down facing ride

On Tuesday I went mountain biking on the Kenai Peninsula. I chose Resurrection Pass as my virgin trail and it pretty much kicked my butt.

It was beautiful scenery, and I made lots of noise so as to not spook grumpy furry beasts. I did manage to spook two grouse while biking and watched a porcupine waddle away as I was driving in.

There were lots of campers on the trail for mid-week. I like that when I'm biking solo.

I couldn't go all the way to the pass as there was 4' of snow there. In fact, I never made it to the snow.

I climbed 10 miles, over 1000' in a little over two hours. It only took 1.2 hours to get back down, definitely the fun part!

Here is the mighty steed:

Notice in this one you can see the exorbitantly priced stars and stripes bell (it's next to the bright yellow GPS/ radio):

This photo reminded me of the movie Into the Wild where a boy tries to live in the last frontier with no actual experience.

He tries to learn how to make it by reading books, taking notes as others tell him how to hunt. In other words: he had no experience, just the book-learning. I would compare that to reading how to walk and then thinking you are going to run a marathon.

I won't give away the ending, but it doesn't go well:

Ever wonder what it would feel like if you got injured and had to ride on the back of a bike/ horse/ ATV looking down as the rider tried to get you to help quick-like? Well my helmet cam was pointed a bit down so here ya go: