Vail Exploratory and Conditioning Ride

How does a dose of 1,000’ elevation gain in approx. 1 ½ mile sound? A couple of us headed out to do a different ride today by exploring the Vail area - - in the sun no less!. Did you know you can ride from Vail (near the town of Rainier) all the way to Alder Lake (Elbe area) on dual track – logging roads? (That’s not what we were after today.) Today was about exploring a new area for single-track. No such luck. Everything we saw was old overgrown logging roads-- very steep climbing, and great conditioning.

At one point, John swore he saw single-track (he was friggen’ delirious from sucking wind going up hill), and took off riding after it and immediately (yet ever so slowly), plunged over his handle bars. (Hit a hidden rock in the grass he did!) Well, he got up laughing (way to cope with stress and relief he wasn’t injured), and upon getting up, saw a scale for weighing big meat. We didn’t have any big meat. So, Jeff thought it’d be a good idea to see how the bikes weighed in on the matter.

We took a couple of improper turns today. One went downward for about 2 miles appearing very hopeful. Nope, it dead-ended. Up once more. Pound-for-pound a great conditioning ride!

Foghat would be proud: It was a "slow ride" in the snow ride, we had to "take it easy." The Great Northwest Snow Storm of 2008 led to two Kennedy Creek rides of note: The first was a journey of discovery as we left the normal route and found ourselves in a mystical place where distant banjo strums from the Deer Hunter (squeal, HEEEEE, squeal) melded into the background around a half-built log cabin in the middle of nowhere. Just a bit freaky, but an interesting discovery all the same. The second ride was simply a brutal push of time against a short distance in deep snow - see John ride: Ride, John, Ride.