25 September 2009 - 13:09SSWC – Being There – Part 2 (Electric Boogaloo)

After our muddy melee, we were offered the opportunity to go check out the “hard” part of the SSWC course.

There was much bicycle cleaning going on at our place that morning. I am amazed I even had brake pads left. The almighty Magnatron (aka Mike Maggs) and his buddy Carl from Philly showed up to do some last minute tweaks to our individual setups before we all set out to see the sights.

Our little hacienda turned out to be in a very convenient location indeed. We were right at the base of the climb up to the trails where the event was being held, and Matt McFee from Hermosa took us out to check out what was the gnarliest part of the SSWC course. It started out as a road climb up behind our place, then it ducked into the trail for a powerline climb. And this was the easy part.

Then came the hike-a-bike. Many of you readers out there may have heard about the hike-a-bike already. It is not like anything I have ever carried my bike up before. Holy crap. I have heard several mutterings about just how steep it is, from 26% to 75°, either way you slice it, it is really effin steep. And it is long too.

The result was a magnificent view over the Ft Lewis campus towards Durango. Wow! Maggs was so moved he called someone…

We were up on Raider Ridge, and by the looks of it, we were on a hiking trail that followed the ridgeline. And wouldn’t you know it, this was the way we’d be going! It was some of the scariest stuff I’d been on in a long time. It was very rocky, and some spots left zero room for error. I walked a lot, and my knee was starting to become very angry with me. This was some very hurky jerky uber technical riding.

You could see all the suckers -whoops I mean riders hiking up from below.

The kicker: it was all deceptively flat, and pretty much everything required some sort of a power move to get up and over. Damn! It was also very exposed, not only to the sun and elements, but also to the big drop to the right. It was in your head all the time.

I probably rode about 50% of the ridge, scared out of my mind. We finished out  the last descent into the start/finish area, which was a feat of strength and cunning all in of itself. Baby head rocks that hate you and mean you great physical harm prevent you from getting to the bottom unscathed. My brakes actually even stopped working completely, and smelled like the charred bits on the ground near a runaway truck ramp.

A super tight corral let you know where you were:

The gauntlet had already been thrown. The “powers that be” decided that the cut off time for this part of the course was 2:30. We did it in practice at 2:19 at a lackadaisical pace with lots of stopping.

We ended things there. Had some beers. Went out for dinner. Went to bed wondering what the hell was going to happen tomorrow…