(Click blog post title for trip video) Keith and I left for Vernal late Saturday night. The sky did its thing above Fruita and away we went.
I awoke at 5 AM to the light of the rising Sun AND Moon, my sleeping bag covered in moist dew. It was a chilly night in the heart of the Book Cliffs, camped just a little too close to a roaring gas line pump station. Noise aside, it was a fantastic camp. I fell asleep to shooting star after shooting star.
We rolled into Troy's camp at about 7AM. Having risen so early we just threw our bags back out on the ground and waited for our guide to awake. Troy owns Altitude Cycles
http://www.altitudecycle.com and is always ready to take us on a rip any time we make the pilgrimage up north.
More friends from Fruita arrived, Maria and Richard, and we were soon riding...er hiking, sweet sweet new trail.
For sure the steepest hike-a-bike I've ever done, but oh man was it worth it!
Looks like a normal seat post clamp right? Well, the bolt holding it together was sourced from an unlikely spot after the stock one broke half way down the mountain.
We stole it from the brake mount, and then used the chain tool from a Crank Brothers Multi Tool, plus some Presta Valve nuts for spacers, to fill the missing brake bolt hole. I'm pretty proud of the team effort it took to come up with this most unlikely trail fix!
We were in the saddle all day, which for my current state of "fitness" was quite long. I was glad to finally sit down by the campfire with a full stomach and watch the light fade away over distant single track. For a Spring that has seen me sick most of the time, it was good to get some long technical miles on the bike. The light for most of the day made for mediocre pictures, but we did shoot some video. Check it out here...
http://vimeo.com/24438586
Nice thinking on the fix!
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