pan-o-rama

before the car trouble started we actually had a pretty nice weekend going... after hanging out at the dcist exposed opening for a little while on friday we went back home and i packed up the car for saturday's outing to harrisonburg for a morning ride and the gw national forest public comment meeting at jmu.

we'd set the coffeemaker on auto so that i'd have coffee when i got up, but didn't realize the clock was set wrong. luckily i noticed the lack of coffee brewing noises & smells when i got up and i got the machine going just in time to fill my cup before i had to be out the door to pick up matt. wolf gap is a good 2 hour drive from dc, but we made it there with time to spare and soon were out riding in the GW along with chris scott, junkins, mike, susan, paul, and pat.

from the wolf gap trailhead we rode out mill mountain trail in mixed trail conditions. anything on the west side of the ridge was mostly snowed in, while the east side of the ridge was clear and dry. along the top of the ridge was a mix, mostly clear, but with patches of soft snow. half way through the ride we stopped and walked out the trail to the rocks at the top of big schloss, then kept going along the ridge untill we got to big schloss cutoff and made out descent from the ridge.

the downhill was a lot of fun... one of the more challenging that i've ridden, with more than a few 'oh-sh*&t, get off the front brake, get back and hope' moments and one crash near the end. the epic was a little out-gunned on that downhill... i'd have rather had another inch of travel and slacker angles. at the bottom of the downhill we hit a fireroad and took that back to the road and climbed back up to the cars.

after the ride we raced down to harrisonburg for the public meeting about the george washington national forest master plan. it looks like the mountain bike community was pretty well represented: there were 3 of us in the breakout group that i was assigned to and i got reports of similar numbers in the other groups. our group was really civil (we had hear reports of some more heated exchanges at meetings earlier in the week) and everyone made their comments. everyone had their own agenda, but also seemed open to keeping the forest open for multi-use and working together...