We only went .6 miles before Bigbird's chain broke. I used the downtime to replace my clutch lever, which had its ball end broken off in the parking lot when my bike fell off its sidestand and tipped over into my truck. In the first loop we did while Bigbird was pumpkin-wrenching, we lost placelast within a few miles.
After rejoining for the second loop, I pointed out to Bigbird his bike was leaking oil and he said it was hydraulic fluid and he didn't mind. I had no idea Katooms had black hydraulic fluid.
We followed a bunch of new ribbon (Quicksilver course?) and did a few u-turns and wrong-ways, but Jonala never let us down by getting us into horrible situations. Although that rocky downhill I remember from the QS was pretty bad, it was fairly short. At the bottom, Bigbird followed a hint of a trail into manzanita and I stayed back. I recalled doing something similarly unwise at this same place at the QS years ago so I waited. That's when Bigbird came back and said he had an oil leak. Well no kidding! We took the second-easiest looking trail out and back to the main road.
Bigbird eventually fixed his leak and rejoined us.
I was at Clear Creek just two weeks previous, when I covered 55 miles of trails. This time around I think we rode on only one trail I did on my last ride. This place is huge!
The pace set by Jonala (sometimes Bigbird) was good. I only wanted to go faster on some of the downhills and I dropped off the pace on the choppy, whooped-out uphills. But we were all good about waiting at intersections and nobody was more than a few seconds behind. I got the impression Bigbird could have gone a lot faster, but he was content with the pace and usually wanted to ride in the sweep position.
The last trail on the last loop was a little too much, a single rut snaking downhill through bushes and manzanita. Once I stalled it I just held the clutch in and paddled along. One bush snagged my goggles pretty good and another got under my visor and almost took me off my bike.
My enduro computer recorded 42 miles at the end of the day.
Let's do it again sometime! I'm thinking Stonyford next weekend.