Avoiding the rain….

With carpool plans to Taos falling apart, I managed to convince Hugh to get in a few fat tire miles, at a leisurely 9:30 start time. Which, for Hugh, usually means a 9:45 start time. I left a few minutes early, hoping to catch a few free tips from the Kisiels’ mountain biking clinic, but they saw me coming and sent everyone on a break. Nothing free for me….

A note about the weather. Los Alamos’ weather has been bordering on incredible lately, but has posed a few problems for cycling. After a very dry six months, the monsoon season has arrived and July has been wet. very wet. There has been enough moisture in the air tha tthe dew points have been hovering near the average morning temperatures, meaining that clouds are condensing early in the morning, and then not disipating through the day. Some days, the rain has been punctuated with severe thunderstorms, others it just rains off and on all day, and on others, it doesn’t rain at all. But, for the past 10 days or so, all of these days look the same, from sunrise to sunset, which makes it difficult to predict if you’re going to get wet during a ride, or more importantly, if lightning is going to start during a ride. But, the influx of moisture is doing its magic on the trail surfaces (can you say tacky?), the termperature (highs in the 70s), and on the vegetation (even the locusts )

So Hugh and I hit the road about 9:45 (such an easy guess). . As we rolled out from his house, every peak around Los Alamos was obscured by the clouds. We were going to get wet. After 5 minutes on the road, we hit the trails. LA is a greta place for mountain biking!! We planned on hitting the trails along W. Jemez Road, and then climbing from the top of Nail Trail up to Guaje, but Guaje was still socked in and looked pretty uninviting. With all the recent rains, July was a very wet month, the trails were in excellent shape. No dust to be seen, and when the trails are in this condition, descending Pajarito canyon is a delight, so we bagged Guaje and bombed Pajarito. During the climb from the top of Nail Trail to the top of Pajarito Canyon, we talked about flowers, and only flowers. Los Alamos is undergoing its annual explosion of colors! We don’t rival Crested Butte for the total number of flowers, but we do represent with the number of varieties, and it is Hugh’s contention that the flowers in Los Alamos are more striking because of their subtlety and their stark contrast with the rocks and the burn zones. And I think that he is right!

After blasting through Dickless, we headed up western perimeter and headed out towards Cabra. At the Rendija intersection, Hugh suddenly realized what time it was, and we had to head back towards home. So much for Cabra. We hit Walnut and Bridges and finished off the ride. A short ride for a Saturday, but a great ride with great company. Much more interesting than my Ipod, my usual ride companion..

Total numbers for the ride.. 32×18 ratio, 22.71 miles, 3634 feet of climbing, and ~3 hours and 22 minutes, but no pictures…

I had no pretenses about carrying my SLR during this ride. I didn’y need the extra 5-7 pounds in my pack, and I didn’t think that I’ve ever be waiting for Hugh long enough to get it out of the pack anyway, which leaves the pocket camer. But Carrie had a grrrrlie ride planned as well, so she called dibs..She hooked up with Amy and Donna (the usual non-male ride suspects) and, up from the ABQ, Jeni and Denise. You can read about their ride (and our subsequent bbq at Donna’s house) on Jeni’s site, but here are a few pictures taken by Carrie..

They started a bit later than Hugh and I, so where we saw clouds, they saw the tops of the nearby mountains..

Early on they ran into a hiker that grew weary of sharing the Quemazon trail with four hot mountain biking grrrllls. hmmmmm..

Amy, with her constant smile, shows relief as she summits Quemazon

Jeni rides through the local contrast of new scrub oaks and burnt out trees on the Perimeter trail