Tuesday evening…… With the weather having been crap the last few days, and a day off ahead, myself and Eric start to debate our plans of heading to Golden to ride the Moonraker trails.

We figured we would make the call in the morning.

In the morning the weather looked like it was supposed to rain, but…..it looked like it would rain way less then in Canmore. So we went with our riders instinct and said, screw it, it’ll still be fun, lets go any way, we can always turn around and go for beer.

We woke up in the morning to see a better forecast then Canmore, and hadn’t heard any rumors of  flooding in Golden, so, off we went to Golden to ride….

It rained on and off the whole way, but seemed to lighten up as we got closer to Golden. We figured that we were in luck and would have some reasonable riding conditions.

Off to Cedar Lake we go to hit the trail head.

As we prepared to get ready it was a nice drizzle, not too bad. But by the time we had prepped and the bikes were ready…..It was a downpour!Doah!  Being too proud to turn around and go home, we figured we would wait it out a bit. After a 15-20 min wait, we either tricked ourselves into believing it was raining less or it actually was( i think the first was the case).

Off we went down the trail, before we had gotten 200ft into the trail we had realized that the trails were 100% saturated. But, we were soaked and dirty already, so we might as well keep going.

Can you feel the enthusiasm at this point? We could.

The trail started off wet and only got worse.

It was right about this time that i noticed i had made a rookie move, I left my water bottle in the car…..but we were too far at this point to turn back.

Now being faced with interesting trail conditions we had to change our riding style a bit. no longer was the objective to try and find the fastest smoothest lines, the plan had changed to whats the driest possible way to finish this ride…..

A common sight we came across on the trail, water filled tracks.

We didn’t lat long before we were so wet, soon enough we would go through mid crank arm deep puddles and rip through the shallower ones at full speed with out a care(maybe even a few laughs and smiles at how ridiculous it was)

Sequences of splash’s

Paul Givin’ ER through the wet stuff.(notice the focus in the eyes)

Even with the trail being super wet, all the great work  the Golden Cycling Club has done has kept the real boggy areas bridged over. Their good work allowed us to ride  a trail that we could ride and enjoy, even in the most wet of conditions.

 

The plus side of all this rain( you may not believe there to be one, we didn’t) was how amazing the forest looks when it is fresh and wet.

We took advantage of the rad setting to have some fun and shred the mud and water.

Eric ripping a sweet manny!

The folks in Golden are even nice enough to provide a dry place to pee in the middle of nowhere. Thanks.

The ride went on and we had a good time, completely soaked, freezing, questioning weather we were completely stupid for having just done  this ride.

Once back at the parking lot and changed into dry clothes, we actually looked back on the ride and though….Man, that was stupid and ridiculous, but….. a ton of fun.

Now that we were completely dirty and soaked it was time to clean……

Off to the car wash we go!