scaqaboutwest: 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.