Little Bald Mountain

Clancy, Deb, and myself drove over to Whistling Jacks in Cliffdell, WA on Friday nite. We got there just after 8:30, when they stop serving food, but they were sports and served us anyway. A few beers and a steak later, we backtracked a few miles on 410 to get to our camp site, which was called Halfway campsite, or something like that. It was right at the base of the ride, so was very convenient. Saturday AM we returned to Whistling Jacks for breakfast, and realized it had a very nice view of the river.

Eventually, Tim and Walter met us at the base of the ride, where we started the shuttle. It was exactly 15.0 miles up a forest road to the start of the ride. The conditions of the road was very good for the most part. A couple of spots were rough for my car, but we got by them fine. Walter and I were wanting to ride up the road, but had second thoughts as it seemed we would be splitting the group. No biggie, the ride down was plenty fun for the day.

The start of the ride had a significant amount of climbing and scree fields. That was a surprise, being at elevation and having a few beers the night before, and a heavy breakfast, I was quickly pegged as there was no warmup. The ride down even was a good workout, as most of it required pedalling as it was not very steep - the 2800 foot descent was drawn out over 15 miles, so it had a lot of flat spots and even a few more small climbs. The views were fantastic, as was advertised in the guidebooks.

At the start of the ride, my rear brakes were rubbing, so Tim and I adjusted them, thinking it was a simple matter of being off center. There was a small amount of warpage. I wasn't too concerned at first, as the last two rides (Mt Margaret and Tiger Mt) they were performing great. Soon, it just went kapooey. Brake squeal started to sound more like metal on metal, and they were stinking. I was fairly certain I was about to ruin my rotor, but there was no bailout on this ride and I figured I would rather pay the fifty bucks for a new rotor than to waste a great ride. Later in the day, I pulled the brake pads out, and found the left pad had much of its metal scraped off, and the clip was missing. It looked like much of the rotor was gone.

I was wanting to do Cowiche the next day, but having no rear brake it seemed wise to just go home Sat night and go bike-part shopping the next day. It was nice to stop at the Mint along the way. The hard part was passing by Ranger Creek and not riding it. It was a fun time on Saturday for sure, but I really would have liked to start the day earlier and ride up the road to make for a more honest loop.

Clancy

Deb

Beaver Lake: Microsoft Day of Caring

60 of my colleagues and myself spend the day doing trailwork at Beaver Lake. This was my first time there. The trails were in fine condition, for MTB singletrack. The goal was to make the trails better for multi-use, including horsies and hikers. Half of my coworkers focussed on a new parking lot area, where they did a lot of landscaping. The rest of us hit the trails. Most of us doing trailwork were trimming the sticker bushes (salmon berry bushes or whatever). Despite the multi use, there was not much horse crap. Next time I would like to see a bunch of rakes, as that would have made cleaning the trail of dead organic matter a bit easier. Lunch was provided and we all got XL t-shirts. This made for a very nice day. I think we only hit about a quarter of the trails, but that is fine because the trails were really not that bad condition to begin with.