DJ's Journal: Idaho- End of days

End of July 2013

I spent another day in Sun Valley just soaking it all in and then going for a grueling bike ride on the Red Warrior trail. The ride back bombing down the mountain was great, but the ride up left me with just enough energy to once again refresh myself in the hot spring and then sit my butt down along the bank of Warm Springs Creek for the evening. Appeased and enthralled by nothing more than listening to the creek's incessantly melodious babbling while watching the tiniest of fish maintain itself against the current while zipping left and right to capture its food. My big concern for the evening is wondering where will the little fish go once its belly is full? For the moment I prefer to not think about the fact that there may also be bigger fish in the stream.

Pettit Lake at night.

Afraid that if I didn't leave the area today I might never leave, I packed up and drove up to Stanley, Idaho and dropped in on the Stanley Adventure Company to meet a new friend of friends who said to stop in and say hello. I find my options for the evening are restricted because of a forest fire in the area, but luckily the picturesque Pettit Lake area is open. So I set up camp there and hope that today's 70% containment status of the fire means they will open back up the Fisher Creek Loop in the morning. It's supposedly Idaho's best mountain bike trail and it would be a crying shame if I didn't get to partake of its offering.

Kayakers avoiding the lake sharks!

After I managed to repair a solar system snafu in the morning I strolled down for some leisurely reading by the lakeside which, by the way, has a view to die for. Other than the view the only distraction was one boy who swam out to a point with his older brother, but was scared to death to swim back alone, clinging to a large floating log like it was his protector and savior. Someone had mentioned the word shark and after that you could hear him shout, "It's the dark water freaking me out!". Of course there were no sharks in the lake, nor anything else remotely dangerous or scary in the dark water which was actually quite clear. They were all in his head. It's funny how we can become fearful and paralyzed by nothing more than illusions created by our minds. Silly boy, silly minds.

After a while I decided that the Rangers had had enough time to open up the trail if it was going to happen today and decided to head that way to check. The wood fairies were smiling upon me because they had indeed opened the Fisher Creek Loop. It was surely a somewhat epic 17.5 mile ride, but there were two shortcomings.

1) To complete the loop you have to do some road riding which is a "no-no" for any truly "epic" mountain bike ride.

2) I crashed! After the long climb a connector trail starts the downhill and it's very fast, sandy, has lots of switchbacks and is a very narrow singletrack right on the edge of the seriously steep and deep precipice! Seriously sketchy!! So much so that at the moment in question I was overcompensating and favoring the inside when I caught the singletrack's wall and bit it pretty hard and fast. I suffered some scrapes and a nice gash on my arm while nearly kissing a tree stump intimately, but all in all it could have been a lot worse. With the exception of that and one downed tree on the Williams Creek trail which could easily ruin someone's week, month or life the rest of the ride was real sweet! (I'll only take off an additional quarter point deduction because the stream at the end of the ride where I cleaned up was horrifyingly frigid ;) But now I'm just nitpicking!

Stanley Lake, Idaho

I knew the fire was out the next morning because I was woken up by a parade of fire trucks and personnel filing into Pettit Lake's parking lot to enjoy some much deserved R&R and partake of some of area's features they had been working so hard to protect. It was a little too crowded for me so I decided to make some space and move on to Stanley Lake not far up the road. The scene there was so eerily similar that I did a double take and then momentarily had to consider whether or not I had somehow circled back around on Pettit Lake!

Life ain't bad when you can trade one beautiful lakeside view for another the next day. As a bonus there was another great ride to be had only a few hundred yards away. The Elk Mountain trail was a great 11.5 mile ride and I felt great too, even after my previous crash. It's a little rocky at beginning, but still good and has a few downed trees, but nothing treacherous. All in all, a really enjoyable intermediate type ride on which to exit Idaho and enter Oregon where I may not travel on "The" Oregon Trail, but you can be sure I'll find myself riding some "Oregon trails"!

I'll look for you on the downhill.....