It’s the winter that won’t stop. It’s been rainy and cool in Denver and dumping snow in the mountains for weeks, I hadn’t seen the sun in a while, and avalanche danger has refused to ease. What better way to spend the weekend than head west to visit friends and ride bikes in the sun?

It rained all Friday night (and was still raining Saturday morning) in the Roaring Fork Valley, so we decided to head West to the desert for some riding, and ended up at Mack Ridge. It was a very late start, not rolling until after 2pm.

It was perfect – sunny but fairly cool, fun singletrack, good riding company, and best of all – no avalanche danger.

The pace was nice and relaxed, and we took a short break in the shade about half-way through.

It’s beautiful out there, especially the Colorado River overlooks.

It was a great ride. The next morning we decided to give Prince Creek a shot for some shuttling (after stopping at the Village Smithy in Carbondale for breakfast, of course), since the rain finally stopped in the valley and the sun came out. Kacey came along for the first lap, and managed to wear herself out pretty quickly.

A couple minutes in to the day I bailed off my bike at the top of a pretty big berm, and my bike ended up upside-down in a tree. I wish I’d taken a photo. We went to the site of this video, though Andrew did it a little more cleanly.

We did four laps in all, with perfect tacky dirt the entire day. In addition to great riding, the scenery is phenomenal as well. I could get used to being out there more.

On the last lap down, we beat the shuttle car down and immediately were concerned. After a few minutes of waiting someone asked us if we were waiting for a guy in a Jeep. We got some not-so-great news and pedaled back up a mile to find this.

It was pretty well stuck. Fortunately, someone in a Wrangler had a winch and was able to pull it out.

We got back to Carbondale just in time to get poured on by more rain. A quick stop for burgers and milkshakes later and I was on the road for home. Can’t wait for next time.