Change of Plans

Well we headed out to Taylor Reservoir, dropping the Madness’ car off at the shuttle point. It was definitely looking cloudy but we held out hope. It started sprinkling a little about 5 miles out but not a big deal. About two miles from the trailhead it started pouring. It was a pretty easy decision that we were not gonna do that ride. We drove the next mile or so just to confirm where the trailhead was but then turned around. That whole ridge line up to Crested Butte looked pretty stormy so we headed back to camp to pick up the map for Hartman Rocks, the high desert riding area on the edge of Gunnison. Howie and I had ridden here last year but got chased off by rain after about 10 miles or so. Its really a lot of fun and definitely different than the high alpine stuff we have been doing.
Its smooth slightly sandy single track punctuated with fun technical pieces working through various rock out croppings. Just looking at the map the trails seem very random, but once you are on them you realize a lot of thought and planning went into hitting all the fun stuff as well as doing their best to work around small canyons etc.

There were no real sustained climbs but lots of 100-200 feet ups as well as numerous short grunts. Navigating wasn’t too bad, we a couple “bonus mile” sections as the map was not always totally accurate. We got sprinkled on a couple times but nothing that would even settle the dust, the storms stayed out on the ridges. No idea on the total amount of climbing but we did 21 miles, 2:45 of moving time and we were out there close to 4 hours total.