We hadn’t hit St. Louis in a while, so we went up to play on Monday morning. When Ckucke called me on Sunday night, I briefly tossed around the idea of taking the XC bike, riding up, then coming down. Ckucke was fine with this. Better judgement kicked in, and it was decided that it would be a F/R bike day. I met Ckucke and JT and we did a quick circuit of Upper Dunps while we waited for Root to show up. Root was coming into the park when we reached the road, so we all tried to get a tow up the hill from his Corolla. There wasn’t much to grab onto, and I was on the left, so I was holding on with my right arm with the shoulder separation. Ckucke managed to hold on until the parking lot. Two dudes in a maroon Toyota pickup pulled in just after us. At first, JT and I thought it was Kevyn, since the paint color was the same as Jesus truck – like maybe he was coming by to hassle us. They had gone down once and were shuttling back up.
After Root got ready, we dropped Upper Dumps again and climbed out to the jumps. We sessioned a while, but heavy use and the dry weather eroded the bottom jump, rounding the top over and softening it so it didn’t throw right. The two dudes came down the trail and proceeded past after working out some kind of mechanical. They had some slightly older long-travel rigs with double-triple clamp forks, but were dressed like XC racers with tight short-sleeved jerseys and clipless shoes. Hmm… We decided to drop down a little then grind back up and call it a day. We ran into the two dudes at the taco jumps junction, and they ended up following us down to agave. The climb back up was somehow more heinous than usual. I’m not sure if it was the heat, what I had for lunch, or maybe not drinking enough water, but I had to push the rooty section back to the parking lot.
Pictures here
D = 6.60 km (4.10-miles), Vavr = 7.9 km/h (4.9-mph), Vmax = 34.1 km/h (21.2-mph), T = 50-minutes
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