So after the iPhone Search and Rescue extended my Tuesdays ride, I was more tired than I planned to be for this ride. But there were some trails that I wanted to try again and they looped nicely with a couple I hadn't. It'll probably be next summer before I get another ride in this neck of the woods.
The first time I did Rocky Ridge was in 2016, when we stayed in my cousin Rick's driveway in our motorhome, while we were full timing it. I revisited RR four weeks ago, twenty miles into a 27 mile ride.
I was hoping that by doing it early in the ride, this time, that I would have more energy for all that tech that RR delivers. And while the numbers show me getting within a few seconds of my 2016 total time (my moving time was a few minutes slower, per Strava), I was not fully recovered from Tuesdays extracurricular shenanigans and while I normally don't feel like I need much of a warm up, I think there is something about being at elevation that I have to figure out, maybe a couple short anaerobic intervals to get that system primed. Because with less oxygen in the air, the body goes anaerobic at a lower intensity. But that tank is limited. Prescription, more LSD rides to increase the output with less oxygen, me thinks, although boring. Railbeds and canal paths, here I come!
Regardless, RR is a fun challenging trail, better than any game you see advertised for your phone on TV, and gets you to the good part of Oldham. Other than Elden Lookout road, this is the most direct route to heights of Sunset trail, by bike. I cleaned more than I did a month ago and was a few minutes faster. But I am running 3.0 tires now and boy do they make a difference from the 2.6" tires I was running, before. There was a huge crew doing trail maintenance. I told them all thanks, one by one as I passed them!
While I did not enjoy any of lower Oldham, four weeks ago, I did like Middle and Upper. But it is up, up, up. Not a lot of obstacles to overcome except for the incline and lack of oxygen. Starts out with little tree cover, but switchbacks it's way upward until you are in the tall pines for some shade from the sun's radiation. It's a fine line, an edge let's say, staying near the top of your VO2 max, while negotiating the many switchbacks and intermittent obstacles, obstacles that might not be obstacles at lower elevations or on flatter terrain, two different things I assure you! I passed four riders that stopped to take care of some sort of business. Looked like they where coming off of Down Under. A few switchbacks later one of them caught up to me and I let him pass on a hairpin (I should have moved to the inside). I saw another one later on switchback below, but lost site of both of them.
Eventually, you cross Elden Lookout road and hop on to Sunset for some more exposure. The billy goat that passed me earlier, was waiting for his posse on Sunset. I had it in my head that, if I had energy, I would turn right on Sunset to see how that was and get over 9000'. It was pretty tough coming down four weeks ago. Moot point, cause I hadn't any energy to spare. So down I went, plenty of tech go go along with that side of exposure and I got to with in ten feet of 9K according to my Garmin, before a bit a a knarly descent to Heart.
Going down Heart you get fun speed. That’s why I prefer it over Little Bear.
Heart starts out fairly old school for a more modern trail. It is commingled with the El Viejo hiking trail. So use your GPS. The middle is obviously bench cut, through the red dirt, but that doesn’t take away from the flow of the trail. Not to be confused with a FLOW trail. Red dirt turns to red rocks and you might think you’re in Sedona for a second, the you realize your not and thank the mountain bike gods!
Connect up to Little Elden at the bottom for a mix of terrain, on your way to the fire roady Christmas Tree trail, to a nasty short Hike-A-Bike on Fat mans trail up to Forces of Nature. Jeff Lenosky could probably have made it, but not this Jeff. I have hiked all of Fatman's. Maybe it would be better, albeit longer and still quite tecnical, to get on Fat man's earlier and come down to this section and miss most of it altogether. Another time maybe.
Force of nature is always tough and I was tired. Even so, I made more stuff and hit my pedals less. Both probably due to the 29plus tires. The bigger tires raise the bottom bracket to reduce pedal strikes and the larger diameter tires have a better breakover angle. The larger tires also have more conformity, due to the combination of more volume and lower air pressure.
I finally managed to get in the tail end of FON that, previously I somehow either mapped incorrectly or took a wrong turn and was back on my course before I knew it. The part of FON that parallels Middle Tier is not ridden much, judging from the condition of the trail and it is tough going at least from East to West. It is also hard to follow even with a GPS course loaded into a Garmin, as it so splintered that it resembles a spiders web. I am sure that I did not exactly follow Trailforks GPS of FON, but I could at least see where I was off by yards at the next intersection after it had splintered off. I rode a lot of it but but I was tired and there was a fair amount of Hike-A-Bike at least in this direction.
I'll try West to East someday.
I routed Night Ranger instead of Lower Oldham (did I mention that it's not my favorite trail?). NR is fairly tame and leads to a series of "Connector" trails, to get you to Elden Lookout road, which I thought would be dirt. Trailforks, on my Garmin, got confused after the last connector and kept saying left turn in Zero feet. It would be hard to get lost from here lol. I saw Quintana trail flash in and out as well. I couldn't find it later on Trailforks, but it did show on the Trailforks map on my Garmin. Anywho, I was fine rolling down the pavement, then I noticed a single track on the side of the road and hopped on forthwith. I wonder if I could have got on it sooner. Nothing special, but my mental space changed immediately. The map confuse Social with this Quintana, but like I said very hard to get lost at this point.
The End
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