Thanks for visiting my personal blog! This is the place where I publish photos and ramblings that don't quite fit in with the image of my "professional blog" - AKA "The Light Side". Whatever that means. You can view all my professional wedding, portrait, and business photography portfolios by clicking the 'Portfolio' link above. But if you want to check out Everything Else, read on.
This post is an oldie, but a goodie, so I’m going to recycle it! I haven’t been posting any mountain bike pictures because I don’t have time to ride any more, so let’s just reminisce about the good old days of unemployment!
Back when I bought my first camera (a Canon 20d), I pulled it out of the box and went straight to Moab for the annual Ellsworth Owners Retreat. I really didn’t know what I was doing at the time, but I got a pretty cool sequence anyway. Yeah, I should have used a faster shutter speed! Any way, this drop is really nuts! It is way bigger looking when you are there, because the rider has to bomb down another 30+ vertical feet of steep runout past what you can see here.
I haven’t posted in a bit. I cracked under the weight of too much work and not enough fun. So Bobby and I attempted to rectify the situation with a little Nederland riding. Just to show how mentally cooked I was, I left my riding shoes at home for the first time in . . . well, maybe ever. Luckily we weren’t too far from Happy Trails Bike Shop where I borrowed some rental pedals with toe clips. And extra lucky that I was wearing sneakers and not flip flops. So I was able to ride, old school style. How incredibly horrible toe clips are! It’s been a LONG time since I’ve mountain biked with them, I came oh-s0-close to going down when my wheels drifted out from under me on a loose corner and I couldn’t get my foot out . . . but I was really happy to hang on.
After the ride we Ned-itated in the woods and drank some post-ride refreshments and played with my new 85mm PC Tilt Shift lens. Don’t even think about stealing Bobby’s beer. He’ll give you the stink eye.
I’ve waited a while to post these pictures to make it seem as if I’m out riding my mountain bike. Those folks who just glance at the pictures will think, “Wow Steve Z has such an amazing rock star life, shooting photos and all kinds of great rides in the mountains!” But all you 3 people who actually read the posts will know that this is just the 2nd day that I rode 2 weekends ago in Keystone! Ah well, someday I’ll get back in the regular schedule, I hope. In the meantime, this was the final section of the Colorado Trail from Keystone to Breckenridge that I haven’t ridden yet.
This last little piece was a random little spur of barely there trail on the way back to Keystone Ranch. Tilt-shift epic-ness!
Here are some more photos from my Keystone tilt-shift mountain bike adventure. The Blair Witch Trail connects the Swan River section of the Colorado Trail to Keystone Ranch. It’s a super sweet section of trail. This time of year it switches from bright, sunny and pretty Colorado wildflowers to pine beetle death and destruction.
It has been a hectic July for me workwise. Sad to say, I haven’t done a single ride! But I’m rectifying that this weekend by doing some rides up in Keystone. Here is a shot from the Colorado Trail high above Keystone. I lugged the tilt shift along and had a great day taking some trail and nature photos. More posts to come in the coming days.
Rob came to town for a week of riding and hanging out. The week he chose to come to Boulder coincided with my busiest time of the year. I didn’t take many photos. Here are two.
On my final day in Steamboat, I headed southeast out of town past Stagecoach Reservoir to Kristi and Danny’s house. We shot an epic Sport The Dress™ session in the mountains near their home. After the shoot I headed back to Boulder the back way, over Gore Pass. On the way, I was hoping to find a trail suitable for mountain biking, without any real knowledge of the area or a map.
After a while of rallying down the desolate but well graded gravel road in the WRX, I came across a trailhead for an ATV trail. It was well packed down and looked like it would make for a solid mountain bike surface. So I headed up the trail and embarked on a solid 2 hour granny gear climb. It was pretty challenging with muddy areas, stream crossings, and roots, but I was able to ride almost the whole thing.
Once at the top, there was a great view at the top of this erosion slide gully thing. I have no idea what it’s called, but it was really deep! You can see the area where I started, at the far left, behind the pine tree, in the base of the valley. It probably took me only 15 minutes to get down, but it was a ripping descent!
On my second day in Steamboat I headed a little farther out of town. Steamboat has had the same wet spring weather that we’ve had in the Front Range, so most of the high elevation trails were reported to be pretty swampy. I rode up the Hot Springs Trail to Lower Bear Trail and back down again.
I really enjoyed both trails. They were not really all that difficult technically. Lower Bear is a granny gear climb, but nothing too severe. During the entire ride up I was dreaming of video-ing the descent, inspired by my previous days adventure. I rigged up a Manfrotto Superclamp to my stem and mounted my Canon G10 camera on top, with a plan to record the gorgeous descent. I wasn’t really sure if the camera was going to survive or not.
Climbing up through the Aspens, the camera mount system seemed to be withstanding the vibrations. . .
I stopped at this overlook, turned on the camera, hit record, and descnded the trail at about 85% speed, trying to be as smooth as possible. About 1/3 of the way down I realized that the camera was rattling. The tripod mount was coming loose from the camera body! Bummer. The video was really shaky with a nasty rattling sound. Too bad. It looks pretty cool, but also really amateurish at the same time. So I went back to the condo and promptly ordered a new helmet cam! Stay tuned for real videos coming in the future!
On my first day in Steamboat I did a local ride straight out of town. The thunderstorms were threatening, and I needed to get a quick little ride in before the skies opened up. So I headed to the base of Howelsen Hill, and started climbing the rod up to Emerald Mountain. There is a pretty large network of trails up there. I pretty much just wandered around, poking in and out of various tasty bits of singletrack. I did find a map HERE, that gives one possibility of linking the trails together. This is the view from The Quarry.
The singletrack in this area is super tasty, mostly buff and fast. The twisty parts in the aspen groves reminded me a lot of Park City riding. The timing was right for wildflowers too!
The trails were fast and flowy. These pictures don’t do any justice to the experience. It was here that I decided that I need to get a helmet cam to really capture the experience, I didn’t feel like I could show what the trail looks like with still photos . . . so look for videos to be showing up sooner or later.
I was riding solo this trip, which makes it a little tough to get the action shots. :>) So here are a couple landscapes that I took along the way.
OK, I’m long overdue updating this site. I’ve got some new employees that have been keeping me busy doing ‘real’ work. But I’m here in Steamboat taking more mountain biking photos, so I really have to get these old pics off the camera. 2 Sunday’s ago, Ryan and I rode the Ceran St. Vrain trail up to Miller’s rock. On the singletrack on the way out, there is an angled rock that is perfect for launching. Getting the timing right for action shots with the Canon G10 is tough, but sometimes you wind up with an interesting composition. In this case, it’s me with my head cut off.
I brought the camera along for last week’s Boulder Cruiser Ride. Our faction began from the Green Guru Headquarters in Northeast Boulder. Ryan Van Duzer was in prime form for some cruising action!
One of the side benefits of that start location is the proximity to the 303 Vodka distillery. It is directly next door. I sampled a sample straight out of the beaker. Local, gluten free, and so smooth!
This was the debut of Ryan’s new Phase One music machine. I’ll take a picture of that after the finishing trim is put on it. We headed south to a brand new acoustically superior location to test it out. It was a gorgeous evening despite reports of inclement weather. We wore wigs to keep our heads warm.
I was sporting a pair of Sergio Valente jeans. Yes, they are originals. Sergio Valente is my porn name.
Did I say it was a beautiful night? Yes, I think I did. I have pictures for proof.
We cruised through campus, circling all three Buffaloes.
As night fell, we descended upon the downtown area via the famous Ho Chi Minh Trail, picking up more cruisers along the way. Zack Giffen was in town and rocking out the swing bike.
I didn’t have a flash, and the pictures became increasingly abstract. Join us next week, we’ll be meeting once again at Green Guru, although that won’t be our permanent starting location. To keep up with our latest start location, visit the “Happy Thursday” group on Facebook!
It’s become a birthday tradition of mine to ride Betasso and bring a beer to drink on the bench at Betasso. This year we tried to go to Ned, but for the first time ever, we couldn’t get on the bus because there wasn’t enough room left for our bikes. So, on to Betasso we went. I have a photo to prove it.
Another popular riding spot in Durango is the Hermosa Creek area. We headed up there for our 3rd ride in Durango. The trail is 21 miles, and is usually ridden via a shuttle. Well, we didn’t have a shuttle, so we decided to try and ride the whole thing out and back. As it turns out, the creeks and rivers were flowing above maximum capacity, so parts of the trail were flooded out. So we made it roughly 16 miles in. It was a loooooong ride, as the terrain is not flat either way, even though it mostly follows the creek drainage. The trail is pretty wide singletrack, and pretty fun, but not necessarily the most fun ever. But it was great to have a big mountain challenge early in the season.
So after this point in the trip, I didn’t take any more pictures of the trails. Yeah, whatever, photographers need vacations too! For our last ride we rode the Horse Gulch area of trails that is right at the edge of town near the Ft. Lewis College side to the east. What an awesome trail network to have right in town! The trails are buff, twisty, desert type trails that were clearly made for bicycles. The kind of trails that make you realize how much riding we don’t have here in Boulder. Oh well, we have way more cute girls here, take that Durango!
Perched on the foothills above Durango’s west side, there is a very noticable ribbon of singletrack. It appears to be very extreme and steep. We had to do it. It is at the top of Durango’s Test Tracks area, which is a super cool, twisty, fun trail network right in town. The trail is called the Hogback. We couldn’t find any way to get up it other than to hike straight up it. It was like Fruita, except way more extreme. Check out the super gnarly line straight down the gully in the above picture!
We set out for our first Durango ride of the weekend to the Junction Creek Trailhead. The first thing we noticed was multiple truckloads of kids shuttling from the parking area. There must have been some sort of DH trail right in the area that isn’t on the riding maps. We set out to do it the old skool way of earning our turns. Junction Creek is at one end of the Colorado Trail which goes from Denver to Durango. The trail starts off flat and hardpack, eventually turning upward with multiple switchbacks to climb a 1000 feet or so to Gudy’s Rest. Here is Ryan doing his best impression of how Gudy rested. Durango is in the valley straight ahead.
After that we did a short loop of really cool singletrack. Quite moderate, buff, and non-technical, excellent single speed terrain, not that we were riding them.
After that loop we rode up the Colorado Trail some more, but it started to climb without much flow, so we turned around to save our legs for future rides with greater fun factor. Ryan missed the turn for the Colorado Trail. I took a picture of a tree while I waited for him. I scratched my legs up walking around in the thickets. Good times, good times.
Last weekend Ryan and I headed out on a mountain biking road trip. It had been WAY too long since my last one, I think it was the 2006 Colorado Springs trip. We decided to check out Durango, since neither of us really knows anyone who has ridden in the area. Durango was at one time the epicenter of the new sport of mountain biking, and we were sure to find some great riding there. The other attraction is that the lower climate should allow us some riding in the early season when there is still snow in the hills of the high country.
I could have taken tons of pictures. But I didn’t. I needed some decompression time ahead of the busy summer season ahead. So I took some picutres, but not too many. For the most part we ate, slept, and rode. We did 5 rides in 4 days with 2 full days of driving.
Our first ride was actually in the Denver area on the way out of town. We rode Lair of the Bear which is between Morrison and Evergreen. It was a really buff singletrack, somewhat similar to Betasso. Its only about a 10 mile out and back ride if you ride it by itself like we did. Apparently it’s easy to link up with Mt. Falcon, which we rode on the way back from the CO Springs Trip. Funny how that works. The best part of the Bear was the top section which was FAST FAST FAST with some good waterbar jumps.
So after a quick ride we were off to Durango via the scenic route down 285. We almost made it to Durango before dark, when we came across a nice empty campground about 40 miles east of Durango in the hills. So we set up camp and parked it for the night. Check back tomorrow for Ride 1 in Durango!
We were eating lunch in between photo sessions down in Denver when I saw some kids riding urban assault bikes in the local shopping center. So I had one of them bunnyhop me for your viewing pleasure.
