Granby Seven

Day Seven, August 2nd. 2013. I know six isn't up yet, but I'll get it done soon.

Quinn and I went back to the Trestle Park and rented real downhill bikes, full-face helmets, and all the associated protective gear - chest and back, arms and elbows, shins and knees. I ended up riding a Specialized Status II, and Quinn a Kona Stinky 2-4. It was fun. I could complain a little about some details relative to the bikes, but they were in decent condition, so I won't dwell on that here.

I liked the idea of having the facial protection afforded by the full face helmet. The downhill trails are sort of like riding a roller coaster, and it's best to ride at the speed that fits the trail. That is, flow across the berms, rollers, and jumps works best in the range of maybe 15 to 20 miles per hour. Too slow and it just doesn't flow, too fast, and well, you're likely kissing trees. I suppose some people ride it faster.

Here's a picture of Quinn and me in all our gear:

I didn't bother to track our rides with the GPS this time. And I took almost no pictures because there just wasn't any good way to stop and pull out the camera. The pictures below, of Quinn riding rocky technical stuff, really aren't the norm at Trestle. The norm is fast, mostly smooth, sculpted berms and jumps. The best way to document it would be with a helmet cam, but I don't have one of those. Here's a link to a video, made by one of my co-workers who frequents the Trestle Park, which gives a good flavor for the more advanced trails: Click Here.

Quinn and I made six runs throughout the course of the day. We rode most of Green World first, just to get a feel for the bikes, and then we worked our way up. Our favorite was probably Double Jeopardy, which had a really fun rocky technical section (I love rocks!), but we also like Rainmaker, which was jump after jump for miles. No wonder my knee pain has gotten worse! We did most of the advanced trails in the park, but we skipped those with really big jumps -- it's good that Quinn was there to put a cap on things. As it was, we got through the whole day, completely exhausted, but with no crashes.

Quinn tackles the rocks on Double Jeopardy with ease:

Granby Five

I'm determined to get through the blogging of this trip, but it's taking a long time, and in the mean time I've missed writing up all the fun stuff we did in August. I haven't even mentioned Cindy's new job as a bus driver for the Cherry Creek School District!

Click here to visit the Trestle Park website. The guy in picture looks just like Quinn, doesn't he? As the planet warms, ski resorts may go the way of glaciers and dinosaurs unless they come up with something that doesn't require snow. That might be mountain bikes.

Wednesday, July 31. We took our bikes to the Trestle Park and bought a day's worth of lift tickets. Trestle has trails that vary in difficulty, from reasonably easy to reasonably insane. Since the lift takes you up, most of the trails are entirely downhill, so even the most out-of-shape riders nearly-novice mountain bikers can find something to ride.

These are links to the Garmin logs along with a little discription of each

Green World first, then Green World, Shy Ann and Free Speech. This track covered the first two rides up and down. On the first ride, all five of us, the usual scaq plus Abbey's D rode the lifts up and headed down a trail called "Green World." It's the easiest trail at the park, but has a little section of climbing. Green World is pretty smooth, and fast and fun.  Quinn, however, managed to take a big spill on the only real jump on Green World. After a long section of fast switchbacks, there's a large hump in the trail that comes up somewhat unexpectedly. Quinn jumped it, but pulled up little too a hard, and after flying for a while, landed on his rear wheel but couldn't get the front down and wound up going over backward. He was probably traveling over 20 miles per hour. His knee pads saved his knees, but he scraped up his side pretty well. He was able to pull himself together and ride down, blood soaking into his jersey, and we took him to the on-site medical facility for repairs.

It took about an hour to get Quinn's belly patched, and after that he was ready for a break. So Cindy sat out the next ride with Quinn while Abbey, Daniel, and I made another trip up the lifts and down. This time Abbey and Daniel took Green World again while I tested some parallel blue (intermediate difficulty) trails -- Shy Ann and Free Speech. The blues were not particular hard, but Shy Ann had some really bad washboards heading into some of the berms.

Green World, Free Speech, Long, Lower Long, Boulevard. After Quinn's rest and some really good pizza for lunch, we made another trip with all five of us. We added Long and finished on Boulevard. Long was fun with some bigger, deeper berms and jumps. Lower long was interesting -- it involved some climbing and a descent down some very eroded, poorly designed, and poorly maintained trail that most people seem to avoid. Next time we will, too. Boulevard was only real alternative to finishing on Green World, but was rough and not all that fun. It was at least single track, whereas finishing on Green World was just rolling down a gravel road and nearly 30 miles per hour.

Green World, Free Speech, Green World. Daniel's mom was supposed to pick him up around 4, so we really didn't have time for this ride, but some puppy dog eyes got us one more ride before he left. To make it as quick as possible we stuck to Green World and Free Speech. We rode fast and with minimal stops.

Green World, Free Speech, Long Trail, Jury Duty, Boulevard. One more for Quinn and me. The girls were beat and ready to stop. Abbey's knee was getting sore. Quinn and I took Jury Duty this time, which was something like a 1/4 or 1/2 mile of elevated board walk. A little spooky at first, but fun and easy once you adjusted to the idea of riding on a wood sidewalk 15 feet off the ground.

It was challenge to get good pictures at Trestle Park. While the trails were fairly wide, in most places it wasn't safe to stop and pictures. On the more difficult trails (which we didn't do this day) there were signs saying "No stopping on trail." So I'm a little disappointed in the pics, but we got a few.

This is Quinn riding down in pain just after his big crash.

The group coming through some rollers; pain revealed in Quinn' expression:

At the boy repair shop:

Cindy rounding some gently bermed curves:

Long Trail had some features you could roll across, but would also serve as big jumps at higher speed. Cindy is demonstrating the low speed roll-through method.

Abbey in a curve:

Bike racks:

Near the top of Green World:

Wood Rollers on Free Speach:

Quinn's belly patch:

Granby Four

Now we're up to Tuesday, July 30th. But today is September 6. And my memories are getting fuzzy. Good thing we have pictures.

July 30 was the last day of the trip for H,C&C. Our kids, Daniel included, were worn down and wanted a day off from biking, so we let them stay in the townhouse with Sharon and Cailan while Cindy and I went for a ride with Heather and Chris.

We decided to ride the Tipperary Creek trail back down in the same general Fraser/Winter Park area we'd ridden the day before. Here's a link to the route: Tipperary - Flume.

In short, the ride started with a couple miles of easy singletrack through a meadow that was a forest before the beetles hit, then another couple of miles of gradual climbing on a somewhat muddy gravel road, and then a nice, stiff climb up a steep, overgrown, gravelly two-track that was mostly one track. The climb was steep and steady for about 1200 feet; enough to make it almost grueling, but not quite. The Tipperary Creek Valley was quite beautiful, really, and for the first time in days there was no rain.

One particularly memorable spot early in the climb was at the first crossing of Tipperary Creek, where the trail dropped sharply into the creek alongside some inconveniently placed rocks. Cindy took my suggested route for getting through the crux of the problem, but perhaps would have been better off to select her own approach. She was not seriously injured, but was seriously wet.

A while later we had another chance to cross, this time without incident.

We reached the top of the climb, cresting just over 10,000 ft after nearly 9 miles of riding. Cindy was having some trouble with her shifters after dunking her red Superlight in the creek. There's a bend in the rear shifter cable housing that can get sticky when it's been wet and muddy, but we were able to clean it out somewhat and lube it into order. Cindy's fingers were cold and numb in her wet gloves -- and I can't imagine that her wet bike shorts were comfortable either. Heather was getting the hunger shakes, too, so we took a nice snack break while we worked on the Superlight.

And then we went down fast. Spruce Creek Trail was steep and reasonably straight. The good visibility that comes with straightness allowed us to zip down the trail quickly without concern about unexpected encounters with other trail users. Large, loose, sharp rocks, awareness of our mortality, old age, and hydraulic disc brakes governed our speed. 

And then a little gravel road, a zoom down Flume...

...and in no time we were back to the trucks. Zoo wee mama! 

One might think that 15 miles and 1400 feet of climbing would be enough for one day, but that was just the morning! Quinn, Abbey, and Daniel were well-rested by the time us old folks got back from the morning ride, so after lunch it we were off for more. Cindy decided to stay back with Sharon while the kids and I rode, and H&C had to get back to GJ. So we decided to go for rematch with Granby route that had foiled us twice -- once due to Abbey's brake and then due to excess mud. This time it worked out.

Fraser-Granby-Rabbit Run-Sweet Nancy-Natures Way. Click it to see the route.

I didn't get my camera out early enough in the ride to capture our climing, but we followed the Fraser-Granby Trail to the south along the west side of the Granby Resort, then crossed through the valley on gravel roads until we hit Rabbit Run, which is one of the Granby Bike Ranch cross country trails. It was rough; it seemed like the trail had been cut by mechanized equipment, but no trail crew had ever gone out to turn it from a road cut into a trail. Rabbit Run took us up to the ridge line on the east side of the Granby, where we followed the Vista Ridge north until we reached the top of Granby Ranch, right to the top of the ski lift (which was not running mid-week).

The view was spectacular, especially looking east across the deep Fraser River valley toward the Continental Divide. 

The ski lift was closed, so the official 'downhill' trails were closed and roped off. Someone in our group might have posed the idea that we ride down one of the downhill trails anyway, but I was the adult in charge and put a stop to such nonsense, appealing as it may have been. We rode down Sweet Nancy, which is listed as a cross country trail, so was not closed. It descended quickly, nonetheless, but had no jumps or other technical features. Like the other trails we rode, Sweet Nancy was not a well-groomed trail. Corners were sharp and unpredictable and most lacked berms. The tread seemed unkempt and uncivil; it was a hard, fast, and rough ride down. But I suppose it was still quite fun...