Today we ride! No … HA! Just kidding! YES! WE RODE TODAY! WooHoo!
Got up not TOO early, because it was colder than a witch’s … elbow … we’ll go with elbow. It was COLD this morning, even with an electric heater (thought about testing the furnace, but if things were to go awry, night is not the perfect time for disasters), it was still COLD. In the upper 30s, I think. Maybe very low 40s. COLD. The boys were considering doing the 747 thing again …
Anyway, got breakfast in town to save time, and headed out for Bear Basin. It’s only about five miles from downtown McCall, so it’s not a huge trek … could have ridden the bikes, but I’d rather do all my miles in the dirt. And today we DO plan on “many miles”.
We get to the trailhead (sorry, forgot to take a photo), and there are some vehicles there, all from Idaho. Good sign! Hang out a bit, getting ready, and some folks return from their ride … I decide to approach one of them and ask for some advice. He’s friendly, and a treasure trove of information. It helps to be friendly (yes, I CAN be friendly … just don’t often choose to be …). Anyway, kill enough time so it’s after noon, so it’s time to head out. This trailhead is not on our big map, and that’s all we have, so … we’ll brave it anyway – we have GPS! We take the obvious trail out, a little climb, then it starts a gentle drop … I like this! Good warmup! After about a half mile, we get to a junction of four trails and two roads … ok, one road, but it comes in here and goes on there … like I said, two roads. Six choices. What to do, what to do. There are some signs. We came from Baby Bear. Other trails (clockwise from above) are West Face, Grand Traverse, unnamed road, Sleepy Hollow, and another unnamed road (Ok, ok, same damned road, but it comes in one place and goes out the other – TWO ROADS). Anyway, there is a sign between the trail we came in on and the second road that says the trailhead is down that there same road. WAIT! I thought we came from the trailhead! IS THERE ANOTHER TRAILHEAD? Damn! Ok, I have to know, so off I go down road 2 (yes, ok, it’s only ONE road here … oh, never mind!). It says it’s only half a mile, so no harm done. And it goes to … where we parked! But it’s hidden from where we parked. Very confusing. Well, I’d always rather ride singletrack than a road, so we go back down Baby Bear, to the Grand Intersection. Well, that’s what I call it. We don’t flip a coin to decide, as The Bear proclaims we’ll take Grand Traverse. I really don’t care, I just don’t want to be the one to decide – if I don’t decide, then I can’t get yelled at if it’s a bad choice. Well, ok, I’ll get yelled at anyway (married life, kids, just face it), but at least I can tell myself it wasn’t my choice. Anyway, off we go!
Grand Traverse is pretty nice. No steep climbs or descents, just mild ones. I like this. We come to an intersection. two trails, but four ways to go (I’m trying to avoid another “two roads” argument). We see two signs, Grand Traverse (makes sense, it tells us how to continue), and the downhill one says Lower Drain. No sign on the other one, but it’s obviously a downhill, as we can see a banked turn just up the trail. We’ll just continue on GT. After a bit, another intersection, and one of them is … West Face – we’ve seen that before! We have NO idea where we are, but we know West Face will take us back where we came from, so off we go! Again, nice ups, nice downs … a great ride … and we come upon an open area! I’d just remarked how close we were to the highway (I could hear the traffic), when we come out on a HUGE parking area for another trailhead! The Bear finds a map cache and hands me one, then goes out to investigate, headed for the highway to look at the sign, when I look on the map and see that this is the West Face Trailhead. Wow! What a coincidence! That’s the name of the trail! Who’d’a thunk it? The Bear returns, and we see that, on the map, it’s actually the Westy Corridor we came from, and the Westy Trail back to where we came from. The good news is … WE HAVE A MAP!!! And looking at said map … it’s good we did not take Lower Drain … it is an Expert section. We’ll find out later exactly what that means. It’s good we did not take Lower Drain.
We take the Westy Trail, and get back to our starting point. Time to eat. Get some bars and some Gels, and chow down. As we do, a couple of guys show up a ways away. After a couple of minutes, I decide to go ask for advice about the trails. they’re friendly, and give us a few pointers, so we decide to take Sleepy Hollow. Some of the advice they gave us was to avoid Lower Drain – EXPERT section, VERY rocky, with tables that have drop-offs of over six feet! It’s good we did not take Lower Drain!
Down Sleepy Hollow, out to a road, and across the road is Blue Ridge, which we decide to take. In a bit, six guys catch us, so we let them pass – they’re young and fit, we’re old and slow, but they tell us about Upper Drain coming up, which we had decided to go try – their advice tells us it was the right choice, so we follow them and almost try to keep up. Soon we arrive at Upper Drain, and they’re right – twelve banked turns that you can SCREAM down … and scream I do … well, ok, it’s not really me, it’s my rear brake – it’s been screaming ever since I baked it in Boise on that motorcycle downhill. Gotta get it fixed, but not today. Wow! What a fun ride! At the bottom of it, we take Grand Traverse back the way we initially came, to go back to the Grand Intersection.
Ok, while out on Blue Ridge, we had seen a trail called Della’s Delight, so when we get back to the Intersection and we again see one of the six guys, we ask about it, and he says it’s a fun little downhill, then also tells us of some other trails he likes around there – Mack’s Connector and Rising Sun, so then we ask about Ditch Witch, but he’s never done it so … ok, we have to. And off we go!
Ok, we HAD to do Della’s Delight, because DORBA’s (Dallas Off Road Bicycle Association, NOT Drunk, Obnoxious, Rude, Belligerent Assholes – well, ok, some of us might be) treasurer is Della Bird. If she knew we had been within spitting distance of a place called Della’s Delight and had not ridden it … it would not have been pretty. Can’t blame her for that! The Bear liked it, but to me it was a bit disappointing after riding Upper Drain. If you come out here, ride Della’s Delight FIRST, then do Upper Drain. After that, Mack’s Connector takes you to a jeep road that goes straight up, and you catch the almost-top of Rising Sun. Ok, but you catch it in the middle, and we’re only going to do the bottom, twisty half, as our guide told us it’s the most fun. And fun it was. Not a lot, but fun. We ride back out to the bottom of Della’s Delight, and take Polar Express over to Ditch Witch, so we can get back to the Westy Corridor, which we’ll take back to the Westy Trail and back to the Grand Intersection. Whew! Before DW, one more snack. Bars and Gels. Wrong kind of Bar – I could sure use a Guinness right about now! DW is fun, as have been ALL the trails out here. Did you catch that pattern? I have not had this much fun on a bike this whole trip! The Bear thinks that next year’s DORBA Women’s Camp should be held here! Two hundred miles of trails, and two ski resorts that will take you to the top so you can just do the downhills. And these trails are (so far, with no reason to doubt they’re ALL as good) some of the best I’ve ever ridden. They don’t do monster climbs, they take you up, give you a rest, take you up, give you a rest, all the way around. Fine examples of great trail building – THANK YOU CIMBA (Central Idaho Mountain Bike Association) … no, not Simba … that was Tarzan’s elephant, and I’m not sure how he would have done building trails at 5,000 feet. But CIMBA does an EXCELLENT job. I’m joining up! The guys we met on the trail (the group of six) were from SWIMBA (SouthWest Idaho MBA), out of Boise, and they also know how to build good trails. Kudos to you all!
Ok, here are some photos:
Yes, beautiful scenery. Colorado has nothing on Idaho. AND they have some sane gun laws – I could live here!
Oh, yeah, and here’s a shot of The Bear as we make the Grand Intersection at the end of the day, when we’re almost done:
Stats for the day? Not great, but good for us – 16 miles in four hours, but there was a lot of stopping to rest and to admire the scenery. It’s not a race, folks! It’s all about being out in nature and trying to stay healthy. My cardiologist is going to be pleasantly surprised when I get back to Dallas.
Oh yeah – the shower I spoke of? Here’s a photo:
See the teeny-tiny point it comes to? That’s so it can funnel every bit of water pressure and blow the top few layers of your skin right off your body!
To be fair, there is ONE thing they got right – PLENTY of hooks, so you can hang everything you need – see?
Towel, shirt, shorts, and shower-things. The dirty shorts can just go on the door knob. PERFECT!