Some watch the road, others fly over the edge. Courage isn’t wings, it’s a decision. 🚴🔥

another adventure, but it was too windy for road bikes today. fun fact when it is windy and 34-36C as it was today? the wind does absolutely fuckall to cool anything down and makes wildfire risk extra spicy as well 🫠

Photos:

midway up the prairie trail on the network i ride a bunch. the Flatirons, because they’re famous ofc, seen from a slight angle

the trail i rode up to get here, there’s more climbing too. this is the flattest MTB ride i can do in this region incidentally, only 315m D+ for a 2 hour / 30km ride.

yes it really is that hot in the shade lol. everything’s in metric; i dont use freedom units cos i work in the sciences for a global corp.

shot from the top of a big flowing descent that i like to rail when trails are empty like today. old cattle tank, Flatirons in the background. you can see these mountains from everywhere along the Front Range, they’re very distinctive.

plaque at the trailhead commemorating the Marshall wildfire. over 1000 homes burned. the most tragic part of this was that it happened so fast and during a workday that evac notices didn’t go out until everything was already on fire. we had to communicate via twitter and nextdoor then the mobile network partially died because the cell towers went down. homes burned to the basements. vehicles burned to just pools of metal slag. i was on holiday so i wound up out on a nearby road helping the owners of a horse ranch i ride past almost daily free all of their horses onto the road as the fire approached to get them out of the path, all while a massive wall of smoke and embers ran towards us on 150kph winds, which made it hard to even stand up. absolutely terrifying. thankfully their horses got out. yes only two (human) lives were lost but so, so many people lost their pets.

a little hard to see it’s so zoomed out but there’s lots of critters on that hillside. these trails are on county open space that is part of a working ranch, so there are big herds of black angus cattle everywhere and sometimes working cowhands on horseback. plus lots of cow pies on the trails.

more Flatirons views from the trailhead parking lot. they finally finished rebuilding it this spring, 5.5 years after it all burned down in the wildfire, although part of that involved digging out and extinguishing the coal seam fire that had been smoldering for over a century in this location, as it was thought to be a partial contributor to the Marshall wildfire.

Danger on the Divide

Maggie Slepian is back with a gripping story of outdoor adventure gone wrong hundreds of miles into the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route.

A few friends had completed the route the year prior, both regularly riding 90 miles each day. They recounted their trips casually—one broken chain, a few grueling passes, some Achilles issues. On paper, the logistics were also easier than my thru-hikes; the only moderate concern was our compressed timeline. Matt had to be back for late-summer guide work, but if we averaged 70 miles per day, we’d have time for rest days and any mechanical issues.

We ruthlessly reduced our pack load, eliminating extra weight to make room for water and account for the oddly shaped bike bags on our ultralight setups. I removed my extra mid-layer, swapped our cookset for a smaller model, and we decided against the satellite communicator. The route was highly populated and the older inReach weighed a hefty eight ounces. It hit the no pile with a thunk.