|   a tale of two rides | little b
Aug 9, 2002 10:51 AM | | On Wednesday, i was ready to head out the door for a ride at nine when my landlord showed up with the locksmith. sigh. guess i'll go when they are done. i was hoping to go early, since it rains every afternoon and it's cooler in the morning. by 10:30 i was finally rolling out the driveway. my plan was to ride up pipeline and down guaje ridge, as recommended by lidarman. guess i should have read newmexjoe's post about the trail conditions up there.
the elevation killing me, i rode up and up and up pipeline road. about half way up, it started to rain on me. biiiig drops. i kept going, since it was warm and i didn't want to just turn around. soon the rain turned to hail. ouch. there were no trees to hide under, since the fire reduced them all to matchsticks. i pulled on my jacket and kept riding. within minutes, i was totally soaked through. but, at this point, why turn around?
I finally found the trail head, and headed down a sweeeeet piece of trail. it was swoopy and fun, with a few roots and rocks. it was great. until i came to the edge of the burn. suddenly, the trail was wrecked. hard to fine, overgrown with small aspens and some other very sharp bush. i lost the trail a few times, and ended up walked sections where the trail was completely eroded away. finally i came tothe junction with the mitchell trail. the trails were supposed to cross here, but i only saw three ways, instead of four. i guessed. oops, wrong guess. i realized pretty soon that i was on the mitchell trail as i hiked down a bunch of switchbacks too loose and tight to ride.
after hiking on the eroded trail for about 2 miles (ok, maybei should have turned back) i came to a dry riverbed. i'd seen a very similar one from pipeline road. i decided to ride down the river, rather than continue on the nasty eroded, overgrown trail. i figured it would take me towards town. at least the going was faster.
eventually, the river bed wasn't so dry, and the clouds were getting dark again (oh yeah, it stopped raining near the top of the climb). i thought it might not be a good idea to stay in the riverbed if it started raining up the mountain, so i hiked up a ridge to see where i was. and i found a trail! ok, a road. but i rode it and it turned into sweet trail. the rain started again, very hard, and i made my way home, arriving totally dripping with rain. four hours after i left for a 'short' ride.
today was totally different. after discovering my hard drive has given up the ghost, i decide to go riding. i head for the trail that leaves from behind the materials science lab. ahhh, a good one. after some double track, sweet single track. a few turns to explore, and i make a good loop. a fun, fast paced ride and i was home in 1.5 hours. a perfect friday morning. |
| Rides gone bust . . . | pedalAZ
Aug 9, 2002 10:57 AM | | make the perfect ones that much more enjoyable. |
| Excellent! Unknown trails are like a box of chocolate, blah blah blah(nm) | Biking Viking
Aug 9, 2002 11:02 AM | | |
| Ah, the Mitchell trail ... | NewMex
Aug 9, 2002 12:41 PM | | That one is a bit dauting. I fell three or four times hiking down it. At the bottom is a resevoir, or used to be 3 years ago, and the Guaje canyon trail. It goes down for a few miles with several creek crossing. You actually get in tehe creek bed for awhile with big baby heads. You end up at a junction with a dirt road going up the right that takes you by the Sportman's club and out to the round-about that is at the East end of the golf course. If you don't take the right on the dirt road you end up heading onto the Indian reservation.
Sounds like you're having fun. Come November you might have to move down a bit in elevation to get to ride. Las Alamos very likely will get some pretty good snows with the predicted weather patterns, wetter than normal winter. |
| you probably already know this..... | krank
Aug 10, 2002 7:09 AM | | But if you don't, our flash floods here have made discovery channel documentaries (sp). Be careful in those river beds when it starts to rain. Down here in ABQ it doesn't even have to be raining in the city and the arroyos will flood. Drop me an e-mail, my wife works at the lab, too. mnichols54@nospam.comcast.net you know what to do with spam, get rid of it |
| Don't blame me. :-) | lidarman
Aug 10, 2002 4:54 PM | | I haven't ridden LA since the fire. Sounds like fun though. |
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