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RR: Sweet Sweet Connie's East Side..
This is best printed off and read before bed..
I'm heading to the Sawtooth mtns of Idaho next week for the annual AMB- ID get together, that due to my negligence, will only have probably between 4 to 6 participants this year. We're camping at Stanley Lake, a truly awesome spot, situated at 6,000 feet and we plan to ride Friday, Saturday and Sunday. http://www.steveshamesphotos.com/idaho21.htm http://www.ruralnetwork.net/~dpinney...tanleyLake.jpg http://www.aslo.org/photopost/data/5...L_vertical.jpg http://www.biology.usu.edu/labsites/...anleyout_2.jpg Well, you get the idea. Soo, to make a long story even longer, I wanted some butt-kicking at elevation to help get ready for the weekend, called my homey Parker, who knows the higher trails around here, and in the time it takes to say Stay on the trail, doofus! and yield to uphill riders, idiot! he put a group of 9 together yesterday. I'm up early, bopping around the kitchen. Why is this boy happy? Camera, check. Coffee, check. Pack, helmet, gloves, bike, check. Lay everything out in the front yard, scarf down some breakfast in time for Parker to screech to a halt at the happy hacienda. Quickly load the Right Reverend Father Titus, jump in the back, meet the new guy, and away we go. Meet the other 6 jackals at the grocery store at the base of the ski hill road. Parker and the other engineer types try to figure out the vehicular challenges, the shuttle involved and so on. Veterans of pas AMB-ID rides will understand why I stay out of it. Our ride starts about 7 miles up, where we park and roadie it up to the start of Eastside, one of the funnest trails I've ever ridden, given the 5 or 6 states and 2 countries I've ridden in. It has it all. Woodsy, fast singletrack, sidehill exposure, variety, natural stunt features made of logs and rocks, gnarly sphincter- testing creek crossings, it reminds of me of marital advice I gave a young doctor once: to succeed in marriage you must conduct yourself toward your wife with honor: you get honor and stay honor. Well, we got on her, and stayed on her. I walked maybe 2 of the 20 or more tricky spots. Tripodded one or two, also. At the base of the big climb out of Eastside to Stack Rock, our group split into 2 cadres, the a-team climbers, made up of a pro and 2 or 3 other young racers, and the b-team, that I somehow wound up leading out of the deep canyon we were in. Thanks to my new buddies at rosstraining.com, I found the climb out fairly easy, especially since I hadn't done any long rides like this all summer. But I was to pay the piper soon enough. We rode a brand new section of trail our group had built (great work, Al), and hooked and carried the gaggle all the way to the Stack Rock trail, where we stopped to eat, fiddle with bikes, you know the drill. From there it was a fast, rolling hoot to the start of... Sweet Connie. A 10 mile downhill that takes us from halfway up the ski hill, all the way down into town. I'd never ridden anything so long, interesting and consistently tough. Steep, loose, rocky, and off- camber the whole way. Occasionally fast, but our fearless Air Force guy learned that it's nothing to take for granted. I came around a corner and found him stacked up, in a daze, covered in dirt and blood. We washed him up, he's good to go. Re-saddle and keep rocking. Some parts look barren as the moon, others rocky as South Mountain. I've never worked so hard on so long a "downhill" either. Seems we were climbing more than we were descending, but who knows? At one point, as we'd lost a lot of elevation, and it was about 100 degf, still as death, and baking our brains, Alex yells out, "this is like riding in Hell!" As if he'd know. Or did I imagine it? At one point, a couple of our members are hurting, falling over a lot in this endless rock garden toward the end of the line. Thank God for my double-squish and being angry enough to just keep pedalling. The last half mile, though is a slap-ya-silly climb out, reminiscent of the climb out of Amasaback. About 6 of the 9 make it, but I hit some sand near the top, can't recover and have to walk my faithful steed out to the cheers and jeers of the fans. There are a handful of repetitive shots here for those with an mtbr account. Why we ganged up our cameras on this one log crossing, I'm not sure. There was a ton of stuff to photograph.... http://forums.mtbr.com/showthread.php?t=321120 We laugh, we cry, we fall down and wait for the shuttle rigs to arrive and pick us up. Well, to tell the truth, at this point I didn't really care if they picked us up or not.. all I wanted was my cooler full of pop, beer, water and ice... 2 Deschutes Twilights later, I was starting to revive. What a day. CDB May your trails be narrow, crooked, lonesome and dangerous, leading to the most outrageous adventures. Paladin |
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Sweet Sweet Connie's East Side..
Paladin wrote:
Thanks to my new buddies at rosstraining.com Discount shoppers?!? Bill "rest was...NICE!" S. |
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