Cruising the Kokopelli
Thursday - Loma to BitterCreek Campground
Hit Fruita on Wednesday night to ride the 1st leg of the Kokopelli Trip with my buddy, Ted and 2 of his co-workers on Thursday.
The first part of the day would take us through Mary's, Loins, Troy Built, the "hike a bike" section and the road down to Rabbit Valley. The second part of the day consists of Rabbit Valley to Bitter Creek Campground via the Western Rim. I think it equaled out to ~38 miles (my gps died after 8 miles)
After all of us had a terrible night's sleep we finally got on the trail at 9:30.
Ted, Brandon and I are about the same speed and technical ability. Tom is a newish rider and would quickly fall behind on the technical sections.
The sky was full of dark clouds and the wind blustery and we were a bit worried about getting rained on. Finally while on Lions we decided not to wait for Tom any more - the weather was looking grim and we wanted to get past the "hike-a-bike" before the rain hit. Since there were several people behind Tom and he had a map we weren't too worried about him making it...but we all felt bad not waiting....but not bad enough to wait for him.
Sure enough as soon as we hit the "hike-a-bike" the sky opened up. Man - it was gnarly - the getting wet part was not gnarly but the clay like mud that the dirt turns into when wet was gnarly.
It must of taken us 1 hour to get through that section. We couldn't roll our bikes as they would get so clogged with clay/mud that the wheels wouldn't roll. We resorted to picking up our bikes (with an extra 10 lbs of mud) and carrying them. My bike shoes looked like(and felt like) they were encased in cement blocks. I was literally taking baby steps looking directly down and focusing on slowly moving forward.
ugh - totally grueling...but we finally made it to the road and it dried out enough for us to starting riding and we paced lined it to Rabbit Valley. Actually, the guys didn't like me up front because they didn't get any benefit drafting me. But I tried!
I took us a whopping 3.5(!) hours to get to Rabbit Valley. The rest of the day was uneventful and we wrapped up that last miles of the day in 2 hours.
I only took 2 pics the whole day. I wish I had thought to get some of my mud encased feet but I was too focused on just getting through the mud!
Hit Fruita on Wednesday night to ride the 1st leg of the Kokopelli Trip with my buddy, Ted and 2 of his co-workers on Thursday.
The first part of the day would take us through Mary's, Loins, Troy Built, the "hike a bike" section and the road down to Rabbit Valley. The second part of the day consists of Rabbit Valley to Bitter Creek Campground via the Western Rim. I think it equaled out to ~38 miles (my gps died after 8 miles)
After all of us had a terrible night's sleep we finally got on the trail at 9:30.
Ted, Brandon and I are about the same speed and technical ability. Tom is a newish rider and would quickly fall behind on the technical sections.
The sky was full of dark clouds and the wind blustery and we were a bit worried about getting rained on. Finally while on Lions we decided not to wait for Tom any more - the weather was looking grim and we wanted to get past the "hike-a-bike" before the rain hit. Since there were several people behind Tom and he had a map we weren't too worried about him making it...but we all felt bad not waiting....but not bad enough to wait for him.
Sure enough as soon as we hit the "hike-a-bike" the sky opened up. Man - it was gnarly - the getting wet part was not gnarly but the clay like mud that the dirt turns into when wet was gnarly.
It must of taken us 1 hour to get through that section. We couldn't roll our bikes as they would get so clogged with clay/mud that the wheels wouldn't roll. We resorted to picking up our bikes (with an extra 10 lbs of mud) and carrying them. My bike shoes looked like(and felt like) they were encased in cement blocks. I was literally taking baby steps looking directly down and focusing on slowly moving forward.
ugh - totally grueling...but we finally made it to the road and it dried out enough for us to starting riding and we paced lined it to Rabbit Valley. Actually, the guys didn't like me up front because they didn't get any benefit drafting me. But I tried!
I took us a whopping 3.5(!) hours to get to Rabbit Valley. The rest of the day was uneventful and we wrapped up that last miles of the day in 2 hours.
I only took 2 pics the whole day. I wish I had thought to get some of my mud encased feet but I was too focused on just getting through the mud!
Comments