The religious comments put forth herein do not represent the opinions of anyone in particular – other than the author – and are not intended to offend the reader in any way. Lighten up – it’s a bike ride for chrisssakes.

We knew God was on our side when we finally descended the “Pie Plate Trail’ and saw the two coolers of ice water sitting out on the picnic table. We had heard tales of Pete’s picnic raid on a prior ride in the same locale. After six hours in the heat we were all out of water – but God saved us. Or better yet, the two cute girls in the office saved us. They say God is in the details, here are some of the details.

I think I have heard it called ‘The Ulysses Factor’, a character trait that demands exploration. If you can see over one ridge, you want to know what’s over the next three. As folks in our rather tight knit cycling community share this trait, we have been stringing together some epics. It’s like the day you finally clean out all your water bottles, or vacate the dust bunnies and used condoms (the ones the dog didn’t eat) from under your bed. Week after week, year after year, we pass by some of these great blank spaces on the maps en route to our ‘routine’ rides. Don’t get me wrong – the routine rides are awesome, inspiring mountain one track – but it is always more gratifying to go with the unknown.

Part of this ride was known – about a third. We had spent some serious research time playing connect the dots on the topo. The goal was a glorious, remote descent – from 10,600 all the way down to 8,000 feet that some of the fellows had ridden up the year before (see picnic reference). The access was fairly remote with some questionable treading, but we were armed with a GPS, and enough water (so we thought) for a good 6 – 8 hours.

After some initial logistical nightmares of getting 6 riders together in one place, at one time on a Sunday morning at 7am – we hit the trail. A few climbs and carries later we passed our first church – a harbinger of things to come. We knew the first part of the ride, or the first loop. It winds through a new area – and we saw noone. The trails are clean – almost Crested Butte like in their rolling baby butt speed. I have found few trails up here that really allow that ‘go as fast as you can and stay on the ground’ feeling. The meadows are followed by a reasonable climb. The singlespeeders were grunting – but cleaning ridiculous things. I hung back and enjoyed the spin on gears with my beautiful wife. Playing through the backside of the first loop we caught glimpses of the elusive Peak – 10,600 feet, and about three miles away – cool to see it on the way – and wonder how exactly we would reach it.

First loop down – about 3.5 hours into the ride, we hit the road and start looking for the climb up the back of the peak. Now, we had two things going for us – some fairly knowledgeable riders – steeped in long days in these hills, and then we had twisted timmy – or “data” as we now call him. Timmy sits, hour after hour, hunched in his attic, crunching data, plotting topos, creating new routes in his mind that inevitably turn into epics – “Well, it didn’t look that steep on the map”. Timmy plotted our entry points into our new GPS for the backside of the mountain. We began climbing – we climbed some more – infiltrating numerous NO TRESPASSING and NO ACCESS TO PUBLIC LANDS signs. We finally played into the end of a few dirt roads and were stuck with the choice of north or south. The wrong choice would mean hours of bushwacking. The right choice could mean hours of bushwacking. We began wacking. PW in the lead – traversing areas where large mouse farts had left obvious, large swaths of open spaces yearning for the passages of bikes. We popped out on an old road grade – turned left – and headed up. Our altimeters and fields of vision told us that we had a hell of a long way to go. According to Data we had almost 2,000 feet of climbing left – in two miles. I started sweating, really trying to focus on the climbs and cleaning as many of them as I could. It was no use – the mountain was greater than our best riders. We walked, we puffed, we did not blow the house down, but rather were blown down, beaten down by a seriously relentless climb. RV had the comment of the climb, boldly stating that Jesus hadn’t suffered this bad – that he was certain there were references to switchbacks on the way up to the crucifixion in the bible. We had no switchbacks and bore crosses of iron, aluminum and CAAD4. O.K., end of religious banter.

About 71 switchbacks later we came around a last corner and saw the radio tower that signaled the end of the climb. The view was amazing, and as Timmy dragged his one speed up, we relished the view, some small patches of shade, and realized why there were not mountain bikers frequenting this particular locale. This would be a ride you could show anyone – one of those once a year things – where after a year the beating you took subsides into the ether – and you remember the good things. We began the descent. The desent is designated on the map as a pack trail. They should switch that out with grinning, drooling, riders laughing all the way to the bottom. According to Data – we had something like 3,000 feet of descending to get back to our origins at the base of the hill. This was one of those descents where you stop every five or six minutes to just giggle, or stare dumbly around and wonder what the hell you did (climbing 4,000 feet aside) to deserve this kind of experience. We ripped the descent and ended up at yet another junction – stoked on the speed and terrain.
Data told us at this point that we should go west, so, of course we started poking around in the woods looking for previously squirrel farted upon terrain. Of course, it was there. Not east or west, but north – there was – The Pie Plate Trail. When you see a trail that is clearly marked, single track appearing and clearly fun – you don’t hesitate about the thousands of feet you may need to climb back up, or the people with guns that may be waiting by their stills for you. We forged ahead on the unknown trail – beyond a gorgeous overlook – and down into the steeps – where we quickly lost the trail. After a few hundred yards of discouraging bushwhacking we came back out on it – clean – downhill specific for sure – who the hell would be building way out here? The trail egressed into a parking lot – and looking across the dirt lot we found our salvation – two large ice filled coolers of water – noone in sight. What was this place? The secret downhilling camp of the rockies that we had all heard about over at Full Cycle? Lo and behold – the Lord was still with us – and it was Christian Camp, full of Christians.

After pounding about a million bottles of ice cold water and getting directions from a nice guy who told us that the dents in his door were from some mountain bikers he saw that morning. Here we were on his private property, uninvited, lost, drinking his ice water – and the guy was giving us directions. Go figure.

The climb out of Camp icewater was hot, but slow. We passed some old double jumps that may have been closed due to deaths – the gaps were huge! We rode the road for 8 or 10 miles, and ended up pretty close to where we started from, whooped. As we made the last climb we could look back over our shoulders at the peaks we just climbed – cool to finally be in and amongst them after looking at them for almost ten years. We perused maps over beers, and started planning…how about that off-road century idea – on all homegrown?!