October 5th (Afternoon)

A really good ride today! I managed to keep a good pace along Copperhead drive in the 7th cog (a long, slight uphill stretch where I’m normally spinning on the 4th cog). I had a really good pace going up the Hugh Allan hill as well, mainly due to the fact that my left knee was really bugging me again so I was concentrating on pulling a lot more than usual.

Going down into Peterson’s Creek was good, and I made the creek crossing but stopped as I wanted to take a picture of it with all the leaves.

It’s a blurry shot, and my camera doesn’t do the colours justice at all, but it looks kind of neat still I think?

Once again, for like the 5th or 6th time in a row, I messed up the climb up the east bank (just behind where I stood to take the above picture) and didn’t make it. Frustrated, I turned the bike back around and tried again, making it the second time. Not sure why I keep screwing this climb up, but I figured enough was enough and I wasn’t going to leave ‘till I made it successfully (thankfully I made it on the 2nd try and not the 22nd!!!).

I decided to take the bypass trail today as well, mainly because I’ve been having troubles with this climb when I should make it almost 100% of the time. Sure enough, I got about 30% of the way up, and I messed it up (couldn’t hold the right line). Again, I turned the bike around, rode back to the bottom and tried again, telling myself that I WAS going to make this climb today! Again, thankfully, I made it on the 2nd try as well!

The rest of the ride was really good. I cleared the rock “wall” easily enough. At the end of the single-track on Frolek’s land, I did a bit of exploring to try and find more single-track but I found nothing. So I headed down to Frolek’s lower road and continued on. At the gate, I noticed that Brian had finished more of the trail than I’d thought, so I decided to give it a whirl. He made it a bit too tight of a corner to make with momentum, and a bit too steep to just power up! Hah! I would think with some practice and once the sand is worked down flatter it should be a good trail. It turns out that Brian did finish the trail, and I rode it all the way up and around. Nice work, Brian!