Bruce on the way to the Cedar Grove.
Rode Red Mt with Mark Adriance. We climbed the usual way from the end of the South Pass Rd. through the quarry and up the old horse trail.
It was my first ride on Red Mt. since I got the Cannondale Jekyll, and our first exploration of the Lost Camera Loop trails since last fall. The ride also provided an interesting benchmark for how Mark and my riding has progressed.
The climb remains a strenuous physical test, with pitch after pitch in a relentless
snake charmer's dance, each with its own place to let your progressive exhaustion undo you
(here the trench full of baby heads, there a extremely steep climb out of a creek
crossing, etc.). Mark and I now ride farther before the first stop point, which is now at
the top of the first steep climb after the trail forks off from the Silver Lake Trail.
From here, we climbed all the way to the Cedar Grove, which we both agreed could be a mountain bike stunt Disneyland -- there are big hunks of natural old growth cedar planking lying around, along with a lot of downed trees. The drop from the Cedar Grove remains an interesting technical descent, but nothing very hair raising by Galbraith standards.
Then we circled back up on the new logging road system to the Lost Camera Loop, which
we rode twice for the fun of it, and for the purpose of establishing a complete loop
without any road. Need to take saw from Piano Drop up to Lost Camera Loop. With one Vine
Maple pruning just after the Lost Camera Log, the whole loop would be an interesting ride.
Comin' around for the third time, we took the other fork (right fork through the mud hole) on the Lost Camera Loop Trail, which drops you down a couple of rather technical faces culminating in what we call Alex's Drop, because at 13 years old he rode the right-hand root-drop fall away sight unseen last summer when Mark and I were both afraid to attempt it. There are a couple of very nice steep, technical root drop switchback combos in the two sections on either side of the new logging road, but unfortunately the flow was broken up by a lot of large windfall across the trail.
All in all, Red Mt. remains a beautiful and demanding couple thousand verts. There are some steep technical sections, but nothing beyond what you'd see every day on Galbraith, sans all the man-made stunts. Best of all, it's right here and we had it all to ourselves.
Lots of flags made us more nervous than ever that we may be seeing the last of some of
these woods and these trails.
Approximately 1900 verts.
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