royal gorge

Today was my second time at Royal Gorge. Last time I came out here with Geo, Jack and Joe. We rode in Geo’s Prius, which we didn’t think could handle the rough dirt road to the trailhead, so we ended up hiking several miles on dirt roads just to get to the trail (the Palisade Creek Trail,) so we didn’t get very far on the actual trail. We saw some mountain bikers on the trail that time, so I figured it would be fun to try to explore the area on a mountain bike.

The drive on the dirt road is pretty fun in my Subaru.

We ended up parking next to another Subaru.

We started biking on a dirt road. Dave leads the way.

We biked along a nice lake. The trail started out as dirt singletrack, but we lost the trail really quickly when it turned rocky.

A crazy rock garden. We actually cleared most of this on our hardtails.

Sick and slick granite slickrock.

We couldn’t find the trail, and it was too rocky and bushy to ride the bikes. We ended up ditching our bikes here and continuing towards the gorge on foot.

No sign of the trail… We hiked for a bit but decided to turn back.

My legs got pretty scratched up from the thick bushes.

On our way back we got completely lost. We found ourselves on the shore of an unfamiliar lake. I stupidly left my gps in the car, luckily Dave had his iPhone and reception, so we were able to figure out our way back to the car.

What the heck? How did I get a cut on my shoulder/bicep while biking/hiking?

We definitely weren’t prepared to bike here. I had stupidly forgotten my helmet in the car, and I didn’t have my gps with the correct maps and route (which is why I left it in the car, thinking it would be dead weight.) Despite completely losing the trail and getting lost we made it back. Somehow when I bike with Dave we end up getting into these sorts of adventures. I guess there’s a thin line between adventure and disaster, if we make it back in one piece we can call it an adventure, if someone gets hurt I guess it would be a disaster. Thankfully there hasn’t been any disasters yet…

Things I’m thankful for:

• random adventures
• the fact that despite my crappy preparation so far there hasn’t been any disasters