Monday, June 6, 2011

MTB Ride: Thompson Beaver Blacktail

Sunday was another HoTT day...it got into the 80's, but it felt like it was in the 90's.  After all this cold weather we have been having, a 40 degree jump in temps is difficult for the body to adapt to...

I went out to 9 mile and hooked into the Thompson Park trails - did the lower loop, upper loop, back down to the road by the Archery range, and then back up to the rail road bed, over to the Pass and caught the CDT to Beaver Ponds and linked the Beaver Ponds into Blacktail.

After a good effort on Saturday, the legs were feeling heavy on Sunday.  It was good to get back to back 3 1/2 hr rides in.  Although Sunday felt much more difficult on the singlespeed.  It ended up being around 25 miles with around 4,700 ft of elevation gain (the abrupt vertical line at around mile 11 is where I stopped the GPS and forgot to turn it back on until we had already ascended to Pipestone Pass - mileage on the chart is also under-stated by about 3-4 miles.)


A big owl flew about 10 ft above my head while doing the lower loop in Thompson Park.  The owl had a huge wingspan of what appeared to be around 5ft or so.  He flew over my head and then flew onto a tree about 25 yards away:
I came up on a few big trees that were down and took a moment to look at the bark and noticed the impact of the beetle that is devouring the forests:
Even the East Ridge is drying out a little after this heart wave:
and with the first heat wave, comes the first biker burn/tan line:


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