Leaves of three...

We didn't accomplish what we set out to ride but I can't blame Derek too much. He's been off the bike for a few weeks now with his rib injury and then another pinched nerve in his back. It was a long hard ride and we had no idea what was in store for us. We got an early start and drove about an hour out by McKenzie Pass. We then rode about 6 miles of mostly uphill on a serious grade of pavement and then dirt road until we hit the trailhead an hour later. It was a brutal singletrack climb for another 3.5 miles. The trail was overgrown with all kinds of vegetation. I chanted, "leaves of three, let them be" for about the first arduous mile but then that disappeared from my mind as I just tried to keep pedaling uphill. It was so steep and narrow that it took us about an hour to go those measly miles. It was really hot and humid back in the forest and when I would scootch forward on my saddle to get as low to the bike as I could on the really steep parts, sweat would squeeze out my shorts and drip all the way down my legs into my socks. We didn't have that great a map but we were looking for a singletrack to split off the side of that trail and one appeared so we took it. The trail was primative at best and very hard to see in places. We were riding through bushes and vegetation that was shoulder high! The ground underneath that you couldn't see, was choppy and rough. After picking through a couple miles of that Derek started getting skeptical. We might not even be on the right trail and he was already dead tired. So, angrily, I turned back. I hate having to abort ride plans but in all, we climbed I don't know how many thousand feet and rode about 13 miles or so all uphill and then back downhill.

And now for the pics.









I was riding out front following what I thought might have been the trail when all tracks disappeared and all I saw ahead was this.




You couldn't possbily fit another tree in here.