Sunday, August 17, 2008

Fromme at Sunrise

This morning I was up and on the road at sunrise; witnessing a golden morning sky is truly a sweet sight.

It had been a long time since I rode Mount Fromme (Grouse) so I made it my venue of choice for today's ride.

Riding the Rune has opened up a lot of options for me as a rider because it is such a good pedaling and climbing bike. In fact I had my bike set up with a single front chainring and a chain guide today and I had no issues at all climbing up Mountain Highway and up the gravel access road to the trail head of 7th. In the past I used to need a granny on mountain highway to the gravel, but not anymore.

I like to climb at a mellow pace and today from the water towers to the trail head at Secret 7th it took me 55 minutes. I also took note that it took 15 minutes from the bottom of 7th to the top of Upper Oil Can.....more on that later.

So 7th, the infamous 'secret' trail of yesteryear. This trail is such a great trail to flow down at a mellow pace an just enjoy the terrain and the spectacular trail work done by members of the NSMBA. I had a very nice ride as seen in the video below.



So keeping track of my climbing time was important on my first ascent. It gave me a good idea of my pace in the morning, but also gave me a good idea of how long my second lap of the upper trails would take. I started back up the trail to Upper Oil Can and 15 minutes later, I was riding down again.

I very rarely ride Fromme and Upper Oil Can (UOC) but today's ride felt great and brought back memories of riding it at night a few years back with Rob. It seems I haven't been riding skinnies enough lately as I slipped off a few in the super technical section, but most were cleaned with a smile.



I had kind of planned to the ride Ladies Only after UOC, but I remembered that I had never ridden Pipeline, so I decided to give it a go. I think I made a good choice. It's a wickedly fun trail with low consequence features all along the trail.



So after Pipeline I traversed over to Lower Ladies Only. Unfortunately by this point I had run out of recording time on my camera so I was not able to film Lower Ladies. Just think old school steep, some tech and the very first roller coaster in existence.

Down to the car and I was home by 9:30am.

It was nice riding Fromme again and getting in a good pedal. Next time I'll make sure to have enough film for Lower Ladies for sure.

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