Rick & Lori: April 2015

Sunday, April 26, 2015

April 19, 2015

We made another trip to the cabin from Thursday evening through Sunday and were joined by Rick's sister and brother-in-law Renea and Dawson on Friday evening.

Rick and I did a 20 mile mountain bike ride on Friday afternoon with temps around 50 degrees and a strong west wind. We've been riding in 80s and low 90s recently, so it was uncomfortably cold at times. We rode well and both had some personal best times on segments during the ride. Renea and Dawson met us at The Western Bar for dinner. We had moose drools, green chile cheeseburgers with onion rings, and coconut cream pies. It was delicious as always.

Saturday was also cold and windy, so we decided to skip riding and just do some tourist stuff with our guests. We did some shopping in town at the usual places and had a wonderful late lunch at The Lodge. Snowflakes were falling in town when we headed back to the cabin. Rick and I did a 4 mile hike along some ridge tops in the forest near our subdivision looking for elk and deer antler sheds but were unsuccessful. At least we got a few hours of exercise and got to see lots of beautiful scenery.

This road is very steep but doesn't look it in the picture.

Good place for a rest after a long climb with both riding and pushing the bike up the mountain.

Area of trail where we saw elk on our last trip.

The bikes, Rick, and the trail.

The view from the highest point in our subdivision by the water tank on Saturday.

Rick found a monument marker while we searched a ridge top for elk and deer antler sheds. Too bad we couldn't find any sheds.

The wind was blowing strongly, it was cold, and some snow flakes fell during our unsuccessful but scenic and healthy 4 mile hike.

An alligator juniper tree.

Thursday, April 2, 2015

March 29, 2015

We spent Thursday through Sunday at the cabin with Vince--Amy was too busy with work and school. My birthday had been on Wednesday and Vince's was on Sunday, so it seemed an obvious weekend for a mountain bike trip to the mountains.

The weather had finally warmed up and most of the snow was gone, so we decided to start exploring new trails again in the James Ridge area. We really hit the jackpot on one I'd been wanting to try since last fall. It connects 2 areas we ride frequently, is very scenic and isolated, and is challenging but not overly technical or difficult. We even rode up on a small herd of elk on this trail which has not happened before. There are a number of other trails in this area that we haven't ridden, and I'm looking forward to trying them out too. After the ride, we made our regular trip to The Western Bar for cheese enchiladas/green chile cheeseburgers, Moose Drools, and coconut cream pie.

On Saturday, we rode from Cloudcroft for the first time since last fall and hit our old favorites: the meadow area, single track in Bailey Canyon, Bailey Canyon climb, La Luz Canyon climb, Wofford Lookout climb. It ended up being 20 challenging miles with really nice weather and extremely fatigued legs. We later went to the Lodge for a birthday celebration dinner and got to watch a beautiful sunset from the dining room and eat a great meal and dessert.

Sunday was Vince's birthday, and we only had about 43.5 miles to that point. It's kind of a cyclist tradition to ride your age on your birthday. On a road bike on flat ground, that wouldn't be a huge deal, but that's practically impossible in the mountains on difficult trails averaging 7 or 8 miles per hour. We decided that riding our ages for the weekend would be a sufficient challenge, so we needed some more miles. Against my better judgement, we did a smaller loop from town which included the single track and climbing back up to Cloudcroft via the Old Cloudcroft Highway trail. It is a difficult climb, and it sucks! I crashed near the top from loose rocks and complete fatigue, but we made it back with 51.5 miles for the weekend and 6000' of climbing. We all three set personal records (via Strava) for most of the climbing segments for the weekend. It was probably the best mountain biking I've ever done and was a great way to start the cycling season.