rock moves with a few crazy hairball technical sections. Basically MTB nirvana. We burned thousands of calories, ate thousands of calories and left it all on the trail. Drove back to a rowdy Mexican cantina in Fruita for some crazy good burritos, got back to camp around ten and crashed hard. Most of the pictures you'll need to click on to blow up so you can get the full effect of the singletrack.

Fruita Bound

We're leaving bright and early tomorrow AM for three days in Fruita. We'll be riding some of

this

and this

and this

drinking some recovery drink

We'll also be doing this

So I wont be able to blog about it til we get back Monday night. I cant wait for tomorrow!