Homestake Continental Divide Trail

Back on the trails!  Summer was in the air and the trails were calling all fat tires out to play.  I picked up my wheel earlier in the day from the Outdoorsman who replaced a broken nipple on the the wheel and trued everything up.  As work wrapped up, I quickly re-mounted the wheel, mixed some calories in the water bottle, and loaded up the truck to hit the trails.

The air was starting to cool off so riding conditions were almost perfect.  As I hopped on the CDT the trails were nice and tacky.  I was curious to see how the legs were going to feel after the struggle on Sunday.  Curiously they felt pretty good - they did not have a lot of snap in them but they felt surprisingly good considering what they felt like on Sunday. 

The plan was to do a quick out and back from Homestake over to Hwy 2 / Toll Canyon and back.  As I rode I started to notice moto tracks (which are not allowed on this segment of the CDT).  It is a pet peeve to see tracks on non-motorized trails.  The sad part is there are hundreds of miles of trails that moto's have access to and just a couple of runs on a super fast rolling trail made up of decomposed granite will really tear up the trail (the horses don't help much either).  I found myself getting frustrated that moto's had been on the trail and then started to realize that I was letting that impact my experience of riding. 

All efforts were made to put that out of my mind and get back to enjoying the ride.  There were some storms off in the distance but figured that given how localized they were they were probably not heading my way.  I crested the top of the first set of switchbacks and felt good...started the slight downhill to the base of the next climb...made it up those switch backs thinking that the terrain did not feel as steep as it has in the past.  I quickly descended and stopped to take a quick pic of the Highlands on the way.  The Hwy 2 junction came quickly and it was time to turn around and head back to re-trace my steps back to the car.  All in all it was a great ride - a little under 18 miles with 2,700 ft of elevation gain in a little over 2 hours with the legs starting to wake up from their slumber!

Volleyball is tonight...sure hope a team shows up that will give us a game...last week was an embarrassment..the team we played was bombed out of their collective skulls and were barely able to walk, let alone pass a v-ball...we ended up winning 64-0...