East Ridge Night Ride

ahhhhh Friday....just writing that eases the anxiety...Admittedly, this week went by pretty fast and here we are on Friday with the weekend looming and mother nature offering up yet another bounty of great weather! It is a stark difference to this time last year when we were already in sub-zero temps and the foliage was abruptly interrupted by some really cold weather that killed off the leaves changing color - all the leaves pretty much stopped changing and froze. It certainly did not play out that way this year...and it is a good thing too!

Wednesday was relatively calm and I ended up on the trainer spinning lightly for about 45 minutes. Thursday evening's ride was to start off in the daylight and the last 1 1/2 hours was a great night ride. We ended up on the East Ridge CDT and rode from the Homestake Pass up to the peak where you can see the lights of Whitehall and also Butte - within a hundred yards you could also get view of Our Lady.
The ride profile looked a little something like:

It was a 15 mile ride with around 2,600 ft of elevation gain and as you can probably make out from the ride profile, it was an out and back.  Night riding always adds a little extra spice into a ride.  I mounted my light on my bars so I ended up having a little bit of a restricted view (there was only light where the bike was pointed which is great but sometimes you want to be able to look beyond a curve, switchback, etc). 
On the descent, a rabbit appeared out of no where, hopped alongside me for a few feet and then darted across the trail scaring the beeejeeezus outta' me.  About another mile or so further down the trail I heard this big animal ripping through the vegetation.  I stopped immediately and shone the light in the area to see if I could make out what it was...no joy...whatever made that big noise was nowhere to be seen.  We made it back to the car without further excitement or additional heebiejeebies which brings me to Friday morning and plotting the weekend.

Another banner weather weekend is forecasted and what ohhhh what to do....