Sunday, July 26, 2009

Misson Creek July 2009



















The Mission Creek ride holds special meaning for me as it was the ride that I met my wife on in 2001. The club has not done this as a group for some years now too. Mike Riddle tearing up his knee on the ride probably did not help matters. I often do it as a partial ride with my dogs, gives them a different place to go from our normal haunts with a steady supply of water for them. Last year I did this ride alone and ran into a bear and luckily learned to tell about it. I scared the bear away believe it or not.

Anway, I scheduled to take this weekend off awhile ago. When Steve Largent visited us a few weeks ago we invited him to come up this weekend to do a few of his favorite rides. Mission Creek qualifies as one of them.

Mission Creek starts off as a paved road then becomes a gravel road, then a dirt road and then a trail. We park at Jacques Spur just north of Cul-de-Sac, Idaho. Mission Creek takes you up just short of Winchester, Idaho.

This year we had a few new comers to the ride, Doug Goodenough, Scott Trost, Jen Trost and Bill Arnold (a couple of my favorite riding companions and good friends). They are always up to trying something new, exciting and adventurous. Scott, Jen and Doug were a bit wary of doing the ride as they had a huge ride scheduled for Sunday, some monster ride of 70 miles and 10,000 feet of climbing! (And people call me weird).

Anyway all the new comers enjoyed the scenery on the way up. We got to see some relatively thick forest, something unusual in this part of the Inland Northwest. Scott was taking it easy on the uphill not wanting to tire himself for the next day, he chose to walk several chunk of it. (I won't comment on his wimpiness here), his wife also walked a good chunk of it too as she was not crazy about a lot of the loose rock. She also did not appreciate getting her feet went at one of the creek crossing but into each life some rain must fall.

Steve was riding a new Superfly 29er mountain bike. This was his first time riding a 29er off road and he loved the thing. I'd been telling him for years how well these things worked but he did not realize how much of a difference they make. He also just ordered a custom Waterford 29er off road touring bike. He was riding sections of Mission Creek that he'd never done before.



Scott was riding with his GPS and figured out a new route for the trip that allowed us to get onto McCormick Ridge road from Mission Creek this was very cool. He found a new road none of us had ever ridden before. It eventually put us onto an old over grown logging road that Steve new as a boy.


Carol, my wife, who often struggles with this ride had an awesome ride. She was riding stuff she had not ridden in years and was even able to ride sections that Jen (we won't mention her wimpiness here either) was walking. We were all very impressed with how well she did.


We all made a safe return to the starting point to go our separate ways. We hope Jen, Scott and Doug had a safe trip on Sunday.























2 comments:

  1. Good write up Sean. I enjoyed the Ride. We should get back up there again this year.

    Doug

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  2. Oh, more pics here....... http://www.flickr.com/photos/doug_goodenough/sets/72157621860463902/

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