At last, a return to CDO and upper Lemmon riding.
We flashed Meadow and upper Lemmon. Before I knew it we were through the 1995 burn area, high on Suthers and Sammie. Not a single downed tree (I think Louis cleared one before I got there), and overgrowth was as pushed back as I've seen it. It was a clean, sweet run.
At the first junction we decided to hit an out and back on Samaniego. It seemed so fast and I wanted to savor more upper lemmon goodness, so we grunted up some hills to head out beyond the peak.
There were burned areas and erosion had effected the trail, but for the most part it was a nice ride. We turned around at Walnut Spring and about 20 seconds later I started having flat problems.
Both tires went flat so many times and under different circumstances that I cannot even recall the details. I kept hoping they would hold, but when the spare Slime tube I
just put in when flat within 5 minutes, things didn't look good. I started carrying my bike over the thorny-hell bushes, inbetween fits of 'pump and ride' sessions. It was completely my fault for not having a tried and true system in place. It's a new bike for me and 29" and 26" slime tubes just don't cut it with these tires/rims.
I watched Louis descend the drop into CDO with my mouth half open. It's one gnarly, loose and steep descent. I was carrying due to thorn-bush content. I was banking on some briar-free riding down in CDO.
I got it, and my tires held for the next ~4 hours. We spent a couple hours breaking branches, moving logs, trimming cat-claw and building ramps over logs. Mostly we were just enjoying hanging out in CDO. It's a different place post-Aspen fire, but still a great place to spend a day on a bike.
We had some route-finding difficulty as we both tried to pull memories out of mental trail-database. About 25% of the time Louis was right as to where we were suppose to be. 25% I was right, and the other 50% we were both wrong, dead wrong. But you always get down in the end, and some of the lines we ended up on rode well. Cows trails were often deceiving us.
Before we reached the narrows I was having flat problems again, straight on back into the "pump n' run" style of riding. After a few more bouts the rear finally said "enough!" near the top of the 'Gap. As I pulled thorn after thorn out of the tire Louis converted my rim from Presta to Schrader, MacGyver style. Our next trick was to coerce a 24" Downhill tube onto a 29" rim. It took both of us and multiple tries, but we triumphed, and I could now descend the Gap with some confidence.
As we crested the Gap I checked the time. 6pm! The clouds had tricked us into thinking it was earlier. The race was on.
I followed the Louis-shaped blur down the Gap, happy for 5" of travel and disc brakes. I've never descended the Gap so quickly. We turned off to Cherry Tank, but before the climb Louis took us onto a cow trail, hoping we'd end up somewhere familiar.
The sun had set, and I began to question the wisdom of leaving the Gap road, a known, easy-to-follow escape route. But I trusted Louis' navigational skills. Sure enough we were soon on round the mountain trail. The portion of it I rode was extremely fun, especially in diminishing light. These kind of semi-desperate situations bring out some incredible riding. We were torching the trail, trying to cover as much ground before complete darkness took over.
Heightened senses, trust in your abilities, amazing flow--until the 24" DH tube went flat, with the front following suit with a slow leak. We pumped both up in tandem, then I got a few more minutes of heightened senses riding before resorting to running the trail with zero PSI in the rear.
Once we got to upper 50 (familiar country to me) Louis took off homeward to call off any search and rescue efforts, while I continued jogging the trail, Behemoth in hand and by headlamp. It was a nice evening to jog down the trail.
I wasn't sure of the connection to casa de dog, but I knew at worst case I could get there by way of the corral. The way turned out to be fairly straightforward (just head towards the lights).
Pizza and soup at casa de dog and a ride back courtesy of Ian (who also brought us to the top, thanks Ian!). He had been called into S&R duty and had just begun driving up the Gap when Louis returned.
One for the books.
25 miles
4400 feet of climbing
9600 feet of descending
~6:30 moving time, 2 trail work, 1-2 with flats
Linear Mode
