Mark and I drove to Milano's in Glacier, where we got a couple lattes and big brownie and met Jason, who led us a merry chase all over the Glacier area for the next three hours.

We started out riding to the river and hike-a-biking up the rocky river shore for a ways before picking up a very nice singletrack that took us further upriver. There were a couple very steep drops and ups as we climbed and dropped from the higher bluffs to the riverbank. Mark and I rode this trail with Tom DeBari a couple years ago, and it is beautiful for its vistas of the bottle green river, and the deep mossy woods.

Then Jason led us up the Thompson Creek Rd. to the top, where we picked up a singletrack down that was very interesting, with some technical interludes and a lot of speed in places. When we hit the road again, we turned left and climbed to the top of the next turn to the left, where we found the top of another section of singletrack.

This is the new one that John Hindman built this summer while he was recuperating from his knee injury. It's a real howler, beginning with a seriously deep log drop (at least as deep as the biggest on Bob's Trail after the evil corner), which is followed by a really impressive big drop. Mark and I both thought it is longer than the Big Drop on Bob's Trail, with an exit sharp left that is steeper and quicker than the one on Bob's too.

Jason rode both the log drop and the big drop (barely bringing it under control as he brushed a sharp-branched scrub fir). Further down was a nifty swooping slatted ramp up onto a fallen fir, which Jason launched at speed, and I walked to study.

After this, we came into a really magical area where the emerald green moss was so thick on the old logging road grade that John used for much of the trail that it seemed to make a magic kingdom. This won't last as the trail gets ridden more.

Finally, John's Trail dumps out into a steep drop into a roadside drainage ditch and up onto the Thompson Creek Rd. again. We all swooped in one after the other, and then spun back to Glacier with Jason's dog Cleo running alongside. Great day!

Approximately 2300 verts.

Vert Quest chronicles "The Man Known As Mongo's" pursuit of the World Record for climbing on a mountain bike, 404,000 vertical feet, or the vertical equivalent of 13 sea-level-to-summit ascents of Mt. Everest during a 12 month period. Mongo's mountain bike climbing tricks are distilled in Mongo's Over-the-top Guide to Climbing.