So after 3+ years of living within 4 hours (make that 4.5!) of one of the premier mountain bike destinations in the country, I finally got a chance to get my tires dirty there. In a last minute "are you sure you want to do this" decision, I loaded up Friday after a long work week and John "The Punisher" Perry and I motored towards the Western Slope. The weather promised to be outstanding all weekend, and that promise was upheld. We couldn't have asked for any better weather. We lucked out and instead of having to camp at a remote state park, we got to sleep in a newly built custom home courtesy of some friend's very gracious parents who recently moved to the Western Slope. Oh and they fed us a ridiculous amount of food too...
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Day 2 started with a hearty breakfast, an extra hour of sleep due to the time change, and a group of 7 of us heading west towards the CO/Utah border to Rabbit Valley to ride the Western Rim trail. There was some discussion about trying to do a Bookcliffs ride or something closer, but it was all new trails to me so I was game for anything. Western Rim is a 15ish mile roundtrip lollipop loop that starts with a steady uphill climb and then all the sudden opens into a downhill rim ripping singletrack blitz around the edge of the canyon. Our group motored on pretty well, getting most of the mechanicals out of the way the day before. Only a flat and a small crash (neither mine) held us up today, and since I was due to be home I was off the front pushing the pace as much as I could.
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I had just completed a guided ice climb in the Sierra Nevada, and had a couple free days to play, so I drove up into the White Mountains to do some bike riding. I hadn't been up there since I was young (25 years ago) and had very little information except that the main road traversed the ridge top. Now, my typical MO is to go out and just explore randomly. I usually shun the map and compass, and I don't like to be too informed about a potential adventure - that's cheating!! In this case, my propensity toward 'getting lost' really got me into BIG trouble.
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Where the hell is Rapelje, Montana?? Its about 25 miles north of Columbus, MT amongst cattle pastures and hay fields. Driving north from Columbus you can see Rapelje out in the distance...it literally looks like a speck in a sea of wheat fields. Beyond the town itself are some buttes, but other than that it looks like the middle of nowhere. This is Montana's ONLY 24 hour race, and it was our first race. Despite the fact that it was only a 12 - 14 mile course, I decided that I probobly better ride a five man team so I didn't embarras myself too bad. I called up one friend and asked if he was interested...he said he knew of one other guy who wanted to ride the race. He brought in the last two members of the team.
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