"Adventure" ride

Well, last Saturday my Honey was out-o-town playing in the snow at Keystone, so the time was right for an Adventure ride. One of those rides you know may be stretching the limits of both sensibility and endurance, and I was able to con Mississippi G and 4father into doing it with me! Here they are pulling up to the meeting point at the start of our 'Cross bike assault on Rampart Range Rd. The idea was to ride from Chatfield south through Sedalia, climb to Rampart Rd and head south to an previously unexplored exit road heading east, which comes out on Perry Park Rd, then back to Sedalia and homeward.

Things went well until we got all the way to Rampart Rd. With every ride into new territory comes the risk of encountering the "unknown factor", and this ride was no exception. Rampart Range Rd. is gated this time of year, due to those couple of poor S.O.B.s who attempted to hike up to the Firewatch Tower in midwinter a couple of years ago. They ended up freezing to death, and made it so the F.S. closes the road now every winter. It's only accessable to ATVs, motorcycles and the hearty Hellclimber on a 'Cross bike.

What my smaller than normal brain didn't take into account was that the closure of the road meant no maintenance too- DUH!! The road had deep snow on it with deep ruts cut my hundreds of ATVs and then frozen and re-frozen each evening. We got about three miles down the road and had to turn back, as keeping 5 m.p.h. was a pretty agressive pace. Coming back was a great bike handling experience. Imagine taking your road bike on the Olympic Luge run......Got alot of weird looks from ATVers. We're gonna try it again in a couple of months.