"It's so beautiful when it's not burning"

Schultz, Gnarly, Sunset, and Little Bear, July 2, 2005

Jeff, Lisa, Rusty, Saeid, and Steele

We welcomed Lisa and Saeid to the Lowell Riders for this crank up Mount Elden to the ridge on Sunset and then down Little Bear. It was a beautiful day.

Lisa and Saeid rolled into a rally point on Gnarly. It was here that, on her very first expedition with the Lowell Riders, Lisa snagged the ride travelogue title award. The remark, shown at top, was a comment about the beautiful Ponderosa forest surrounding us.

We spun up the old doubletrack that goes out behind Schultz Tank to the ridge where Sunset makes its final descent back toward Schultz. At our first rest stop at about at about 8400', Lisa and I actually took a break...

...but Rusty got right to work doing his environmental duty, pulling up lots of invasive knapweed.

After we got rolling again, Steele got a shot of Rusty cruising through some lupine (which he did not uproot). He also smiled very nicely for the picture.

Well, maybe it's just some kind of endorphin emitted by lupine, but Lisa seemed similarly delighted by this field. Or maybe it's the spanking new Blur she's riding!

Lisa and Saeid spun along through beautiful environs toward Sunset at 8700'.

We stopped on Little Bear at an overlook. The exposure on this trail is fairly respectable. Steele's advice here: "Don't look at the scenery, or you may be part of it."

Maybe I should have taken his advice. For reasons that still elude me, I was suddenly going over the bars on a completely innocuous part of trail. I think it may have had something to do with that troublesome front brake. My bike flipped over me and flew off the cliff, but somehow landed right on a random branch protruding from the dropoff. I don't know if I could have balanced it there if I had tried!

After that debacle, Steele insisted on getting a shot of me back on the bike and in better shape a bit farther down Little Bear...

No endos for Lisa; she hammered the whole trail.

Probably the most satisfying part of the ride was after all these pics. We took a break at the bottom of Little Bear, and while we were sitting there, six bikers came bombing out of Little Bear and stopped, getting ready to set forth up Little Elden. These were the epitome of mountain bikers: buffed bods in sleeveless jerseys, shaved legs, lots of over-the-top bike banter. They were almost too darn cool for their Lycra. We gave them about a five minute head start, figuring we were just not in that league. Much to our delight, we smoked them on Little Elden about halfway between Little Bear and Schultz Tank, right at the little swoop around a ravine where it gets pretty steep for a short bit. Maybe it was altitude, but in any event, it was one of the highlights of the season.

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