Waldo Lake Mtn. Biking

This past weekend Thor & I and our friend Sean went to Waldo Lake to mountain bike for the weekend with a group of people I knew through River City Bicycles. We camped at North Waldo Campground -- which was beautiful -- but POPULAR. Our friends Julia & Dean got there on Wednesday and saved us a spot and they said the campground was completely full by Thursday afternoon. We'll have to remember that in case we want to go back next year. The location was perfect because we didn't have to shuttle to any of our rides - the trailheads were right there in the campground!

Thor & Sean prepping to ride on Saturday.

A shot of the campground across the lane from ours where we spent the majority of our time drinking beer by the campfire!

Saturday we rode the Waldo Lake Trail that circumnavigates Waldo Lake. The trail is about 22 miles long and begins & ends in the campground. We rode into the 'burn section' first - there was a fire in the area about 1996 that burned one side of the lake -- here's a shot I took of the burn section from across the lake.


A shot of myself on one of Thor & I's many breaks. (Thor was very nice and rode with me the whole time - which was great because I'm just learning about shifting & things like that and was by far the slowest rider of the bunch).


Another shot of Waldo Lake on Saturday. The lake is incredibly clear -- we could see to the bottom no matter how deep the lake got -- absolutely gorgeous!


Sunday we headed out towards the Twin Peaks Trail. I say headed because only a few people actually made it there. I managed to break my chain twice on Sunday. grumble. Here's shot of the first obstacle that rallied my chain:


I swear it was worse than it looks in the picture! The resulting damage is below -- we had to take out 3 links in my chain.


About 30 minutes later we hit a long section of uphill and just as I was getting to the top -- PING! My chain blew apart again. Here's a shot of Thor & our friend Brice fixing my chain for the second time.


After this second episode (minus two MORE links from my chain) I opted to ride back on the main road so the boys could continue on towards the top of Twin Peaks. This resulted in my riding my new single speed mountain bike along 8 miles of this:


Not so much fun. Fortunately for me my friend Sage had stayed back in camp so when I got there she was ready to go hang out on the boat dock with cold beers & snacks. Yum. We also got a good amount of swimming in right in the middle of the day -- here's a pic of Sage before we started swimming for the afternoon.



It was a great weekend with good friends & excellent trails -- I think we'll definitely head back to ride there next summer too!