Met Jeff and Sara out at Ditch Trail on Sunday afternoon. Chris had fun planned with the family and JT was on the side. It was breezy and a little overcast, but no rain all week promised good trail conditions. We climbed Government Road and turned onto the Ditch trail. On the ride two weekends before, we discovered that the road had been groomed. The trail itself had been groomed since that time. Most of the cut grass was still on the trail, so the turns were a bit sketchy.
Somewhere near the turnaround before getting onto the upper trail, Jeff hit a little rock jump. On landing, the bike felt a little odd, so I saw him looking down checking for a flat tire. At the top of the climb on the upper trail, he found a crack on the upper ring of the steerrer clamp of his Thomson stem! In recollection, he thought that he may have heard a “pop” when it gave. The lower ring was still holding fast, so the stem didn’t rotate in relation to the steerer, but there was noticeable flex in the rotational direction. I saw a pair of drop-ins on the left of the upper trail leading down to the lower trail. One was before the red truck, and one right after. There was also a singletrack dropping in from the right that Jeff said probably starts near the tree up top. Those deserve further investigation. We saw two riders coming out from the right trail.
With the broken stem, I figured it would be a cruise back to the cars, but we did the inner loop anyway. After that, I again thought it would be a return to the bottom, but Jeff and Sara turned up the road after coming out of Ditch! We climbed up and dropped into the secret ditch trail and came back out on the road.
A few more pictures here.
D = 17.20 km (10.69-miles), Vavr = 17.21 km/h (10.7 mph), Vmax = ?.?? (data corrupted), T = 1-hour riding time (total trail time approximately 2 hours)
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