I must just have some kind of subconscious sense for finding the trails you could die walking down, let alone try riding down on a bicycle.
The other day I spent a brutal day at altitude. I started from my house with map and gps in hand. A backpack packed with all the essentials: water for 3hours, PB&J, water purifier, headlamp, rain jacket, warm gloves, arm and knee warmers, tube, pump, and multi tool. You might ask yourself, "what? Is he going on a weekend trip into the mountains?" Well, I suppose it wouldn't be the first time.
Anyway, I started from my house and rode about 5min to the Falcon Trail inside the Airforce Academy. I have never ridden the Falcon Trail and I think, now having ridden it, it will be one of my bread and butter rides for the future. It was so fun!! Just pure and simple classic buff single track with lots of "Hero man rollers". I rode the first half of it to the opposite side of the base where it connects with some trails leading up into the mountains. All the maps I had were not actually all that accurate and I was lucky to find my way out of the AFA with the help of tons of signs pointing me in the right direction. The trail out of the AFA started pretty sweet...a little steep, but whatever, I like it steep. It climbed out west around their water purification plant and up a canyon which I thought was called Stanley Canyon (actually it was West Monument Creek Canyon...oops). I proceeded to climb up and up and up, quickly reaching 2000vertical feet from my starting point. The trail turned into a service road which was surprising because the map made it look like it was a trail...eha. There were some little sweet single track offshoots and some loose hike-a-bike sections leading up a "Y". There was a little sign signaling "Trail 713". I was like "SWEET!!! More new trails". I had to walk across some sketchy little rotted out bridge to instantly find a super technical, pretty much unrideable trail (at least at this point because there was still some snow and ice on it). I decided to ditch the bike for a minute and walk up a ways to see where the trail went and if it was even worth taking my bike up it...maybe I am learning a little bit. I made the call to go back to the road and keep going up. Before long I ran into all sorts of stupid water district signs saying "DO NOT ENTER or be PROSECUTED" LAME!!! I popped out my map and kept following the road up to Rampart Reservoir. Kind of dissapointed in the lack of trail I road around threshold to get to the next bit of single track as fast as I could...haha threshold at 9,000+feet for me right now is about 300watts...Oh the burn. I kept going and rode down to the Lake and discovered its pretty nice up there and there are some serious fish in that lake and a sweet little trail all the way around it, 'er it will be sweet when there is less snow on it. I made it to the north east side of the lake after going all the way around it and found a little trail heading to the trail I originally thought I was on to go to the Stanley Cayon Reservoir. By now its been about 3.5hours of lung busting altitude and some really really cold snow/slush/ice water riding and I was nearing total bonk, dizzy, headache, hungry, heart rate through the roof, so I decided to pull over and have a little anti bonk medicine: PB&J and a coke. It was a great opportunity to check out the view. Pikes Peak looks pretty awesome from this aspect behind the lake.
I looked at the clock and it was getting a bit late and the thunder heads were approaching in the distance so I decided to get rolling as fast as I could and go down the trail I originally thought I went up in the first place.
The trail from Stanley Reservoir started out really sweet, but gradually got really technical. In fact, so technical there was no way to ride it. I eventually pretty much got cliffed out on my bike. I ditched the bike again to try to find the trail, which looked more like a boulder field crushed it on the way down the mountain. Lucky me there were some little pink trail marker ribbons to get around this section of trail that looks like it was taken out by a big land slide. I got my bike and scrambled down into Stanley Canyon. As I got further down, there was a lot more water which made some of the granite rather slippery with cycling shoes. After a couple of really close calls, I finally made it to something that looked more like a trail than a pile of rocks. I was very happy to mount back on the bike. I think being a cyclist for so long, I might actually be more comfortable and less clumsy on two wheels, than actually walking around. I took it mellow, since the trail was still really loose and rocky and came up to a sign that said "IT IS UNLAWFUL FOR ANYONE TO ENTER THIS MILITARY INSTALLATION WITHOUT THE EXPRESS PERMISSION OF THE COMMANDING OFFICER" Haha, well, I wasn't going to hike back up what I just got down...and they let me in earlier in the day, hopefully that will suffice. Just in case, I bolted as fast as I could to get down and out of there to avoid tangling with any Air Force personnel who might not appreciate my sense of adventure. I got really lucky and the trail spit me out right back on the Falcon Trail...WOOHOO!! From there it was a pretty sweet fun ride with more "Hero Jumps" all the way back to North Gate. Until next time....BAM!BAM!
