Toes-Tea

5 of us set out to ride on the 9th of OCT. We knew it was going to be cold. Hah.

We decided on Golden Gate Canyon State Park and left at 7:30am from Metropolis Coffee. The temp in Denver was around 42 when we left. It was misting on the way up to the trail, but nothing major. It seemed to be around 35 to 40 degrees outside. We had prepared well. All of us had on lots of layers. I personally went for 2 layers of wool on top with a wind/rain layer on the outside. I wore long cycling pants with short on over them, and shin guards for fun. We headed out only to find that it was too much clothing. I shedded a few items here and there after the first long climb, mostly to protect against sweating a great deal (don't want it to freeze). We continued to climb up lots of beautiful singletrack until it finally turned back down. I think this is when it started to snow/sleet lightly. It was absolutely beautiful. We all kept commenting about how quiet and perfect it was. As we approached the top of Windy Peak, it began snowing big flakes. BIG ONES. On October 9th! It was nice since we were all warm enough. Then we started getting cold.

We all cycled through losing feeling in different parts of our bodies, mostly extremeties. This all changed as we got into the creek crossing section of the trail. Lots of water on airy cold feet meant that I started seeing ice on my shoes. Not too good. From the last creek crossing was a really long climb on jeep trails with stumps for feet. We all agreed that it was good timing, cause we did warm up for the most part. We finished up on the road because we had some mechanical problems.

We all thawed out on the way back to Denver.
All in all it was a great ride. Hard to explain why, but it was amazing.

Dave - Surly Fixed Mountain - Surly Steel Bars
LGB - Black Sheep F/S - Push Fox parts
Greg - Indie Fab F/S - Sqwarshy
Danny - Giant Trance - Whored out as usual
Scott - Black Sheep SS - Boing