Thompson & Helena Rides

Mother nature played nice this last weekend and we had a phenomenally good weekend weather-wise.  The temps crept into the upper 70's and made for some great riding.

I took the dogs out for a walk on Friday to Thompson Park to do some recon to see what kind of shape the trails were in.  To my surprise (given the recent big snowfall out there) it was in great riding condition.  I left after work on Friday and did the Thompson Park upper and  lower loops and then meandered up the RR tracks and caught the new trail up to Toll Canyon CDT where it was rideable up to 6,800 ft.

On Saturday, I went up to Helena and decided that if I was going to be riding the singlespeed at the Whiskey next weekend, it was time to take it out and get familiar with it again.  I swapped the forks and went from the stiff carbon fork to a squishy fork up front.  The first thing I noticed (besides the extra 2 lbs) was how squish forks often 'chatter' when braking and simultaneously turning (think switchbacks) and it took a little while to get used to that.  I am still debating whether the suspension pro's outweigh (no pun intended) the cons - and that will mostly depend on the terrain.  I will probably play it safe and take the squish down for the Whiskey.

Saturday's ride ended up being a great day in the saddle and I rode part of the Helena ridge trail that I had not yet been on.  It was an awesome day to be out and it was a big day elevation gain wise.  It was almost 25 miles of riding, but with close to 4,700 ft of climbing.  The good news is that the Whiskey is only about 2,500 ft more of elevation gain so my hope is that with a taper, the legs will feel OK...no doubt there will be some hike a bike this upcoming weekend but there usually always is....