18-Jan-14 Ride & Camp Report

[liv2day]

There's nothing like getting out in the middle of January when a temperature inversion is hanging around the area, especially if that inversion is accompanied by blue skies and sunshine. Actually, what tops that is getting the ok to join a few friends after the ride to hang out and enjoy outstanding camp food, a hot fire, and then a fair amount of good whisky!

The guys had been camping since the day before, so I loaded up and headed out first thing Saturday morning to meet them at camp. Convinced a couple of the usual suspects to head out for the day ride and we all arrived around 9:00. Unloaded, geared up, then waited for the temps to rise a little before we headed out.







The planned loop for the day is easily described with 3 words I hear regularly: You'll Be Fine :laughing8: The idea was to head west from DM and explore some of the trails I have yet to experience. We started the ride with a great warm up on Mike's and then bombed up Jones Creek...those woops are fun. From there, we hit a trail I hadn't been on and had no idea where it went...didnt' matter as it was fun single track. We finished that and hit another trail I have no clue about, but we ended up at the top of another trail I don't know (lol) and that unknown trail was going to drop us down onto Deerfence. Talk about perplexed - so much for any internal GPS...thought we were heading toward the likes of Frankenstein and Outback...lol.





Unfortunately, on the no-name trail that led to the other no-name trail, Billy had an encounter with those nasty jumping trees or branches or stumps or something harder than his finger. One of those poorly timed situations in which is front wheel bounced up, taking the bars and his hands with it to where it was perfectly positioned to miss the bark buster, but snatch his left index finger in a way that it wasn't meant to go.



Hmmm, the rest of the gang had already descended to Deerfence, so we headed down to join 'em as we didn't have much in the way of first-aid on us. Not wanting to turn back too early, Bill threw a band-aid on as a first layer, then some duct tape to make sure things stayed put. He couldn't bend it anyway, so the duct tape helped keep it straight. He toughed it out another 20 miles...pretty damn good

We hit the logging road, then peeled off to where the special test section takes you over to Old Cedar Creek. What a fun section of trail, just don't blow the small creek crossing by burying your front wheel in the hole - and it is a hole. Fortunately, Randy was kind enough to tell me how it was supposed to be done upon passing me - the video is great...lol.

We bombed up Old Cedar Creek and then some other no-name trail that somehow put us at a point where I usually hit the first part of Frankenstein. We took a break at this point as the temps had climbed to somewhere near 55 - not bad for January 18 8)