Friday:
Cameron rented a 2009 full suspension Specialized Enduro MTB. We rode up to Brown Mtn (the bottom lollipop of this ride) . Everything is good. Then my light goes out. Down to one light and it's 9:30pm. Then Cameron does a skid-out on his rental, the reflector jams into the chain and knocks off the derailleur. Broken derailleur.
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My extra derailleur hanger doesn't fit. We take off the chain. I'm riding single speed so between us we have one gear and one light. Screw it, go down the singletrack anyway. Did I mention this is Cameron's first night ride? We go about 1/2 mile before we decide to break the chain and convert his no-speed into a single speed. Success! Then 100 yards later, it steps up a gear and pulls so tight against the cassette it becomes a fixie. Drop it back down, and baby it for the rest of the trail. We descend El Prieto on on single speeds, at night, with only one light. Did I mention we drank PBR and Natty Ice at the top before all this fun happened?
Saturday:
After tooling around on the motorcycles waiting for the derailleur to get fixed, we drove the truck up to Cherry Canyon for some easy singletrack riding. We started off climbing the bitchest of all trails there, then leveled out, had some fun on some jumps, drank a few beers, and descended back to the truck after exploring just about all of the singletrack. This was a good picture day, with lots of shots of beautiful SoCal in the background.
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Sunday: Using the two-car system, we drove up a couple thousand feet to the start of this 14-mile singletrack descent. It was easy going for a while until we hit some rocks, then more rocks, then more rocks through the stream, then got lost (MY FAULT!) halfway through, descended on a singletrack perch several hundred feet above a canyon, then realized that's not where we wanted to go, climbed back up and righted ourselves. The rest of the ride consisted of many stream crossings, some 100% undoable, some doable with speed and a really big gear. We came back wet, bloody, and I had a tick in my thigh!
