Monday’s St. Louis ride didn’t transpire, so I met Kevyn and Root up there on Thursday for some XC riding. Thursday is usually Tantalus day, but I really felt like riding dirt for some reason. Kevin’s truck was there when I arrived, but he was nowhere to be seen. I figured I’d take a little spin up the ridge trail to warm up then come back down and see if he was back. It immediately became apparent that my legs were feeling the effects of the beer ride on Wednesday, so I dropped it into granny just past the water tank and spun easily to where the trail jogged to the left. Returning back down the trail, I took a little left side trail into the strawberry guava thicket and re-explored the sideline that I had seen over a decade ago on a ride with Chris Clark. The trail along the edge of the ridgetop was still open, but disuse had obscured the line a little with a heavy layer of ironwood needles. I passed a DLNR pig monitoring enclosure complete with rain gauges and automated camera. It was looking rather dilapidated, and disused. Continuing down the tight singletrack, I dumped back out onto the main trail above the moonscape.
Root called me to say he was in the parking lot, so I told him to come up the trail and meet me. Kevyn had just come back up to the parking lot after riding down to the rock waterfall with Jarrel and Curt and saw Root and followed him up the trail. We played around on the side trails down through the ironwoods into the Norfolk pines, continuing down the paved path past the restroom and upper pavilion, descending to the road at the upper flume. Riding back up, we took upper Dumps into the valley, then climbed up the switchback trail to the road. We were going to make another run down the right sideline and return via the inner loop, but it started to rain, so we called it a day. Kevyn will go in for his shoulder surgery next week, so at least he had a chance to ride this week. He’ll probably be off the bike for three or for months.
Pictures here
D = 3.51 km (2.18-miles), Vavr = 6.92 km/h (4.3-mph), Vmax = 27.2 km/h (16.9-mph), T = 30-minutes
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