Ridin' Friday: Jackson to Game Creek and Trail Foray #2

The morning of my big planned ride, I actually tried to get up early. I've never been all that good on knowing how long something will take, and there was a bike sale in town I wanted to hit that afternoon.

Since at the time, there was a good possibility I was heading out to Hoback, which is 12 miles away, I brought water and a peanut butter sandwich and felt somewhat like a little kid packing lunch for a field trip. I also wore my brand spanking new helmet, which I made sure to buy after this little adventure.

The weather was perfect. Perfect! Clear skies, sunshine and just enough of a breeze to keep from drowning in sweat. I easily passed the Bird, and was off into the great unknown, such as it was.

The path hugs the highway itself pretty closely until the Melody Ranch subdivision, where it swoops down into the smaller hills and fields below. Farther on, you totally forget the highway is continuing its highway thing above you. Partly that's because the location of the path gives you this illusion that you're  cycling through an untouched paradise of green things and rolling hills and Teton views. However, it's also because you periodically end up with all your attention on getting yourself up the four or five random 8 percent grade inclines the path kind of sneaks in there.

If you're like me, you'll reach the first one after the scattering of smaller inclines and declines up to that point and you'll see the sign the thoughtful trail builders posted that warns you that you're coming up on a hill. As you get closer and start to ascend, you'll notice more details on the sign. Like where it says more specifically there's an 8 percent grade ahead. Your inner voice will be all "wait, what did that say? Shit." I've found as I get further into this whole biking thing that approaching long steep uphills gives me much the same feeling as that moment I realize I've just used my last clean fork and can no longer pretend the dishes in the sink will keep a while longer.

Luckily, much like my dishes, I can pull off the climbs, I just have to get through the internal whining. I am also a big believer in the power of a little judicious whimpering to get you through the tough times.

I also had the consolation of getting these grudging respect nods even from the spandex-clad snots as they'd pass me going the other way. Kind of a general acknowledgment that you're both doing something worth doing.

Where the path itself ends at Game Creek, you cross the highway and can can either head down the former highway, which is the beginning of the route to Hoback, or you can continue down Game Creek Road. After all this pavement, I was kind of craving another crack at a trail, and the Game Creek Trail is famous locally as part of one of the best mountain biking loops in the area. So I decided to leave the Hoback trip for another day - you'll almost certainly be reading about it later in the summer.

Game Creek Road is a gravel road that gradually climbs from the highway until it suddenly shoots upward in a steep-ass hill just past the Game Creek trailhead. As you bike it, you see something along these lines:

 

 By the time I got to the trailhead, I was feeling a little dehydrated, so I paused for a drink before venturing onto my second ever trail ride. The good news is it lasted considerably longer than seven minutes, the length of my first. It was a beautiful trail, although it was still muddy in places from melting snow. It just turns out there are things you plain don't think about when you're hiking a trail that suddenly become super important when you're biking it. 

Like rocks. Given that a not-especially-large rock had nearly killed me the previous weekend, I had a healthy respect for all things sedimentary, metamorphic and igneous (thank you, Magic School Bus). By the end of the ride, it was less respect than a kind of sullen resentment.

This is a perfect example of what I mean. Hiking by that patch of rock, you'd scarcely notice. Biking, you feel every single contour of the ground. Rocks like that make for a bumpy-ass ride, and if you aren't careful, your tires actually bounce sideways off of them with no warning. When you're trying to avoid a patch of slippery mud, or a ditch off to one side, that's damn inconvenient and kind of scary. I was sort of getting the hang of the stance I needed a few miles down the trail, when I realized the second major hurdle of trail riding: you use a lot more effort to gain a lot less momentum, so your legs hate you triple what they would if you rode the same contours on pavement. In short, I was getting a little fatigued and I knew I had a bunch of steep climbs to make on the way back to town. 

So I took a quick break to assess how much my legs were hating me and decided I probably should turn back. Nothing wrong with knowing your limits, and you look a lot dumber when you fuck something up by pushing yourself too hard than by acknowledging what you can't do. 

  On the way back, I wished a zillion times I'd brought more water with me because the sun was a lot higher and hotter by then. I also thanked the Lord I'd thought to bring my sandwich, because about halfway back I was starving and pulled over to scarf down the food I'd brought. The cool thing? For the first time in a long time, I had no question at all that I'd earned every last calorie, and I didn't have to face that gerbil on a wheel feeling a treadmill gives me to do it. Plus, the view was way better.

I'm definitely also going back to the Game Creek Trail this summer, although I may consider driving there once I get a car rack so I don't have to factor in those 8 percent grades before and after. What can I say - I honestly died a little when I had to turn my back on that last bend, although this picture is a little earlier in the trail.