Our office will frequently hire students in the summer to help out with field work. Sometimes these students will share an office with me. This last summer that student was Max. Actually I believe his first and middle names are Maximilian Thor. I always have like the name Thor (probably too many viewings of Adventures in Baby Sitting)! Max is not your typical student. First off, Max is around 6' 5" tall and pretty ripped. Max was accepted to an Ivy League school fresh out of high school but got bored and decided to join the marines. He spent some time in the sandbox and after he got out he eventually landed in Bozeman, started school, got married, and had a baby. Anyway enough about Max's life and more about mountain biking. Max loved to bike and was wanting to know about some trails in the Helena area. Well one thing led to the next and I started mountain biking again as a relief from the boredom of road riding and to help build more biking specific muscle endurance. I believe the first trail I took Max on was the "Secret" trail that dumps off from Brooklyn Bridge Mine trail and comes out near Cox Lake which is between Davis Gulch and Orofino Gulch. I spent a very limited amount of time mountain biking the last few years and haven't ridden the Secret trail since 2003. The Secret trail is best characterized by some rolling climbs along the first portion of the Brooklyn Bridges Ride. These rolling climbs used to be very steep climbs but there has been a new logging road graded in since. It definitely made the first 3 miles much easier. Once we left the logging area we rolled along the old jeep trail which hasn't seen much use in 20+ years. There was tons of downfall and from what I could see, very limited bike traffic. I would later learn that the exit from the normal Brooklyn Bridge Ride crosses some public ground which has been shut down to bikers. Anyway, there were a few fun and somewhat techy climbs through some boulder fields and then we had to find the turn off to the Secret Trail. From the Brooklyn Bridge Mine trail this turn off is tough to find. It is slightly less than a game path going about 100 yds up a draw and then turns into a trail at the top of the ridge. From the ridge the trail heads north towards Cox lake. My memory of this portion of the ride was a nice free-flowing trail through Aspen groves with some log ramps to ride over fallen trees. Well this portion only lasted about 1/4 mile and then it turned into a steep gnarly downhill that is slightly scary. I let Max lead the way as he is a better downhill rider but I was surprised to find he had ridden the entire gnarly section. Later when I caught him I found out his disc brakes got too hot to stop and he just rode it out like a champ. The trail eventually dumps onto a trail that follows an old irrigation canal or flume and contours the edge of the mountain. It's fast and fun and has a few very technical sections. One technical section in particular brought back some great memories from 2003.
In the summer of 2003 I moved from Fort Collins back to Helena where I was ready to hit the trails with every free moment. Little did I know that I would soon enter into a new relationship (with my wife to be) and ride much less than planned. Anyway, our friends who introduced us (Ryan and Nikki) were getting married the first weekend in July. As part of the festivities we took in a couple of bike rides. We rode the Brooklyn Bridge-Secret-Flume Trail a couple days before the wedding and as Ryan reminded me later, we rode it pretty fast and hard. Looking back, I wonder if Ryan had any reservations in riding that hard a couple days before the wedding. If there is a high-risk of wrecking trail in Helena, this was probably it. In fact, we all tried to ride the technical section along the flume. Nate tried multiple times with at least twice endo'ing over his handlebars. I think Nate was pretty sore from that for several days.
So back to summer of 2013....I caught the mountain biking bug again and decided it was way more fun than riding the road bike. I knew I needed to keep riding the road bike but had decided to make Tuesday nights mountain biking night. Max and I went on one or two more rides together and occasionally Jim and Kyle would join us. I discovered a new trail near York that was a lot of fun but only got to ride it once. Regardless, I decided that in the future I needed to make time to get some mountain biking in!
In the summer of 2003 I moved from Fort Collins back to Helena where I was ready to hit the trails with every free moment. Little did I know that I would soon enter into a new relationship (with my wife to be) and ride much less than planned. Anyway, our friends who introduced us (Ryan and Nikki) were getting married the first weekend in July. As part of the festivities we took in a couple of bike rides. We rode the Brooklyn Bridge-Secret-Flume Trail a couple days before the wedding and as Ryan reminded me later, we rode it pretty fast and hard. Looking back, I wonder if Ryan had any reservations in riding that hard a couple days before the wedding. If there is a high-risk of wrecking trail in Helena, this was probably it. In fact, we all tried to ride the technical section along the flume. Nate tried multiple times with at least twice endo'ing over his handlebars. I think Nate was pretty sore from that for several days.
So back to summer of 2013....I caught the mountain biking bug again and decided it was way more fun than riding the road bike. I knew I needed to keep riding the road bike but had decided to make Tuesday nights mountain biking night. Max and I went on one or two more rides together and occasionally Jim and Kyle would join us. I discovered a new trail near York that was a lot of fun but only got to ride it once. Regardless, I decided that in the future I needed to make time to get some mountain biking in!