July 21 Club Ride - Tom Snow

[lindsey]

Hey Ladies,

This week's club ride is Tom Snow! Meet at the carpool location by 5:45 so you can be ready to roll by 6. Here are directions:

spinsisters.proboards.com/index.c....lay&thread=1229

Otherwise, meet at the Station Flats trailhead by 6:45. Drive south on Hwy 66, about 10 min past Bragg Creek, you will pass Allan Bill Pond on your left, then start to look for Station Flats parking area on your right.

Fingers crossed that we don't get some kind of freak flash floop or golf size hail today.

See you out there tonight!

Lindsey

[ramonahill]

Hi all! I can lead the ride tonight. I will be meeting at the carpool location. Is anyone else going to be carpooling? Thanks,

Ramona

[Kayla B]

As seems to be usual this year, we drove out to the trailhead west of Bragg Creek, passing by some impressively dark clouds, but there was blue sky and sunshine when we got there.

Dividing into Cruisers and Scooters, we headed up the trails: Scooters going up Tom Snow and down Ridgeback, and Cruisers going up Ridgeback and down Tom Snow (seemed like a good idea at the time!) Trails were in pretty good shape, wet and slippery in spots. The fresh roots on Ridgeback were nice and challenging! Our two parties cris-crossed at the far end of the loop, where the trail runs along the spine of the ridge, with all the lovely loose cobblestones. It was a beautiful still evening, the fir trees across the valley seemed frosted or haloed with the golden light of the pre-sunset hour. We could hear other riders for quite a distance, huffing and puffing with exertion up the grades, or tires buzzing as they spun out on a root. The flow of the trail lulled us into higher and higher speeds, leading the group to spread out quite a bit at times. It's a great trail, Spin Sisters built major parts of it!

The Cruisers arrived back at the trailhead more or less together, but there was some concern as it seemed part of the Scooter group was delayed, lost, perhaps eaten by bears, for some time after the first riders arrived. They eventually did show up, to everyone's relief, but this points out the importance of everyone keeping an eye on the riders behind to make sure they follow all the turns and forks correctly, and for the lead riders to stop to regroup fairly often. Riding so late in the day, if anyone at the back had had a mechanical problem or injury or took the wrong turn, there wouldn't have been a whole lot of daylight to go back and search for or help them after noticing them missing. But all's well that ends well. Ahh the adventure of it all!

I (Kayla) was nominated as the ride leader but we kind of navigated by popular consensus as I wasn't sure of all the turns and crossover points between the trails. This points out the importance of ride leaders being prepared (like, with an actual map? :) Gwen was in front most of the time, and had a pretty good idea of where we needed to go; I'd say that makes her our de-facto ride leader. Charlene was our tail-end Charlene (sweep).
There were 11 of us in the Cruiser group, somewhat more (15-ish?) in the Scooters.

Thank you to all who came out, we had a great turnout, especially considering all the alternative events going on this week (pre-riding for the Canmore 24H and Xterra races, some Spin Sisters were spotted heading for Pneuma and ROS)

[Stephanie]

Thanks for the report on the ride Kayla! Great to hear how it went, including the weather and trail conditions.