Granby Three

This post covers Monday, July 29. I'm so far behind now -- I gotta speed this up. Extra steps to get photos resized then rotated are slowing down the blogger.

We have Garmin logs; the first ride was this one: Creekside - Zoom - Chainsaw. A really nice loop it is. Not surprisingly, Creekside Trail climbs gently uphill beside a creek; easy but rocky. Then there's a long grind up a gravel road -- must be a hundred miles and a few thousand feet -- to Zoom downhill. Zoom is rugged and loose and steep and this time a little damp. Chainsaw is wonderful and swoopy and switchbacky and when it starts raining it's a river.

Here's Creekside:

And the gravel road:

Top of Zoom:

 Bottom of Zoom:

Chainsaw:

Later in the day was this one: Ice Hill - Blue Sky.  We started this ride at the Winter Park Resort, with a long steady climb up a gravel road, followed by a long fast descent down another gravel road. And then there was a bunch of nice, up-and-down single-track with plenty of wet roots and rocks that I found quite challenging. The last portion of trail followed the railroad back down to the resort. It was fun and wet.

Chris and I traded off a couple of times, one of us captaining the Ventana tandem with Cailan as stoker, while the other rode his new Salsa 29er. This gave Daniel the chance to ride my Nickel, which it seems he quite enjoyed. After experiencing that bit mountain biking bliss, he's been after his parents to buy him a comparable piece of equipment -- quite unsuccessfully thus far. I enjoyed the opportunity to ride Chris (and Heather)'s bikes. The dual suspension tandem with it's plush long-travel fork is really nice for getting over slippery roots, and the Salsa with the Lefty fork and clutched derailleur was without question the lightest, smoothest, and quietest bike I've ever ridden. It's a good thing it was a little small for me -- I was less tempted to keep it.

Did I mention that most of the afternoon, it was either raining, just about to rain, or just finished raining?

Granby Two

Sunday morning, July 28th. Our first full day in Granby turned out to be an interesting one. Although the rain had ended early the night before, the morning air was damp. Yet the ground seemed surprisingly dry, so maybe it hadn't rained as much as we thought. After dragging the kids out of bed, we set out on a morning ride to explore the trails around Granby Ranch.

The Granby Bike Ranch, which is what the Granby Ski Resort becomes during summer, has designated downhill trails and others called cross-country trails. The latter are open to riding and hiking, uphill or downhill, pretty much any time. The downhill trails are only open when the ski (bike) lifts are open, and the trails are limited to bicycles going down hill.

Our goal for the morning was to ride down the hill from the townhouse, past the ski resort, and up the hill to the ridge where the Fraser-Granby Trail (FGT) crossed road. We would then take the FGT south and just see what we found. I was hopeful that we could connect with the Granby Ranch cross-country trails, but hadn't yet located a trail map of sufficient detail to be certain it would work. Pedaling south on the FGT, we found ourselves on a firm gravel trail that was much dryer than expected. Maybe it rained less than I'd thought. We crossed a wide area of dirt where it appeared that some resort-related construction was occurring, and then a few open areas that would be ski runs in winter.

The trail climbed gently for about two miles, with nice views out across the valley and ski resort, then dropped down to connect with gravel roads that access some homes and yet-to-be developed properties. Signs along the roads kept us on the FGT. Eventually we found a cut-off allowing us to climb steeply up a rough trail that connects with the Grandy Ranch Cross Country trails. At first the little connector trail was very rocky, so most of our group had to push the bikes up, but it eventually leveled to a more broadly rideable state. After stopping to regroup and make a plan, where I made my usual promise we'd climbed the worst of it and the grade was leveling off, we continued up the rocky trail. Abbey took the lead and set off at a strong pace, showing the boys her power and technical skill -- until here brake hose came loose.

I heard a loud exclamation; Abbey shouted that her brakes had broken. Sure enough, the hose had pulled out where it inserts into the lever body. I put the hose back in place, but the few drips of fluid that had spilled left air in the lines, so the brake was useless. After some consideration of options, Cindy and Abbey headed down the trail planning to follow the gravel roads back through the resort and back to the townhouse. I continued up the trail with the Q&D. We climbed for a while and then descended back to the resort. The descent was fun, but once again the rain had begun.

Here's a link to our morning route: Sunday morning ride.

Since it was Sunday, I was afraid I might have trouble getting Abbey's brake lines refilled and bled that day. I had brought neither fluid nor a bleed kit with me. Fortunately, the Granby Bike Ranch has a pro shop to go along with their bike rentals, and they were able to service the brake immediately. This particular brake line was one I had installed myself when I set up the Nickel, so I probably had not tightened the compression fitting adequately, which eventually allowed it to pull out. So I hung out in the bike shop, watching a steady, heavy downpour outside, while the bike shop guy did a very thorough and by-the-book bleed of Abbey's rear brake. I felt we lucked out there.

The McKims arrived while Abbey's brake was being serviced. When the brake was done, I pedaled my bike back to the house while rolling Abbey's along beside me. After waiting out the rain for a while we decided to try going for a ride. I thought that we still had a chance of riding on the FGT since the trail surface was a coarse gravelly material rather than a fine dirt that might turn to mud. I was sort of right: the trail itself wasn't too bad, but it crossed an area where it appeared the resort was putting in a road -- or maybe it was just an access road. Either way, as soon as we tried to ride on the road, the mud stopped us in our tracks. Sticky clay wrapped our tires, clogged our pedals and shoes, jammed our chains, prevented our wheels from turning. We had to drag the bikes back to the trail and scrape away the mud just to turn around and ride back to the trail head. Yuck.

Here's a link to our afternoon route: Sunday afternoon ride.

On the way home, we stopped at the resort and used the bike cleaning station so that next time we tried to ride the bikes would actually function. Once we got back to the townhouse, we had a whole lot of muddy clothes to wash.

Granby One

Last spring we realized that there were very few open slots on our summer calendar for a week long vacation, so we set aside the last week in July for some sort of Mountain Adventure Vacation -- at least that's how we labeled it on the Cozi calendar. Initially, the event was to be a camping trip nearly two weeks long, and we had visions of traveling around Colorado, exploring little mountain towns, sleeping in the wild, and riding all the best bike trails. Maybe we'd hook a little pop-up trailer behind our Nissan, the top of which would be bristling with our fleet of mountain bikes. Well, reality narrowed it to a week, and practicality planted us in a townhome in Granby, which is a small town and ski resort area centered between Winter Park and Rocky Mountain National Park. It turned out to be a good choice as base for our adventure, and we had a nice week.

Our little family of seven arrived in Granby around noon on Saturday, July 27. We couldn't check in to the townhome right away, so we had a leisurely lunch on the patio at a restaurant in Granby to pass a little time and watch the storms brew.

Seven? In addition to the usual scaq, Grandma Sharon, Boyfriend Daniel, and Dog Amos comprised our family. The townhome was nice, with kitchen, dining area, and living room on the main floor, along with large deck elevated deck out back. There was a big master bedroom upstairs and two bedrooms downstairs. We put Q and BD in one room downstairs, A and GS in the other, and C and I took the sofa bed in the living room. The Diddiwah would be joining us on Sunday, staying just a couple of nights, so we saved the three of them the upstairs bedroom. It worked out pretty well, although if the Diddiwah had been staying all week, it would have been a little tight.

Storms? Shortly after our arrival that first Saturday the storms began. We had planned to get the bikes out for an afternoon ride, but dodging lightning bolts wasn't exactly what we had in mind. So we put the bikes under the roof of the porch, the three kids played the Xbox in the basement, and the adults twiddled thumbs, looked at maps, and cooked some fake burgers on the grill on the back deck. After dinner we played a few intense rounds of Bananagrams. And outside it rained and rained and rained.

Dave's Visit

Is it my imagination, or is it easier to get family and friends to visit when you live somewhere interesting. Perhaps it helps, too, that Colorado is reasonably close to Kansas. My friend, Dave, came out from Wichita for the weekend following July 4th. We rented a bike for him so he could get a taste of mountain biking in Colorado. Dave had not previously done much of that, or maybe any, so I hope this was a fun experience for him. Fortunately, he was good shape, so despite the lack of acclimatization time he held up quite well.

We rented a Rocky Mountain Element 10 from the Single Track Factory. That's the Denver bike shop that I would call my new favorite bike shop. The Element is a comparable bike to my Nickel, with 26" wheels and about five inches of travel front and rear. I gave the Element a test myself on a trail near our house (it wouldn't be right to put a good friend on a bike you hadn't fully evaluated for trail-worthiness), and found it to be a fine ride.

Not knowing exactly how things would go for Dave, we started out on Friday morning with the Meadow View Trail at Elk Meadow Park. Cindy was working, so it just Dave, Q&A, and me. Here's the Garmin log from our ride: Elk Meadow. We hadn't ridden here before, but knew that it was supposed to be good intro-to-mountain biking sort of ride. It turned out to be really nice. The trail took us upward, not too steeply, through a nice open meadow and thin forest, then made a long rocky, rolling traverse across the slope above the meadow, before descending back down along the far side of the meadow.

The morning ride at Elk Meadow went so well that we decided to head over to the Alderfer Three Sisters Park to get in some more trail time that afternoon. It should have been a quick trip between the two parks since they are both in the vicinity of Evergreen, but as usual, I managed to miss a couple of turns and get us going the wrong direction. But eventually we figured out where we needed to be. Here's the Garmin log: Alderfer / Three Sisters. The ride at Alderfer also went really well. We stuck to the north side of Buffalo Park Road, riding the Mountain Muhly and Bearberry trails. I tried to get everyone to ride the rocky, rugged trail up to the Three Sisters themselves, but they were all tired and after several yards of hauling bikes up the rocks I had to deal with a small rebellion. So we turned back and zipped down to the parking lot. We had a great time.

Dave and the kids:

Dave and the trail:

In the picture below, the Element sits on top of our truck, along with Quinn's Superlight and Abbey's and my Nickels. Three of the four bikes are white; not by preference, but by simple accident.

After the first day of riding, Dave had done so well and seemed so strong that I thought we could take on something a little more challenging for our Saturday ride. So I picked one of our favorites, the Colorado trail in the Buffalo Creek area. Specifically, we road the Green Mountain Loop. See the Garmin log here: Colorado Trail - Green Mountain Loop. This was a more ambitious ride than those of the previous day, with a total distance of about 17 miles. But with limited climbing, as Front Range trails go, so I thought it was not an unreasonable choice. Cindy had to work again, and Abbey's knee was sore after Friday's rides, so for this one it was just us boys. Quinn and I decided it leave our white Santa Cruz singles at home this time and break out the big black tandem instead.

Once again, we had a great time and the ride went really well, but by the end we were all pretty beat. Dave took one pretty good spill, sliding as a he rounded a steep and slightly descending corner; no major damage, but he picked up a few bruises and left a little skin as he slid to a stop on his side. Near the end of the ride I was feeling like I might have bitten off just a little too much. The trail is very much a classic Colorado Mountain trail. It traverses a north-facing slope for several miles, dropping in and climbing out of one drainage after another, and weaving through the open forest on a smooth gravelly trail. Well, there was the occasional rocky section, and the more-than-just-occasional, rough, challenging roots-across-the-trail section. And the climb up green mountain in the rain was not exactly easy. So by the end, we were all beat. I was thinking the Chair Rocks trail would have been a rational alternative this rugged brutality. But now I'm ready to do it again!

Quinn sits for a break:

Dave swoops through the forest.

Dave and Quinn enjoy the rain on the shoulder of Green Mountain.

And the next day Dave went home. I hope we'll be able to get him out again next year!