Bull Mountain

Mid-August, I felt like riding Bull Mountain. Most weekends, for months really, I'd been staying local, for various reasons, and the mountains were just calling, man. So, Sunday morning, I headed up to Bull Mountain to try to satisfy that urge.

I don't remember much about that morning, or the drive up, but I parked in the Jake lot, as usual, got dressed, and headed west, counterclockwise, again, as usual.

The ride wasn't all that great, really. It was a little damp, so everything took a little bit more effort than it normally would.

I'd checked the weather too. One of the reasons I'd been staying local for so many weeks was weather. It was always raining somewhere, like every day. I had to watch the radar, see what hadn't gotten rained on, and attempt to ride there. The further I'd drive from home, the more likely it was that it would have rained where I was going between the time I left and the time I got there, so I had a better chance of success by staying local.

It was damp, but not properly wet. The trail was still fun to ride, but the roots were rocks were slippery and the trail itself was tacky.

I always like to get a photo of The Great Rift whenever I'm there, just to compare it to old photos.

Of course, it's always important to get a photo of the truck.

I've tried to identify the truck before, by taking photos of all of its different parts, and comparing them to stuff online. The older photos I have are lower quality though, so I got some updated ones.

Interestingly, the truck was once red, or at least part of it was:

I'd never noticed that before.

I never noticed the gas tank on the ground before either.

I slogged up through the rhodo tunnels on Bear Hare...

...only to have my phone die right after. I didn't think the battery was low, but it wouldn't turn back on, so I got worried that it was really dead. Turned out no though, later on it started back up after plugging it in. I guess I'd just failed to charge it earlier. No problems since either.

The rest of the ride was pretty uneventful, actually. Down Bear Hare, around Booger Holler, and down the new trail to Jones Creek Dam. The climb up off of the dam seemed a lot more difficult than usual. I had to walk a bit of it even. The switchbacks felt tough. It was wet, yeah, but I think I was also just having a bad day. I bombed down Jones Creek, spun back up to Turner Creek, and rode that.

I did hit the "new" trail that bypasses little bitch gap. What a mess it was. You enter it through a water diversion channel, then it's kind of nice for a while, then there's a ton of blowdown that's never been cleared, then it looks like it might go back over to the road, and you can see the road, but it actually goes right, and there's more blowdown. Then it's overgrown for a while... It sits on a fresh-cut roadbed, but has the feel of an old roadbed that's become a trail over the years. It's too wide to maintain the way we maintain singletrack. IDK, it probably would be fun to ride if it were clear, but it's not an ideal trail by a long shot.

From there I rode No-tell, and Black Branch. The logging that they'd been threatening to do near Black Branch finally got done. It's all off of 28G and 28B. There wasn't any impact to the trail though, as far as I could tell. From there it was Jake back to the truck.

It probably would have been a great ride if I had felt better, but I remember feeling beat up and tired at the end.

Eh, some days are just like that.