Saturday, October 1, 2011

Kurt Gowdy State Park, Wyoming

This state park is between Cheyenne and Laramie.   This was my first mountain bike ride of the trip, and a most excellent one.  I wanted so bad to repeat the ride and expand it but it poured right after I got back so I had to stop.  I love this park.   It's designed by mountain bikers for mountain bikers.  The hikers love it too and are grateful to have the new trails.  There are other nice mountain biking spots in the area (see this and this post), but this is my favorite.  However, I could spend a week here and do them all!

According to my GPS watch, the ride was a mere 3.89 miles, starting altitude was 7307 feet, highest was 7708 feet, so 400 ft climb.  Total ascent was 762 feet (not sure how much I trust this since I'm not sure how the GPS accounts for errors in altitude).

Here I am starting up the trail

 nice single-track:

lots of rocks to climb over.  some I had to walk.

a couple of "play areas" to practice climbing over rocks:

nice scenery

just the right amount of challenge:

pretty trees

more pretty scenery

I wanted to do it again, but then came the rain and thunder.  oh well, I was lucky, because I started just after a rain storm and got back before the next.  The first rain was not that heavy so the trail was not muddy.
This was an awesome ride.