On Thursday evening after work, I jumped in the Big Red Firetruck along with 4 mountain bikes and began the long slog over to Boise. The plan was to get to Boise late thursday, maybe sleep in the car if I got too tired, then grab Andrew and head to Sun Valley where we would meet up with our college buddies, Joel and Patrick who were coming in from Bozeman and Salt Lake City. The Bellingham member of the group, Captain Lange, would arrive late Friday night in Boise and drive Andrew's car over to SV that night. Then spend the weekend enjoying the areas immaculate singletrack.
So after sitting in lovely Portland traffic for an hour, I finally made it into the Gorge and was able to put the fire truck into cruise control. Just have to sit back and listen to the tunes for the next 6 hours. After many pit stops and refueling stations, I arrived in Boise around 2am mountain time and crawled into bed at Andrew's house.
The morning we awoke around 9am and fueled up on a nice egg and toast breakfast. After stopping by a local bike shop, REI, Costco, and the airport (to drop off Clare for Lange), we were on the barren road leading to ID 75. After driving 7 hours in the dark and 1 or so of desolate southern ID landscape, I was longing for a view of some sort so I was very excited when the sawtooths came into view. The remainder of the drive was absolutely gorgeous.
We met Patrick at Andrew's family's condo in Elkhorn, quickly unpacked, then grabbed the bikes and headed out for a ride. We settled on the Greenhorn Gulch trailhead and loop due to its proximity, length and technical ability. Andrew had purchased the adventuremaps.net map for the area, and it was fantastic as usual. I have a couple of these maps for Bend, Mt. Hood and the SW washington, and they are great. The trail climbed up and a moderate incline for a few miles with very few switchbacks till the end. I struggled a little with the altitude. We arrived at the junction and found an old picnic table and chairs. We rested here and debated whether we wanted to keep climbing up the trail to potential view point or just continue up greenhorn gulch. In the end, we climbed higher but quickly tuned around to follow the original trail. After some more climbing, we broke out of the forest and emerged onto an open ridge with spectacular views in every direction. After being talked out of doing an out and back to the car, instead of continuing the loop (glad I lost that one), I proceeded to bomb down the great open singletrack. After a few miles, I realized that I was by myself so I stopped to wait for the guys. A few minutes went by before I started climbing up to see what happened. Turns out the Patrick got a flat not long after I started down and was running down the trail while Andrew tried to catch me. We replace the tire and continued down to the bottom. I was grinning from ear to ear as I had never hit singletrack like that that was so open with great views.
That evening Andrew made chili while we awaited the arrival of Joel and Lange. Many beers were drank and tales told as we passed the hours. Bed time didnt come till around 3am. I was lucky that I was still on Pacific time.
UNT
Bryan
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