Saturday, 31 May 2014<\/p>\n
The weather was nice at the end of the week, so the call to ride went out.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0The day was narrowed to Saturday morning, but the crew dwindled to Ckucke, Root, and I.\u00c2\u00a0 We met out at the Ditch to climb Government Road and go as far into Demon as time allowed.\u00c2\u00a0 The graded road was just damp – enough for perfect, sticky traction with no picking up or packing.\u00c2\u00a0 There was one mud hole before the road turns rocky, but that was it.\u00c2\u00a0 After a rest at the top, where Ckucke and Root noticed what appeared to be a lot of traffic on the switchback cut directly down from the big trees, we headed up the Demon trail.<\/p>\n
Here we found more wetness.\u00c2\u00a0 It was very soft before popping out onto the golf course road, and in the usual dark places.\u00c2\u00a0 The waterfalls were running, and the mountain apple trees had set flowers.\u00c2\u00a0 We reached the melaleuca grove without too much trouble.\u00c2\u00a0 My legs were a bit less than fresh, since I had rode the day before and neglected to follow up with Endurox, and I had run out of Cytomax, so my frame bottle was very dilute. I popped my second gel and finished my Pro Bar meal bar to keep the energy levels up as high as possible.\u00c2\u00a0 Ckucke busted out his trail edamame much to everyone’s enjoyment.<\/p>\n
We still felt somewhat fresh and we had time, so we continued to the next ridge.\u00c2\u00a0 The climb after the melaleuca rest was the worst, and the next ridge led to the one after, then the one after that.\u00c2\u00a0 The East contours hidden behind ‘ie’ie were the usual soupy mud found after heavy rains.\u00c2\u00a0 Our final stop was the ridge that the trail crossed at a saddle.\u00c2\u00a0 The return was fast and fun.\u00c2\u00a0 The slippery conditions and loose rocks in the dark places made for challenging riding.\u00c2\u00a0 After one of the waterfalls, Ckucke took a backward lowside slide off the trail. The presence of a random mountain apple sapling stopped Ckucke from sliding further than 3m down into the ravine.<\/p>\n
Passing a pair of hikers, we got back to the end of the road.\u00c2\u00a0 Ckucke attempted to ride the switchback cut through the trees, but ended up going down at the very bottom.\u00c2\u00a0 While we were regrouping there, a neverending group of pig hunters and dogs came down through the trees behind us.\u00c2\u00a0 To avoid getting in their way, we decided to take the side loop.\u00c2\u00a0 That was a mistake.\u00c2\u00a0 The upper traverse was nice as was the drop in, but the lower traverse was all gumbo mud.\u00c2\u00a0 With the fatty 2.4 Rubber Queens, my brakestay packed up quickly, but Ckucke’s Ibis and Root’s Yeti were not immune from the goop.\u00c2\u00a0 After a long slog, we made it out to the road and made a careful descent to the trailhead, watching carefully for dog poop.<\/p>\n
Ckucke had to get somewhere, and the rest of us were rather burnt out, so we called it a day.\u00c2\u00a0 I got back home early, but it was another 2-hours of bike scrubbing before I could get inside and put some lunch together.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s how many rides out there where I had to hose down the bike afterwards?<\/p>\n
Pictures soon<\/p>\n
D = 11.4 km, Vavr = 5.5 km\/h, Vmax = 30.7 km\/h, T = 2-hours, 5-minutes, A\/D = 484 m<\/p>\n
Total trail time about three-and-a-half hours<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Saturday, 31 May 2014 The weather was nice at the end of the week, so the call to ride went out.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0The day was narrowed to Saturday morning, but the crew dwindled to Ckucke, Root, and I.\u00c2\u00a0 We met out at the Ditch to climb Government Road and go as far into Demon as time allowed.\u00c2\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paJYlx-2dR","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8547"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8547"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8547\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8562,"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8547\/revisions\/8562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}