Goose Creek Loop

Nick, Brett, Chad

Moat to island uncrossable by scouts

Overlooking a canyon, rocks in back ground typical of area

Chad, Nick and I headed off Friday to the Goose Creek Trailhead Friday to take advantage of the long weekend.  Our plan was to camp Friday near the trailhead and hike about 20 miles Saturday and Sunday.  We ate dinner on the way to the trail at Zoka's in Pine Colorado.  From the outside, it looks like a hole, but it is an amazing restaurant.  We each had their Zoka burger, and it was amazing.  Once we got to the trail parking lot, we set up camp and attempted to make a fire.  Dry wood was hard to come by.  Despite using 22 ounces of fuel and a lot of other stuff, we could not make a fire.  Saturday morning came, and we were off.  We hiked about 9 miles at a pretty good pace in four hours.  We got to our pre determined campsite ,which was on an island, at about 12:30.  This gave us plenty of time to hang out.  During the next three hours we had some sporadic rain.  After that, some pesky boy scouts tried getting to our island.  Thankfully our moat was uncrossable by the scouts.  Saturdays fire attempt was very successful.  Our fire lasted from 4:30 to 9:30.   Sundays route was quite a bit more taxing.  There were 11 miles to go to finish our loop.  The weather was comfortable despite the overcast appearance.  There were three notable climbs during the hike.  The second climb took us from 9,000 ft. to 11,000 ft.  The scenery was amazing.  Everywhere we looked we saw tall aspens and pine trees, slab style rocks and canyons, and we seemed to follow a river and even crossed it several times on log bridges.  Rain broke during the last two hours of our hike back to the car.  The loop was pretty nice, different from what I typically see in the mountain ranges of Colorado.  Despite periods of bad weather we had a lot of fun.  

WRIAD on a SS

Side profile with ridiculous backpack

Brett, Jeremy, Marni, Chris

Early morning in the middle of the drop in

This past weekend Erik, Chris, Marni, Jeremy and I headed to Moab for a White Rim In A Day trip around the desert.  The forecast looked good with sun and warm temps.  And warm they where.  We made the initial climb up Mineral Bottom rd. to warm up and warm up.  I took my Gary Fisher Rig, which is a single speed, and used a 32x18 gear, which was perfect.  The start was a little difficult, but with the climb out of the way, my gearing was good for all but a couple climbs.  Even though it is a hard tail, it felt pretty decent on the descents as well.  The sun was bright and as the day went on the temperature approached 90 degrees, and there was not a cloud in the sky.  We ran into a couple groups that asked us how many days we were doing the ride in and where our support vehicle was.  I always get a kick out of this question.  The answer is one day, where as most do it in 3-4 days and are supported.  We carried everything on our backs, which usually works out.  By about mile 90, some in the group needed to stop at a campsite and ask for water.  The last mile or so is about 1 mile and a thousand feet up to the vehicles.  I was probably able to climb 75% or so with a mix of walking included.   103 miles of riding a single speed, 9:08 on the bike.  Riding the single speed on the White Rim was one of my goals for the season, and I finished and felt good afterwards.  

Sunday we woke up and went to the Jailhouse cafe for a nice breakfast.  Chris and I climbed a couple routes up on Wall Street just outside of Moab.  The first route we did consisted of climbing a crack for a while.  The second had a couple tough moves with obvious holds after the third bolt, but Chris was able to get to the top anyway.