MTB Flagline

As Sunday approached, I had made plans to go ride starting early morning in order to try to avoid some of the heat later in the day.  The plan was to head up Mrazek, up to Happy Valley, over to Flagline and back down into town from the shelter on the ridge.

The climb up Mrazek was nice and gentle until we got to the burn area where the trail was closed for some sort of maintenance so we skirted the connector road over to road 4601 and rode that up and caught Mrazek further up.  We made our way over to Happy Valley and took a quick break where we re-filled, ate a few calories and then started the slog up Happy Valley through the old growth that occasionally opened up to views of Broken Top.  Wow, I forgot just how beautimous that ride is!  The views are spectacular and the riding is not too far behind.

We linked into Flagline with great anticipation as the trail had just officially opened on Aug 15th due to Elk calving.  What surprised us was just how banged up and loose the trail was.  It was evident that people had been riding the trail extensively prior to Aug 15th.  It was a bit of bummer as the downhills were pretty torn up.  We were expecting nice tacky descending since the trail had only been officially open for 3 days but alas it had been ridden hard for a while.

The ride was still very enjoyable but it was sad to already see it in 'late season' form.

We put in a good day - 51 miles and about 5 hours of ride time and a little over 5K of climbing.