It’s finally here! Ever since I decided that I’d tackle the 30 days of biking challenge again this April, I’ve been counting down the days to 4/1/14 eagerly. In fact, I’ve been waiting for this month for four years now.
I first completed the 30 days of biking challenge in 2010, which just so happened to be the first year that the challenge was held. It was very difficult and extremely taxing, but I persevered, and it was one of my best experiences with lifestyle biking to date.
Ever since 2010, I’ve wanted a chance to tackle the challenge again. This year, 2014, is the year!
Day #1: Impromptu Fat Bike Exploration
You know it’s a hard-knock life when you have a hard time deciding which bike to ride. It took me a while to decide between the Bike Nashbar Big Ol’ Fat Bike, the GT Force Carbon Pro, and my tricked-out Airborne Goblin. Eventually, I settled on the fat bike, since I had recently mounted up a pair of Origin-8 Devist-8er Ultralight review tires, and wanted to see how they’d perform.
It’s also a hard-knock life when you have a difficult time deciding which trail system to ride from your back door. “Do I want to ride the Arkansas Hills, or Methodist Mountain?” Eventually I settled on Methodist, since I hadn’t spent nearly as much time up there in recent months.
You might think that tackling a two-mile climb on a 38-pound fat bike would be pretty horrendous, but thanks to the XC geometry and rigid frame, this puppy rolls along pretty well. Perhaps that’s why I turned right at the Little Rainbow trail and kept on climbing up the Double Rainbow… more elevation gain, baby!
About half way through the Double Rainbow trail, I started to get a little bored. I had ridden this same trail about a week previously, and if there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s riding the same trails all the time. However, about halfway through Double Rainbow, I crossed an old wash/road, and I remembered seeing it on my map and wondering what it’d be like. So on a whim, I hung a left, and begin riding/hiking up a steep wash.
Ah, there’s nothing like exploring new singletrack! And singletrack I found, surprisingly enough, hidden off the side of the drainage. As I climbed higher, the old legacy trail widened considerably, and I began to hit patches of snow. All in the name of adventure!
Thanks to the hours I’d spent staring at my local trail map, I knew that this trail should climb steeply up the gulch to an intersection with the Rainbow Trail. Since the lower section was so rideable, I decided to make that junction my goal.
However, as the climb wore on, the trail steepened and got progressively snowier, eventually turning into a solid hike-a-bike. And as I reached the upper sections of the trail, I was post holing hard and simply pushing my bike through snow too soft and slushy even for the fat tires to handle. All in the name of adventure, my friends!
I ended up turning around when I took the photo above, and based on the GPS on the Singletracks Topo app, I was just about at the Rainbow Trail junction. But with all the snow, it was pretty difficult to tell.
Thanks to a couple of impromptu left turns, I turned my two-mile climb into a seven-mile climb, with a gross elevation gain of almost 2,400 feet over the course of my ride. Not bad on a 38-pound fat bike!
After I turned back downhill and left the snow behind, the descent proved to be well-worth the climb! It was great to be bombing down through big pine trees in the high mountains again, breathing in that sweet scent of the Rocky Mountain forests.
I finished my ride with a comparatively-easy roller coaster roll across the Little Rainbow trail and a high-speed bomb back down into Salida on a section of sand/dirt doubletrack I’d never ridden before.
18 miles of riding and some unplanned exploration later, my 30 days of biking was off to a fantastic start! What was your first day of riding like?
4 Comments
Apr 3, 2014
But at 430pm, when I headed home, it was 61 degrees, albeit with a strong wind. The upper half of my commute is singletrack which connects to many other singletrack trails, so I turned the journey home into a 15 mile, 1,500ft of climbing, 1hr45min singletrack fun fest before turning home.
April 2 was much the same. As for today, well, it's off to the stationary bike in the gym, but if the snow doesn't pick back up, I'll be back on the real bike tomorrow.
Apr 3, 2014
Apr 2, 2014
Apr 3, 2014