Spent the weekend camping on a friend’s property in Oak Creek, near Steamboat Springs. It’s always a good time with this crew, plenty of grilled meats and whiskey around the campfire, punctuate with mountain biking and SUPing and playing ball with the doggos.

This was to be a solo mission for me, meaning sans girlfriend but taking the doggos with me. She worked all weekend, so I figured taking the responsibility of the puppers off her plate would be nice. It’s a couple days later as I type this, and they’re still sleeping. Ruff life.

Saturday, me and my friend Elroy decided to do some exploring of new-to-us trails. We rode Mad Creek, Saddle Trail, and lower Red Dirt Trail. We were… a little disappointed.

Sometimes you roll the dice and come up
Snake Eyes.

Later on, I’d discover the trail I really wanted to check out in that zone of Steamboat wasn’t on maps for a reason… might need to head back and do some incognito exploration.

Sunday was the Big Ride™ day, we “shuttled” up to the top of the Spring Creek trail with the intention to climb Flash of Gold, then descend Grouse Ridge to the Spring Creek DH, and coast back into town. We’d still have to chase a truck at the top of Spring Creek afterwards, but we’d save ourselves 5 miles of climbing… which would bring our total down to 10 miles of climbing instead. Woof.

At least the views were awesome, and the descent down Grouse is one of my favorites… super technical and highly entertaining.

Monday morning came and Jay fixed another amazing round of breakfast burritos, we got packed up, and hit a hot lap on NPR before leaving town.

I took one of the more scenic routes out of Steamboat, up and over Lynx Pass. Great drive, and didn’t take a whole lot longer than the standard route over Rabbit Ears.

I did manage to overheat my truck climbing up towards the Eisenhower in stop and go traffic. I really ought to get that radiator fan clutch looked at, I think that’s the issue.