But, we don't really live in the woods; we live in a modest neighborhood, surrounded by houses. I can see The Peaks from my backyard, but from my house, I can only actually see one trail; I can see it when I'm standing in my driveway. It's called The Lost Burrito.
Thing is, almost nobody rides The Lost Burrito anymore.
Back in the day, when I first started riding it, it was a hairball of a trail... 1200 vertical feet of crazy, rocky, steep trail, with a few genuinely scary no-fall zones near the top. It was very difficult to ride up, and always required a few portages. But it was pretty much rideable down, if you had the courage to stay on your bike while locked into a terminal skid on a steeply sloping trail.
I hadn't been on the Burrito in several years... perhaps as many as five, until today. Since moving into our new house in June, I've been staring at it daily... and it's been calling to me... quietly but persistently coaxing me to come ride it.
So today I did.
No longer merely a hairball, the upper quarter of The Lost Burrito, quite frankly, humiliated me. What had once been a rideable test-of-courage was now nothing more than a near-vertical screefield, a rockslide, a viscous, unpredictable talus-slope-of-terror. I walked several parts of it.
Fortunately, the view from the top is still spectacular. And descending the much-less-steep, still-swoopy-fun bottom three-quarters of The Lost Burrito trail is great enough to almost make you forget about the fear you tasted on the upper portions. And seriously, how often does one ever get to descend 1200 feet in under a mile? So I walked a bit of it. It's still an amazing claim-to-fame for a trail (or sheep driveway) of any kind, fully rideable or not.
Baaah!
If you're curious you can view my entire Lost Burrito Loop at Everytrail; it was a shortish ride for a Saturday morning... Dogfood to AZ-Onceler to Little Gnarly to The Lost Burrito... about 11 miles... but a perfect just-one-waterbottle ride. Watch as I descend at under 4 miles an hour! Better yet: Watch-and-learn as I avoid Schultz Creek Trail in its entirety on a Saturday.
1 comments :
nice, real nice.
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