Ridin' Friday: Trail Fail and Josie's Ridge

~ Note - This was always going to be a tricky one to preview, so in the interest of catching back up, I've decided you're going in cold. You're welcome.~


At the beginning of the month, the U.S. Forest Service opened up a large chunk of the Greater Snow King Recreation Area - ie: the stretch of land with most of the really good cycling trails near Jackson. (During the winter, the land is closed to humans to keep elk and other large wildlife from wasting calories by being startled by people.) Partway down Snow King Avenue, there is an access point to the trail network just off of Wildlife Drive.

I'd been eyeing that sign announcing National Forest Trail Access for months by then, so that weekend I decided to take Little Red for my first cycling foray on a trail.

I was super excited to try something that I could describe as "mountain biking" without having people who actually go mountain biking laugh at me. I stayed excited as I pedaled up the kind of steep, gravelly hill to the trailhead. I stayed excited as I continued pedaling up an equally steep hill that comprises the first stretch of the trail. My legs kind of wanted these hills to be done, but I was making it and I was excited! This was going to be great!

And then I nearly got bucked off by my bike. I was less excited about that.

It seems anyone who has ridden trails before knows - ie: not me at the time -  it is possible for your bike to hit a protruding rock and flip over. When your bike flips over, you do too. It's a physics thing.

As I concentrated on calming my heartbeat, I realized it was time to buy a helmet. Shit would have gotten pretty concussion-y if I'd been going a little faster, or if my reflexes were a little slower. Hell, it could have gotten pretty skull-split-open-y. And this was just one of the hundreds of rocks on that stretch of trail.

So I made the executive decision to leave Little Red at the trailhead and explore on foot. I fully admit, I was a loser in so many different ways on this one, but mostly because:

1) It's really dumb to own a bike but not a helmet
2) It's even dumber to try something like trail riding for the first time and not wear a helmet
3) My first trail ride was about seven minutes long
4) I had a near-death encounter with a freaking rock


That would have been one for the Darwin Awards, yeah?

It made me feel marginally less like a loser when I realized that the trail I'd vaguely intended to seek out - Josie's Ridge - is not really meant for cyclists. In fact, I later found out that it's the only trail in the Greater Snow King Recreation Area that's built to be for hikers only. In short, it is steep as shit, narrow as shit and full of twists and turns. Show me someone who's tried it on a bike and I'll show you someone who isn't very fond of life or limb.

It's also a great hike. Those who are inclined to take a break from the bike should check it out. The trail climbs (and I mean that word more strongly than usual) up to the top of Josie's Ridge and then goes along the top of it for a while.

You start out looking out on this:

Then finally this:

So yeah, worth the climb. And a decent consolation prize for completely failing on my first cycling trip to the trails. Let's just say my evolution as a mountain biker was on hold until I had a way to protect myself on the - as I realized that day - inevitable falls that would entail.