Monarch Crest to Agate Creek

First off a correction, I knew I would screw it up, its daywalker, not tripper, sorry about that. Anyways the ride today was a shuttle on Monarch Crest trail descending Agate Creek trail to the waiting car. Monarch Crest trail is actually part of the Continental Divide trail starting at 11,200 feet. It was chilly, about 50 degrees at the start. The first part starts out on a jeep trail, then a bit of single track then a rather tough jeep trail climb up to the start of the single track after a mile and change. The disappointing factor was that we were basically riding in a cloud and although there were potential views for miles and miles, I pegged the visibility at about 100 yards, David said 200, so the truth probably lay in between.
It was still pretty wild, the Madness remarked it must be what riding in Scotland would be like.


The crest portion was about 7 miles and after about 6, the clouds lifted a bit for some decent views.

We started down Agate Creek trail with 10 more miles of single track and close to 3000 feet of descending in front of us. It was a bit on the tough side as there were plenty of rocks and roots, most of which were wet, and even if they were not, your tires probably were. After a few miles the boys had to take a break to rest their hands then on we went. Things started to level out a bit but still definitely down hill. At some point we started in with the creek crossings and I was ridiculed ferociously for the rest of the ride for walking across one, trying to keep my feet dry for a while, it was still pretty chilly out. We kept working our way down along the creek, mostly on really nice single track, a few puddles, and a couple of nasty rutted out sections. David and I heard something happen behind us and turned around to see Alex doubled over on the bike. Turns out the seatpost clamp cracked off the top of the carbon fiber seatpost and when Alex went to sit down, the seat gave way. Enough said. We took the seat post out and howie and Alex switched bikes. There was a bailout trail to the road a mile or so down which howie walked the bike out on and then took the road down to the shuttle car. The four of us continued down along the creek, crossing too many times to count. We got to one crossing and upon further examination all came to the conclusion that it would be better to walk than ride. It looked mostly ridable but there was one spot with some white water that we could just not determine how deep it was and if you buried your front tire in it, it would get really ugly. There was one other crossing that David tried that got a bit deeper than he anticipated about 2/3 of the way across, he just about lost the bike when he got stopped. We continued to freeze our feet with a few more crossings, a few technical sections that David did very well on, then back up out of the creek drainage eventually back to the shuttle car.