Soul Revival

Hope everyone out there had a great Labor Day!

Labor Day weekend is awesome.  Gives me a much needed reprieve from work; and more often than not, ends up offering an opportunity for one of those mountain bike rides.  You know, the one that refreshes the palate.  Reminds you why you mountain bike in the first place.  The ride that is a soul revival from the church of two wheels.  For me, this usually means I'm heading out on a long ride, to new terrain, with friends.


Waking up on this Labor Day, I heard through the grapevine that Elgee (of A2B and Squirt Lube fame) was heading out for a good, long ride.  Hooked up around 10am, and started from his house to the Pipeline trail.  What was to follow was a 2 hour trudge up Hardscrabble Road, up and over the top.  4000 feet of net elevation gain - I have no idea how much climbing we actually ended up doing.  Probably closer to 5000 feet.  Plus, with all of the recent hunting traffic, most of the road was covered in 2-3 inches of loose, powdery dust.  Crested the top of Hardscrabble Mountain and started heading down the backside.  Hopped on the McKenzie Trail, a singletrack linking up Hardscrabble Road and Sylvan Lake Road.

Apparently, this used to be a trail ridden every now and then on the Wednesday night Shop Ride from Mountain Pedaler; but I've never been up here in my six years in the valley.  My synopsis of this trail:  super fun the way it is, could elevate to bad-ass status with a little maintenance.  That means all my Vail Valley readers need to get down here and ride this trail!  Downhill the entire way (at least how we rode it), weaving through the aspens off the side of Hardscrabble Mountain.  Some deadfall in places that you have to dismount for, but it's really an intermediate-level trail that will bring an ear-to-ear toothy grin to any rider's face.  Simply ride out Sylvan Lake Road / Brush Creek Road back to Eagle.

By the way - If any of you have an iPhone 3G or 3GS, check out the Motion-X GPS app.  Six bucks, and you get a full blown GPS unit.  You've already spent the money on the phone - why buy a Garmin on top of it?  The image above shows a number of the trails around Eagle (the BIG blue loop is what I rode today).  Just take your saved tracks from Motion-X, email them to yourself as a KMZ file, and open them with Google Earth.  Pretty effing sweet, if you ask me.

It's Labor Day.  GO RIDE!