23
Mar
Ascent Cycling Going Green Part II:You Remind Me of the Babe, but Don’t Go Chasin’ Lake Pueblo State Park
By Scotty Mac
Voodoo.
A few of the trails at Lake Pueblo State Park are obvious in what they intend to do to you, hacking away at your bike and body with all the subtlety of a 13th century-vintage Scotsman swinging his claymore. Voodoo is the stiletto knife, the hidden blade. Its distance is deceiving, the level of effort given surprisingly draining. There isn’t much in the way of vertical gain, but there are turns. Lots of turns. Lots of curves, corners, and chicanes. You power out of one just to lay on the brakes into another. It’s incredible. It’s also very treacherous. The hard pack of singletrack falls away into an extremely loose downhill runoff, and woe betides the one who forgets this fact. Ask me how I know. Okay, I’ll tell you. Voodoo had claimed me twice in my first two outdoor rides of the season, the second crash leaving my right elbow and shoulder damaged for the better part of a month.
All of these trepidations flitted through my mind as Craig and I took off from the remnants of the stone structure marking the start/finish to begin the nine mile loop. Craig motored past me at an opportune moment, tapping out a pace a little quicker than I had been managing. Quick aside: it’s tough to gauge effort and speed on a singlespeed in certain situations, and on level ground is definitely one of those points. What I thought had been an acceptable clip, well, wasn’t. I picked up my cadence to just south of “butt bouncing off saddle/Wicked Witch of the West theme song at 78rpm” ridiculousness and rejoined Craig, trying to work with him as much as I could. Our plan was to make a quick pit stop thirty minutes into the loop, take on some beef jerky an energy gel and soldier on back to the junction.
You know what they say about best laid plans… actually, ours pretty much worked out. The beef jer- I mean- energy gel stop came just about dead on 30 minutes into the loop by my watch, and we were quickly back on it. I stayed as smooth as possible, kept the pedals turning up and over any climbs, got a good, steady acceleration out of each corner, and most importantly, tried kept my breathing calm. The corners didn’t catch us out. Before we knew it, the stone building came into view. We pushed to the junction and I looked at my watch. 55 minutes to do that nine mile, sidewinder snake of a trail. We were stoked, demons were exorcised. For the time being, at least.
Slogging up the doubletrack climb out of the Voodoo zone, I started to relax a smidge. Things slowed down for me as I was no longer worried about piling it up in the middle of the trail. I was eager to hit Waterfall, because it happens to be one of the most fun downhill sections anywhere in the park. The action started as we crested the last easy climb on Pronghorn and picked up speed as we sliced down the trail to the five-way intersection. A quick left-right look assured me we were clear and we blasted through and onto Waterfall.
The trail is a tale of two halves. The first section shoots down pretty wide open into some more of that adamantine shale (seriously, Wolverine would totally rock- ha, ‘rock,’ get it?- these bladed pieces if he lost his metal claws again) before coming into Section Two. I scrubbed some speed and got out of the saddle, bumping down the rocks steps for which Waterfall earned its name. Craig stayed right on my tail, and not for the first time did I tell myself that it really made more sense for him to lead through this section on his full suspension wonder bike. Hardtails seem like a good idea over full suspension (said nobody at Ascent Cycling, ever) riiiiiight up until you get to a rocky section like the one on the bottom half of Waterfall. Craig ran back up the trail for the photo op, and showed me how it’s really done.
We took our last stop at the base of the rock descent. I checked my watch and saw we were just over two hours for total time. Coming up next were two of the punchiest, hardest climbs on our lap, made harder again by the fact that they came in the final bit of our 24 mile loop. Ugh.
Turning onto South Shore signaled the beginning of the end.
Mac out.
TO BE CONCLUDED…