The Almost Epic

Over the past few years I have gone from closely inspecting every ride map and elevation chart as I was the slowest/weakest rider of the group to not necessarily caring so much as my strength has increased and I’m at least sort of “mid pack.” Today was one of those days that I just stayed outta the planning. Pooh had this loop in mind the other day and we actually ran into two ladies at the coal bank pass that Pooh asked about the ride. They said it was one of their favorites and actually clued us into a piece of single track that could replace a section of road that we were planning on doing that was not on the map. For the PG blog, we’ll refer to it as the ladies trail. The loop starts at the same trail head that the Hermosa creek ride starts, Hermosa Park. The difference was we headed up the creek instead of down, this time on a nice dirt road. Howie rallied from his bruises and Princess recovered enough from his sunburn, so the whole crew was back in action. The first couple miles was pretty flat along some nice back country camping areas. I was keeping an eye on the GPS and saw that we came upon an intersection but nothing was apparent until I saw an old mining road behind us. I was pretty sure that it was what I saw on the GPS. Turns out I was wrong and it was actually the end of the “ladies trail.” A few hundred yards up the road we ran into what I actually saw on the GPS and we continued up our climb to the right. The next 6 miles or so were a reasonable climb, as I was in my middle ring for all of it. Princess yelled up to us and we turned around at one point as Howie was having some issues. Seems like he felt like his rear cog was coming loose and I had heard something amiss earlier when I passed him. We all agreed it seemed loose but nobody had a cassette lock ring tool. We tried to use howie’s leatherman’s pliers stuck into two of the spline spots to tighten it, nothing. At that point we found what seemed to be fishing line in there. We tried to loosen it, same method with the leatherman and princess holding the cassette. After a valiant attempt but ending in a shriek and princess letting go and a second attempt, same ending, it was deemed that was not gonna work. Princess came up with the ingenious idea of pulling off his chain and using it as a chain whip, wrapping it around the cassette then around the rim and tire. Worked perfectly and Pooh with his bear strength took to the leatherman, snapping the pliers end. There was really not a lot else we could try so Howie decided he could live with the issue. It got steep about 8 miles in, dropping me to my granny ring and oscillating between struggling with riding and thoughts of hopping off and walking. Pooh Bear managed to climb up through a heck of a steep section that finally took me off the bike for a couple hundred yards. We passed through an old mine area, and then rode up the last half mile.

Total of about nine miles later and about 2100 feet of climbing, we reached the Colorado Trail. There was a nice little alpine lake where we took a quick brake but due to flies and mosquitoes we got back to riding, up the trail another few hundred feet of climbing over the next mile, through some nice forest the along some nice bench cut that gave some great views of the valley that we rode up and beyond. The single track was great for the next few miles up and down finally going over the ridge away from the valley we rode up. There was a big snow field just off the trail so we had to go check it out. Pooh, Princess, and I had a heck of a snow ball fight in August, go figure. We finally called it quits as the snow in august is still really darn cold and exerting your self to throw snowballs at 11000 feet is more than you can imagine.


A couple locals passed us as we were just getting back to our bikes. We were up and down within a 100 vertical feet for the next mile on some really nice single track, just on our side of the ridge. We ran into a couple motorcycle riders where a road intersected with the trail, they where pretty cool. The trail followed the old road bed for a mile or so before going back to single track and moving back to the Hermosa creek side of the ridge. Again more exposed single track with beautiful views. It started up again and we saw it head up over the ridge.
We were hoping that this was the “big” climb but if we had really thought about it we would have realized that the big climb would be back the other way. At the top of this “pass” we ran into the locals that passed us earlier and let us know that we would go down a bit then up the real climb, about another hour of riding before we got to head back down towards the vehicle.

At this point there was seriously crappy weather all the way round us but so for now we were staying dry. Neither local had ridden the “ladies trail” but at least one of them had heard of it. The other option if we missed it was to go down to Corral Draw and hit the Hermosa creek trail a few miles down and ride back up to the truck. We got to the point where we saw where what we had to get over and I just about cried. It really wasn’t that bad and the folks from the Colorado Trail Assoc. had just done a bunch of trail work on that bench cut. Pooh Bear with is bear like climbing ability cleaned the whole climb. I on the other had did ok but walked a bit. We took a few pictures at the top while the local took off down the other side. The three of took off down while howie grabbed some pictures of us heading down. It was a bit sketchy as it was somewhat steep and the slope of the trail was a little off camber, sloping out and was a little on the loose side as it was very exposed and dried out. We made it down then watched howie on his decent. At that point is flattened out a bit was less exposed, heading down through the forest. It was a great run, waiting up for howie at a couple points. It was getting dark due to the storm clouds and we decided at one point to put on jackets and for those of us with pack covers, those as well. It started raining a little bit right after that soon turning to hail. Pooh Bear assured us that hail was actually a good sign as that meant the heavy rain was already past or something. Turned out for the time being he was right. It cleared up to some degree and we hit the road at Hotel Draw that we could take back down but the “ladies trail” was bit beyond. As we were debating and looking at the map, it stared to rain a bit so we decided to do the safe thing and head down the road. Just after that the heavens opened up and oh did it rain. It rained cats and dogs for the next few miles down the road. And boy did it get colder. We intersected with the road we came up on continuing to head down it and across Hermosa Creek, which at this point was MUCH wider than when we had crossed it earlier but not a big deal. It had pretty much stopped raining by this time and the last couple miles were rain free and it had never rained at the truck. We got cleaned up as best we could in the creek and headed out before it did start raining at the truck. Our initial plan was to stop at the pizza place at Hermosa but they were closed at it was Sunday. We made due with left over brats, hamburgers, and some chicken along with fresh corn we picked up in town.

An Epic ride is a rather personal thing, really depends on your fitness, skill, and preparedness. It also tends incorporate things like mechanical issues, weather, etc. Taking all that into account, this was almost an epic, as it had all the makings for one but we really were not that spent at the end, although Princess was really darn cold.