Down the face...
  Last viewed: Dec 09, 2009, 08:12:01 AM (GMT)

Winnemucca, NV--Sat in with the usual Thursday bunch that climbs Winnemucca mountain. Brian, who's a deputy sheriff I think, and Jeff, a high school English teacher, were there on road bikes; Chuck and I on mountain bikes.

Chuck rode up this trail that must have been at least a 40% grade... no wonder he liked that movie Spiderman so much. "It was only because you guys were watching," he claimed.

From the saddle at the top, Chuck and I went right on the little dirt road, then onto this rocky saddle section, then onto this long watermark sidehill singletrack around a hill that sloped about 60%. I was a little freaked out, as the trail was about six inches wide in most places, and though I rode some of it, I tripodded a lot of it, outriggering my inside leg to put my COG a little closer to terra firma. Views of town in the evening sun far below might have been spectacular, but I wasn't looking down.

Then, abruptly, Chuck plunged downslope, off-trail, practically handstanding on his bars, skating and sliding if he locked his wheels then letting it out a little in places straight down the face toward a little ridge that formed a few hundred yards away... I took a few deep breaths, lowered my saddle and followed.

Sometimes, you'd hit a little rock and it would start rolling along with you, underneath you, a beachball underneath a circus bear. Sometimes, your back wheel would lift and you'd have to drop the front brake and spurt ahead a little too fast. When the runout spot on the ridge seemed close enough for safety, you could let it free and cozy up to gravity a little bit more.

From the ridge, a funny little footpath started switchbacking down the ridge's noseline. "We saw it the year the mountain burned," said Chuck.

The ridge was not a lot less steep than the slope above--between a 60% and 70% slope. That is to say, horizon and mountain formed two sides of an architect's 3-4-5 angle, with the right buried somewhere down there beneath you.

The trail zigzagged down, switching back every 20 to 50 feet, the turns thrillingly compact. I rode all the left-hand ones fine, but I still dislike tight right switchbacks. That's because on a motorcycle, the right foot operates the rear brake so you can't both brake and outrigger your right foot around a right-hand corner. I grew up riding motorcycles in the desert, and I never got over the feeling of discomfort.

The ridge trail ended with a dipsy-do gizmo that was pure carnival ride. The trail gradually steepened and loosened, until you found yourself just plunging down this chute so steep and loose that you wouldn't have a prayer of stopping on. But it's okay, because you can see the runout below--which cuts across the corner of a road and then up a singletrack on the other side--wheee!

From there we picked up Ski Run, another singletrack that peels off the inside of the road bend. It grooves and wiggles downward, a hemispherical trench pouring out onto a road down by the water tanks.

Eschewing the road we angle off cross-country for the corner of the fenceline, where we cross a cattleguard and hang an immediate left on Fenceline singletrack. Fenceline centerfuges you through three deep gullies, of which the first is the most dramatic: after dropping twenty feet, you're thrown up against this singletrack wall that arcs up and right, brushing one shoulder against a rusty barbwire fence if you aren't careful.

Then we're back in town and cruising the streets back to the shop, another excellent afterwork epic that Chuck has ridden "Ten times. Yeah. About ten times a year."

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