Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Mountain Bike Oregon 2007

This past week/weekend, eight friends and I attended Mountain Bike Oregon.  There were some rough edges for the event, but we wound up having a pretty great time, and some superb riding.  Matt took his new Sportsmobile on pretty much its maiden voyage here, and I slept in the top bunk during the trip - very cush, and certainly nicer than camping.  Some of the others had an RV, and Rich and Barry each slept in a tent.  

On Thursday when some of us had arrived, we did a quick two hours on the south side of the Salmon Creek trail.  This is a really cool trail.  I'd expected something kinda lame, since we could just ride to this, and heard it was just a quicky loop from town, but it was very good!  Very scenic bridge/river crossing bit at the end too.  

Friday was the big epic shuttle of the Middle Fork.  33 miles I believe, about 5 hours +/- riding time.  The chaos began in the morning with a bus ride gone wrong: driver got lost.  What was supposed to be a 1.25 hour shuttle, became 3 hours!  John, our Google Earth guy, used a GPS and the map and got us on the right track, and we all made the ride and loved it.  

Saturday we did the Tire Mountain/Alpine shuttle, which was just awesome.  I was totally knackered on the climbs, but the descents were so sweet!  Lots of long, flowy, fast, tight singletrack, some extreme switchbacks, and just great stuff!  I ran out of water with about an hour to go, which sucked, but oh well.  This was a really great trail. 

Sunday it had rained all night the night before, and was still in the morning, and most of us had to get going, so we just packed it in and headed out after breakfast in the rain (the MBO folks had put up some tents/EZ-Ups, so it was fine).  

A few of us took pictures:
I rode my Reign for the duration.  It was great on the Middle Fork, but I think I'd actually rather of had my Niner on Tire.  There were some rough spots, but I just love my Niner, and the lower center of gravity.

The Specialized folks were at MBO, and I got to take a quick spin on their new 5" travel 29er.  No doubt about it, that's my next bike - will be getting rid of the Reign for that.

Monday, August 6, 2007

Two Great Rides This Weekend

Matt was visiting for a few days, and we rode on Friday and Saturday. Friday we did Brice Creek, and Saturday Larison Rock. Both were good rides, even if I screwed up and had us do the Falls loop portion of Brice backwards (we probably had to hike 3/4 of the climb).

Matt did a good job with the photos and blogging of them, so check these out:

Brice Creek

Larison Rock

Make sure to check out the photos page - you'll see we rode under the waterfall, and so on.

Also, as Matt said, we know now that we'll almost for sure want to try to get in the Larison Rock shuttle while at Mt. Bike Oregon. I was absolutely hating life on the climb, but the descent was superb, and will be a great shuttle. It's not real long (3.5 miles), so we will be able to tack that on to whatever else we do say on Saturday. Probably a good Saturday will be to shuttle Alpine and shuttle Larison Rock. We may be knackered after Friday's epic, so a couple great shuttle runs will be sweet (Alpine has a few climbs during the descent, but it's probably 17 miles of descent and 1 mile of climbing :)

It was harsh having been off the bike for a couple weeks, and just getting back from traveling, but what a great couple days we had. Matt had also scoped out this great hidden hot springs (we soaked in water up to 108 - or Matt tried the 108 pool, the 106 was plenty for me, and the rather chilly river was fun too).

I also found that that Sport Legs stuff is quite effective (thanks Matt). And, that damn if the lemon-lime Sport Beans aren't awesome tasting (and I think working) when you are seriously bonked out.

I rode my Niner at Brice, and the Reign at Larison. Have the Lyric fork dialed in fairly well now, liking that. Wished I had the Niner on the climb up Larison, but was glad to rip the descent on the Reign. I've upgraded to 8" front, 7" rear rotors on my Reign now (and may go
to 7/7" on the Niner as well), for the long descents here. Makes a really nice difference, as I was getting some fade and such out of the dual 6" I was running before (especially somewhere like Alpine or Crawfish where you're into 5+ miles of continuous descent).