More riding in the Sierras

I’ll get back to posting framebuilding stuff someday but I just started on frame #20 and don’t have much to show just yet. So more riding shots of the beautiful Sierras!
First shots are from the Hole in the Ground trail up on Donner Pass. I rode with fellow framebuilder Smudgemo who is up in Donner on vacation with his family. The trail is pretty sweet, although the last few miles are pretty hacked up and stair-steppy. It’s a very popular trail but we rode it on a weekday and saw almost nobody. Being ‘adopted’ by Patagonia, Clif Bar, and a few other organizations, you can imagine it’s pretty buff and well taken care of. The amount of concrete blocks carried in to buffet the trail is…just…astonishing. Great work people! We followed up the ride with a beer made by his wife’s brother with water from Iceland (good water, good beer) on the deck and talked about bikes (duh) among other things. Great to meet in person finally and get a really cool ride in.

Hole in the Ground climbing, Castle Pk on the right

Lots of granite riding

Ryan on his own frame

Lower Montez Lake lunch stop

Today I rode from Robinson Flat up towards Donner Pass on Soda Springs rd. The pavement ends at Robinson so it’s more of a four-wheel drive road that goes all the way to Donner, if you so choose. I took a right instead on road 96 that heads down towards French Meadows and bisects the Tevis Cup Trail. I turned right on said trail and headed down Red Star Ridge. The section of the Tevis trail is reminiscent of Winiger Ridge in my old town of Nederland but way longer at 6.5 miles and some more climbing (and in the middle of nowhere). The trail politics are pretty minimal too here with horses, motos, bikes, trail runners, hikers all sharing. After the long ridge run I turned right and continued on the Western States trail down into Duncan Canyon where I filtered for some new water and started the ascent back up to Robinson. This is a tough piece of trail on a bike with loose rocks and duffy dirt making you work every pedal turn. Oh and of course I front flatted again due to a rather big whitethorn…thorn. The burned areas here have an abundance of whitethorn that apparently thrive in the absence of tree canopy. The WS and Tevis Cup trail crews nicely try to clear the path for their respective races but lots of the old thorn clippings end up on the trail tread and people like me like to run over them. Ugh. This is a true record for me. Wonder if the lower 27tpi Knards would fend off thorns better. Until then I’m getting pretty good at patching.