TandemHearts

It’s been about three years since I have regularly ridden my mountain bike.  The accidents I had in 2007 really messed with my confidence on the bike and I’ve been putting much of my time and energy into training for triathlon.  I have missed the dirt though and this summer we’re planning a mountain bike trip to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, so I need to find my mountain bike place again.
Black Diamond Mine Regional Park is about a ten minute drive from our house and has a lot of vertically challenging trails.

This is the elevation profile from our ride on Saturday.  We rode up the Oil Can Trail and then did the back side of the Ridge Trail, known as The Wall.  I LOVE climbing out there.  It is incredibly challenging because it is steep and quite rutted from the storms we’ve had and the cows that graze out there in the spring.  It takes a lot of thought and strength to get to the top.  I’m really digging how strong I feel climbing.  It’s been awhile since I’ve felt this good on the mountain bike, not since 2006.   The descents… well I’m working on loving those again too.

This is on the flat section, before beginning the climb up Oil Can.

This is about half way up Oil Can which has has about a ten percent average grade.  We stopped on the way up because I was getting freaked out about descending through the ruts.  I was considering just turning around at this point, but I decided to stick it out and ride to the top.

The views are incredible up here.

  And I survived the descent. 

Here I am partway up The Wall.  Enlarge this picture to see Oil Can in the background.

All in all it was a really enjoyable ride.   I’m really looking forward to doing it again.