Hall Ranch is a beautiful Boulder County Park just west of Lyons, CO. We've ridden there a couple of time before, but have avoided the infamous mile-long rock garden ascent on the Bitterbrush Trail. Part of scaq actually have been wanting to try that gnarly ascent, but other have questioned the idea. So on Sunday morning when the c and the a were feeling yucky with the back-to-school cold, the q and the s decided to go play on the rocks. And we loved it.
He may have loved it, but I think Quinn also found it humbling. He's been feeling perhaps excessively confident these days about his abilities to rock through rock gardens, but the Bitterbrush Trail has enough large boulders to require some power-moves that are really difficult when you're still a half inch shy of 5 feet tall and weigh only 84 pounds. But what he lacks in power he partially makes up for in balance.
By the time we reached top, at mile two, he was beat. It was tough.
Don't those big tires on his little bike frame make his bike look like a fatty? But look at view out across the Ranch!
The pics end here. After easily reaching the Nelson loop at the top, we flew down the fun sequence of water bars. What a fun ride in magnificent location. But then, somehow while cruising easily through smooth curves in the middle of the park, Quinn's front tire slid out on a sandy corner and he went down hard. From 15 miles per hour to zero in a blink, he landed on his right wrist. I could tell he was hurt pretty badly. We wrapped it with first aid tape so that he could sort of hold on to his handlebar for the slow ride back. Doing the rock garden routr down would have killed him, so we dropped back down the Antelope Trail, rode through Lyons on the road, and then followed blacktop back around to the trailhead where the truck was parked. An x-ray on the following Tuesday showed no broken bones, but even today he's wearing a brace and still feeling the pain.
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