I stopped in at Desert Sports for some trail info and to buy some Slime tubes. I was happy to find that they had 29er presta slime tubes for me! I didn’t have time for any flats from the innumerable thorns that I would find along the way. I was directed to the Lajitas Trail System, also called the Lajitas airport trails. It was only a couple miles from the shop, and right on the highway, so it sounded good to me.

The trails themselves were only moderately exciting. It was pretty cool to ride in new terrain, but I think I would get bored of these trails pretty quickly if I lived here. They are mostly flat, with some moderate technical bits. There are a few missing signs, which makes route finding difficult in a few places. I rode most of the singletrack of the trail system in under two hours with lots of photo breaks. It’s my understanding that you can link these trails into a nearly limitless ride … but you would likely need local knowledge for that.

I did find a couple cool discoveries along the way. The first was this cool old delivery truck. I must be the King Supreme Old Truck Manifester, because wherever I go I can always find old trucks to take pictures of. This day was no exception, apparently! I like the above shot … now you know why the truck was stranded here.

I climbed around on the inside of the truck. There were some pots and pans and some silverware, and it seems that the inside of the truck has provided shelter for some persons through the years.

I really like the thorns in this shot. I also like wide angles and f/22!

Eventually I made my way along the sandy, rocky singletrack.  I was just riding along, when I noticed the great texture of the cracked and broken mud.  As I was looking down, I caught a glimpse of my second found treasure of the afternoon.

This seashell is small, less than an inch long.  It was sitting perfectly in the middle of a cracked piece of mud.  It was perfectly clean, without any mud residue.  How did it get here? Did someone place it here? Did they hope for someone to find it to mess with their head? If they did; It worked!

Well that’s all for another mountain bike adventure in the far reaches of the country. Check back tomorrow when I check out the trails outside of El Paso.

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’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.

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!

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!

After a full day of beautiful weather and VeloSwapping on Saturday, I figured I had to get back up to Ned for a mountain bike ride before it’s too late.  Well it wasn’t nearly as warm as I had hoped; the high was 50 and the wind was brisk.  All the leaves are long gone, and there is a run of man made snow up at Eldora.

We had hoped that we were going to get one last ride in up high, but there is snow in the woods around the base elevation of Eldora. There were a few snowy turns at the top of Marysville, but nothing like my two early season post-holing expeditions.

Ryan was pretty psyched about his $10 tire purchase at Veloswap. That was until we spent 20 minutes on the shelf road fixing flats and then when the loose bead allowed the tire to peal off the rim during a corner. Bad Specialized tires. Bad.

My staunch work ethic finally crumbled this week. People who know me wondered, “how long can you keep this up?” I kept it up until Thursday. Glorious Thursday, when editing be damned, I had to get out onto the trails and out in the glorious fall weather. I knew the leaves were turning up there. I’m very happy to report that many of the aspens in Ned are just starting to turn, so there is still a few more weeks of glorious color up there. Get out and enjoy it! Here are some pics to motivate you.

I headed out on a pretty big ride this Sunday. It wasn’t actually *in* the Indian Peaks Wilderness, because that of course would be illegal, and we all know that that would never happen. These shots were just above Yankee Doodle Lake, with a nice view of the peaks in the background.

Some people have asked me, “How can you mountain bike in Florida?” I say it’s kindof like mountain biking in two dimensions instead of three, on an X-Y coordinate system instead of an X-Y-Z, for the math geeks amongst us. Which basically means, yeah, it’s flat. But twisty.

The ironic thing is that no one down here rides singlespeeds. We ride singlespeeds on mountainous terrain where the gear you are in is rarely the right one for the job. But down here I’ve been just picking one gear and sticking to it all day. I’ve been using the 42×20. Big ring fun! I could have used a little harder one, but the next option is the 17 which is too hard. This was the biggest climb I did all day.

There can be some technical challenges even more frightening than the log hop, however. One time I had to turn around because there was an alligator on the trail. This guy really likes this spot, he has been here all three times that I’ve ridden so far this trip. The reason he looks so happy is because I was scratching his belly just a minute before. Alligators like their bellies scratched, FYI.

But the most horrible technical challenge occurs if you ride early in the morning. If you are the first one to ride the trails, you have to break trail. See, the banana spiders build webs across the trails at night. They build them precisely at head height. So you are riding along and all of a sudden you have a face full of web. And you know that somewhere there is a spider with a body about the size of the last segment of your pinky finger.

The trails are in perfect shape right now, as it hasn’t rained much this fall. The trails border on the Hillsborough River, and the water levels normally vary cyclically. So the low trails like this one get flooded certain times of the year and are unrideable.

Most of the higher sandy trails are rideable all year long. This is the perfect time of year to ride, it has been in the low 70s all week. It gets cold enough here that leaves do fall off some of the trees, although not completely.

So this is Steve Z Sr., and this is how the Steve Z’s spent their Christmas Eve, under the canopy of the cypress swamp!

Well I’ve been too busy to blog much this month. My photography work has really been picking up, which is great news. I have a backlog of photos so I’m going to try and make an effort to get them posted. Here are a couple more mountain biking photos from the Salt Lake trip. After packing up the booth on Sunday, the Green Guru crew headed up to the foothills for a quick ride before the sun went down. There are trails all over the hills over the city, which is the complete opposite of Boulder. No land use squabbles here. The hills light up golden yellow every night as the sun sets over the Great Salt Lake. On the way down from this vista we hit the Bobsled Trail. This run is as close to a natural BMX track as I’ve ever ridden. It weaves it’s way down a gully, so the corners are all berms and wall rides. Super fun! The local downhill kids have built some jumps on the course. At the end there are two old cars right in the middle of the trail. The first one is a cool gap jump where you have to clear the car interior. I wouldn’t even consider trying it on the XC bike without any pads. The second car has been filled with rocks so you can ride across the top. I was packing my Strobist setup with one SB-26 and a set of Pocket Wizards so I was able to set up this shot after the sun went down.