Mt. Hood Biking

Yesterday I woke up a little after 6am to get ready for an awesome day of mountain biking. I loaded up the bike on the car and got all my stuff ready and headed over to meet Chris at his house. After Heidi made us some awesome lattes we were on the road. It was overcast and actually misting a bit until we got maybe 15 miles from our destination. Then it just cleared up and was beautiful. We parked my car at the Camp Creek campground and I jumped into Chris' car to go the rest of the way. We arrived at Timberline Lodge about 9:30, got ready and were on our bikes.

The Glade trail starts right next to the Magic Mile lift and goes down. Its a very steep, rocky, technical ride down the mountain. Constantly picking our lines, avoiding huge sharp rocks, trying not to crash, we made our way down the mountain. We got to the bottom and saw some buildings.... oh crap we went too far. We weren't supposed to get all the way to Government Camp, there was a turn off we were supposed to take. So we went up about 2 miles and proceeded on Crosstown Trail.

This trail was pretty fun, its faster and smoother so you can just cruise.. There were some creek crossings too. One of the creek crossing was a bunch of 3 or 4 inch logs set together. Chris managed to get a tire stuck between one and went down. Right into the creek!!! So he was wet and muddy the rest of the trip. We had a good laugh about that one. Also on this one there were some logs that were in the trail that you had to go over. I tried to go over one and then went right over my handlebars. Having my feet stuck in my clip-in pedals didn't help!

After the crosstown trail we hit up the Pioneer Bridal trail. This one is even more fun. Fast and curvy it whips through the forest. A few sections were really rocky with sharp big rocks. I came into one of these sections way to fast and about ate it hard. I didn't crash but I did get a flat tire. So I changed that out and we were on our way.

Once we made it back to my car at the bottom, about 13 miles later, I opened up my backpack and pulled out my car keys. The treasured car keys. (this is the key (pun intended) item that was forgotten by my good friend (I won't mention names) the last time I did this ride. We had to ride our bikes all the way back up!

So it was a great day of riding. On another note, later in the afternoon a friend of mine helped me fix up my skid plate for my truck. I got to weld for the first time!

ok bye