Buffalo Creek

Last night I was too verbose in my blogging, so out of respect for you, reader, I'll keep this short.

Here's the Garmin log.

I hadn't initially planned on it, but I went back to Pine Valley again. This time I went a little further down the road and started at Buffalo Creek. The first part of the ride followed Buffalo Creek Road and was a snowy and icy in places; unrideably so in some spots.

Baldy Trail took me north and up, away from the creek. Up, up, up! I love to climb! There were some nice flat slabs of granite around mile seven that beckoned for a little break. The slabs might be the top of a huge dome, I suppose.

Baldy was gravelly, but soft in partial shade and frozen in full shade. Millers Trail is a double track along a wide flat ridge in the trees. It was a gradual descent, but there was too much deep snow for it to be much fun.

Charlie's Cutoff, which I had done yesterday going uphill, wasn't much better going the other way. There was too much snow and ice. It was fun in a challenging endurance sport sort of way, but it most definitely was not like going down the curly slide at the playground. Homestead was better; it playfully twists over and among granite boulders and slabs in a gradual descent. It's a definite favorite, but a with a warm evening and a warmer day today, it was also a little softer and wetter than it was yesterday.

I passed the site of yesterday's crash and reached Sandy Wash Trail, which was mostly dry and almost entirely downhill swoopiness; a roller coaster ride to back down to Buffalo Creek, which made up for quite bit of the grunt work I'd done over the previous 12 miles. Check out the Garmin log to see how much faster those last few miles were, and if you haven't before, try using the Player on the Garmin site.

The continual transition from slush to gravel made a mess of my bike. The worst was really the descent down Buffalo Creek road as I returned. The air was warm, the snow was thawing, and the road was turning into a stream.

 

I hope to make many return trips to this area. It would be so much more fun to do it with the whole of scaq instead of by myself. However, given the intensity of the climbs, we'll wait to attempt it until everyone is well-acclimated and has logged some miles at lower elevation on some flatter trails. This is not what I'd call a good starter ride.

The next two weekends I'm back in Michigan where winter still holds a firm grip, so no more mountain blogs from me for a while.

Pine Valley Ranch Trails

Pine Valley Ranch Park is a Jefferson County Open Space park about 30 miles southwest of Denver, and 50-ish miles from my office in the Denver Tech Center (usually just called "DTC"). I picked this ride today because all the trail conditions info I've been watching on the internet suggested it would be dry and ready to ride. Other closer trails have had more snow recently.

I put in a little time in my office working on a report while I waited for the sun to come up and the air to warm. A little before noon, I grabbed my Nickel and hit the road, stopping at Chipotle for a big veggie burrito to power me through the ride. I knew it would be an hour between the time I at that burrito and the time I actually started riding -- especially since I found that my bike had a flat front tire (two thorns!) when I picked it up from it's parking spot near my office. The Pine Valley Ranch Park looked very nice, being sort of tucked into a cozy, rock-lined valley. It would be great spot for a picnic and a walk on a warm sunny day.

Once I got a new tube installed, I put on my helmet and Camelbak backpack, and headed for the Buck Gulch Trail. Buck Gulch Trail starts at bridge over the North Fork of the South Platte River downstream of the lake, and quickly leaves the Jefferson County Park to enter the Pike National Forest. I'm glad there was a bridge.

Buck Gulch is a long hard grind up a loose gravelly surface. I'll emphasize "up," too, because it climbs right at 1000 ft in just over three miles, the worst being the first two. You can see from my Garmin log that my progress was very, very slow crawling up this hill. And I could feel that burrito. A very large fire burned this area in 1997 and in most places the trees are still just skeletons. There were lots of downed trees across the trail, too, many of which required a dismount to get across. Getting started on a steep gravel his is always a fun challenge. I took this photo while I made a phone call home to talk to Abbey. It was a good excuse to rest. This would have been right at the end of the second mile.

One reason this series of trails is rideable early in the season is that the surface is pretty much all gravel. There's not really much in the way of soil here, so there's nothing to make mud. Even in the few places were it was damp, it was more like wet sand than mud. The last little bit of Buck was downhill and a tremendous relief after the long steady climb. Skipper Skipper was just a blast, although I had to take it a little slower than would necessary later in the season because of the snow and ice patches that kept appearing unexpectedly in the trail.

My guide book suggested taking Charlie's Cutoff to the south to do the second loop of the figure eight counterclockwise, but I did it the other way accidentally, taking the Homestead Trail east instead. This was actually fine because the riding on Homestead in that direction was great. The trail took me across all sorts of big flat smooth rocks, which was really fun, and there even a few drops and little ledges in places, although nothing like what we had seen in Moab.

I guess I was having just too much fun going slightly downhill on Homestead and I missed the turn for Charlie's Cutoff. There was a hiker behind me who did the same thing, so it wasn't hard to do. I actually suspected that I had missed the turn, but the downhill on Homestead was so fun I just kept going. Once I crossed the creek north of Baldy Peak, I knew I'd gone too far. There was a trail junction where I stopped, so I took a little break and review my map and my options. Homestead was great coming down, so why not head back up it and go through those rocks again?

I was feeling a little tired, and with the recognition that I'd come a full mile past my turn and almost 200 ft downhill, I knew this was going to turn into a tough ride. What I did not need was a crash. The little creek I'd crossed right before I stopped had a steep bank on the south that was packed with snow and ice but I'd had no particular problem climbing up it. Going down however, I couldn't get my front wheel to grab and track in the snow, and of course braking on ice isn't very effective no matter how good your disc brakes are! So I gained uncontrollable speed in what seemed like just a couple of seconds, and then found myself veering off course to my right towards a large downed pine tree with a full complement of dry, branches pointed straight at me like spears. Most of them smashed out of the way as I plunged into the tree at about 10 mph (according to the Garmin log at that point). My Camelbak caught most of the force of the branches, but as my body came to a halt among all those spears, I immediately found myself looking around to see if I had any severe puncture wounds. Finding none, I quickly got on my bike and finished riding down the slope and crossing the creek. For some reason, it always seems like the quicker I can get back on the bike and start pedaling, the less I must have been hurt. After a crash like that, it often takes a while for the adrenaline surge (or whatever) to wear off, and that when I usually start to know where and how bad my injuries are.


I kept pedaling, but the crash had sapped my strength, or at least my resolve. Going up Charlie's Cutoff going west was seeming like a bad idea. At least half of the tread was snow and ice, so forward and upward progress was slow. I hit ten miles at that point, and the whole ride was only supposed to be 12. Eventually I made it to the junction with Strawberry Jack's, and felt relieved to turn downhill. Misfortune mocked my relief as I promptly end-o'ed in a snow drift! I was moving too quickly across a little icy snow patch when my front tire sank, and instantly I was over the bars and on the ground. Fortunately, and end-o on soft snow is actually kind of fun and not generally painful. I laughed at myself and my bike sprawled across the snow.

The snow on Strawberry Jack's soon gave way to course gravel, still with occasional snow patches just to keep me on my toes. Toes, which, were completely numb at this point, along with my fingers. As I descended -- maybe due to the wind chill from speed or maybe from cold air sinking into the valley -- I was cold. But I was going downhill again, and I was really tired, so I was happy.

This spot is on Strawberry Jack's, just before the beginning of the fun, fast, and cold descent.

The parking lot had only three cars when I got back around 4:30 p.m.

I guess my Camelbak didn't stop all of the branches. One seemed to have made it through my favorite jacket, my favorite wool shirt, and a little of my skin.