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...
About "fuzzy memory", might it have less to do with July 30 to Sept 6, and more with 1968 to 2013? I speak from experience.
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