Walker Ranch ride report

"How was it?"

"Dry, loose, dusty."

"Sounds like Walker"

Burns and I headed up to Walker Ranch for a short ride post-work yesterday, a 7.4 mile loop with 900ft of elevation gain. After battling a brutal headwind on my commute home I suited up for an MTB ride and we headed up flagstaff to the TH. The above exchange took place while gearing up and then we were off. We decided to do the loop clockwise so that mean we would be hiking up the stairs. The ride starts off with a short(3/4mi) slight uphill that takes you into some North-facing(shaded) steep switch backs that are a blast to rip through at speed. After that it opens up a bit into some double track with lots of loose rocks and many different lines to take. This is where having the full squish really comes in handy as you can just float over the rocks with out getting bucked off. And just like that the down is done and we are at the bottle of this valley next to a stream and it's time to hike up the steps to get on top of this steep ridge. Once at the top you begin some decieving climbs, I say deceiving because just as it seems like it might be over you round a corner to find more of the same loose, not too steep but steep enough to burn, climbing. Finally we got to some more double track and steep decending, unfortunately there were some other bikers who slowed us down enough to where I couldnt launch it over the steep rocks and had to billy goat my way through, which led to nosing into a loarge boulder and getting bucked. From here it was just a long grind out ~1.6mi back to the parking lot.

All in all a hiller ride, next time maybe two laps?