Aug 03 2008
A ride at Keystone
It’s been awhile since I’ve written and I apologize for that. For some reason my energy level for sitting in front of a computer and outputting anything meaningful has been rather low. Work is suffering because of it and I’m not sure what I need to do. But that’s neither here nor there, and certainly NOT what this entry is about. Cycling at Keystone Resort, Colorado, is what this is about.
So yeah, I’m trying to get back in the saddle since my two week hiatus. I returned from a two week stay at sea level (basically lake Huron in Ontario) and never once got on a bike for anything more than just shuttling my ass from one point to the other. And to think, I’m supposed to be heading to Crested Butte Colorado with 5 guys for 4 days in just a few weeks. Four of the five guys are old mountain biking buddies from my riding days in Boulder. One of them is still a super hard core rider and the other three are just intense, fit blokes, who just so happen to ride well. The other guy? I dunno…
Anyway, I thought that I’d get as much saddle time as possible between now and then. Just to sort of shock myself back into some semblance of shape. One of the things that I find suffers when I’m off my bike for any extended amount of time is my downhill skills. My balance and timing just go out the window and I slow way way down. They come back pretty quickly (4 or 5 rides), but it’s a bummer for those first few times back in the saddle.
A high(er) altitude day was just what I needed as well and my wife suggested going to the hills in order to avoid the heat here in Denver (19 days of 90 degrees plus…and counting.). I was all over that in the hopes that I could sneak out on a solo jaunt. Success, my wife was totally cool with that idea!
I chose Keystone because I’d never ridden there and thought that a ride in a place that I’d yet to do any riding would be pretty sweet. So I called the resort and asked about suggested routes up the mountain. See, they do a LOT of catering to the downhill crowd at Keystone and the last thing I wanted to do was become a hinderance on some trail that an armored, speed crazed downhiller was railing. Luckily for me I chose the right date, it seemed that the lifts were shut down for shuttling bikes and most of the trails were clear of downhillers. Yippee!
So I get off at the crack of 11:30 am and arrive at noon, unload my gear and bike and viola, a bike patrol guy sees my stuff and comes up and asks if I knew that lift shuttling was shut down. I responded that indeed I did and that’s why I chose today to come. He laughed and proceeded to give me some really great suggestions about routes.
I ended up starting up Easy Street, hitting Bluegrass, Celtic Way, Let it Ride, Suz’s Cruise, and Girl Scouts to the top. One of the things about riding at an area is that the trails are VERY well maintained and that there are only certain trails that you can ascend on. The trails that I’ve listed are all classified as “greens”, meaning that they average about a 6% grade. I middle-ringed it the entire way up the 2300′ to the summit and was relatively unfazed. It’s honestly a really fun ascent. Very gentle, nothing nasty and no super lung busting sections. It was just what the doctor ordered.
On the way down I took Eye of the Tiger to Mosquito Coast, the end of Paid in Full to Boy Scouts, Bluegrass and ended with an adrenaline rush called Helter Skelter. Now, before I rode Keystone I might have said that their bike trails are a lot like their ski trails; Pretty mild and rather tame, like Disney. Helter Skelter changed my attitude very quickly.
On that one short little descent I tumbled no less than three times. The last one I was thrown down with such force on some baby-heads that I honestly thought that I had broken my hip. It was nasty. The trail was (for me at least) extremely steep. There’s a sign up top claiming that the features on the trail are very technical and to be wary. I thought “Hey, I’ve ridden some of the nastiest stuff around, this can’t be all that bad.” Well I came to the first little techincal section, a wall ride and cleared that easily and thought well this can’t be all that bad. Next thing I knew I was looking down a chute that Salvador Dali must have designed. It was twisted.
Two short, narrow, and VERY steep sections, connected by a switch back caused me to swing back around, shift down, take a deep breath and re-approach. I easily cleaned the first part, lined up the second very slowly and just touched the front brake. HUGE mistake there. I instantly went head-first into the tree standing right at the corner. Crash one. I couldn’t remount due to the angle and had to slide down about 30′ with my bike, completely embarassed.
Second section was pretty easy, a series of whoops and turns which caused me to seriously maintain control and speed. I fell somewhere in there too. Nothing dramatic, just a result of not being on my game and out of the saddle too long previously.
The last fall was by far the most spectacular. I could see the base area and knew I was close to the end so I turned it up a bit on this small chute. The only real obstacle besides the narrow steep descent itself was a couple of cow-head sized rocks sitting willy nilly all over the trail. I made it past the first few and was eyeing up the exit when WHAM, the gravity monkeys caught hold of my handlebars and I was on the ground in an instant. I came down so hard that my breath exploded from my lungs with the impact and I hit my hip on one of those aforementioned cow-head rocks. “Oh shit…I broke my hip” was the first thing through my head as I lay there. Lucky for me this was not the case.
I laid there reclaiming what little of my composure remained to me and limped back to my bike, re-saddled and off I went, completing Helter Skelter and laughing in the face of death. Well, maybe just chuckling at his shoulder?
Observations: I love my Intense Spider XVP, it’s the cat’s ass. Not as smooth as my Santa Cruz SuperLight on the down hill but overall it’s an amazing bike that just eats the uphill and can keep a guy honest on the gnarly downhill stuff. Keystone gets a “hats off” from me. I really enjoyed the trails, the service and the maintenance. For a free time at a resort you can’t go wrong. (IntraWest prides themselves on stuff like this so it’s really no surprise I suppose.) I’m getting older and some of those gnarly falls hurt a bit more than they used to.
All in all it was a great ride. Yes, even the crashing on Helter Skelter. I know I could have cleaned that with the right frame of mind and a little more time in the saddle. I’ll be back.