Mark taking the view at the top of Cleator Rd, and then plunging
down one of the innumerable drops on the Double Black Diamond Trail.
Rode the Chuckanuts with Mark Adriance on a glorious blue day. We climbed the Fragrance
Lake Rd instead of Cleator, which is an improvement.
At the top of Cleator we soaked in the view of Lummi and the San Juans, and then scampered up the rock to the very top. I rode it up the first face into the trees, up the first narrow pass, and punched up over the log drop above that, but I ran out of steam near the bottom of of a root carpet that is surmounted by a large log drop. Whew! What a killer climb!
On the way down (and down and down), the Double Black Diamond is as sweet as NW
singletrack gets. Most of the way, the trail plunges down through a big old forest with
innumerable steep, rooty stairsteps and switchbacks. The size of the trees and the absence
of lots of big log crossings makes it clear immediately that this isn't Galbraith, but the
trail is still challenging in the extreme.
There is nothing cheap about the Double Black Diamond, it impresses by dint of honest verts and a relentless dedication to the fall line that reduces the riders' forearms to instruments of pain from gripping the brakes.
When we got to the bottom of the Double Black Diamond, we headed for Lost Lake, and then down the trail to Arroyo Park. The last part of this, as we came down to the trail through Arroyo Park, was also primo: more big trees with a steep, snaky singletrack tracing down, down, down. When we got to the bottom, we were both whooping with glee.
Approximately 3000 verts. |
