High Country CO with SS and Full Trucker.
- Thread starter Pesqueeb
- Start date
You should probably not ride with me, then. On this particular ride, we had to leave the bikes on the ridge and scramble down the hill about 250 vertical feet and cower in a small group of rock pinnacles:
Did the same ride a few years later with @Full Trucker and just got LUCKY to be honest, that we only saw rain and hail on one of the high points near the "end" of the ride:
I assume your weather can go from really nice to dangerous quickly with little warning.
I got myself into a peculiar situation during our trip to Idaho last year. When it started lightning directly above our heads, on a ridge with two out of three trees scorched by lightning, I felt *very* stupid. And I suspect one hit very near our car as it displayed a mysterious malfunction of power windows when we arrived.
Yes, sir. Shit - as you alluded to earlier, lightning can actually come out of what may appear to be innocuous weather overhead.
Yeah - that ride I mentioned above is an 8-12 hour affair, and the *vast* majority of the trail is above 12K feet. You just gotta basically HOPE that the weather doesn't go to hell in a handbasket while you are out there...
Lighting is very rare here, but the only time I have seen it was in fog, below me.
How about ball lightning, anyone here experienced one? I did, and that thing was beyond weird.
I don't fuck around with lightning (TS) anymore. We do get it a bit here, but not nearly as much as in AZ. In AZ, I was in storms where I was maybe 100 feet away from strikes, deafening and feeling the concussive blast. Strikes happening every couple seconds in heavy rain. Hail, etc. Luckily I didn't get caught in one of the 1" or larger hail downpours, but we had those too. There's a significant difference in being hit by lightning by random, or even way down low when there's a crap load of good conductors available, vs. being on a fucking lightning rod out in elevation, often out in the open, during the peak activity of a thunderstorm. I adapted just fine, but it meant looking at the forecasts, the convective strength and how widespread it was going to be, what times it was forecast to start, etc. All of this stuff is readily available, it's plotted and you don't have to be a scientist. If you want to derive the numbers fro a SkewLogT chart, then yeah, you need a bit more schooling, but the convective forecast discussions and convective outlook stuff is pretty easy to figure out. Also what to look for on radar. We'd get into the summer during a heavy monsoon period where the clouds would start forming actively around 10, rain by noon, and it'd clear up by around 4pm (to amazing cool summer temps where I'd be in the 60s at 5000' and down the road in Phoenix it'd be 110). During those peak times, you had to decide how you wanted to ride. Get off the mountain by 11-12 or start a ride at 4 (water permitting), but don't get caught in the mess of it. That kind of rain can cause serious hypothermia due to how you get totally soaked. Sometimes I'd go to Flag, ride in the morning, go to a restaurant, come back out in the late PM for some more riding. It was nice sometimes when the monsoon cycle would get thrown out of whack and instead of building and raining in the day, it'd do it at night, and there'd be low stratus in the morning and cool temps (instead of shooting up to 90 degrees immediately) all day.
I do a lot of riding in weather, snowstorms, blizzard this week when two rangers on snowmachines went by me high above the city in the mountains, -30F and I'll eventually get so pissed off I'll go ride in the pouring rain here, but not lightning. Lightning=thundestorms, which means downdrafts, lightning, rain, hail, etc. No thanks.
I saw radar returns in AZ on aircraft equipment that went to color-scales I didn't even know existed. Usually, it's green, dark green, yellow and red. Pink and cyan=some shit is going down:
I do a lot of riding in weather, snowstorms, blizzard this week when two rangers on snowmachines went by me high above the city in the mountains, -30F and I'll eventually get so pissed off I'll go ride in the pouring rain here, but not lightning. Lightning=thundestorms, which means downdrafts, lightning, rain, hail, etc. No thanks.
I saw radar returns in AZ on aircraft equipment that went to color-scales I didn't even know existed. Usually, it's green, dark green, yellow and red. Pink and cyan=some shit is going down:
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Maybe he got struck by lightning!
I was so close to a big strike once, I got burned. My gloves were wet, and I had one Hayes (aluminum) lever, and one (Magura) carbon lever. The aluminum one burned my hand. Strike was *maybe* 20 feet away. One of the scariest mountain bike experiences ever.
Man... those pretty colors are business as usual around here in the summer.
3, 4 times a week, some times during the summer. Shit is evil.
I like it when the NWS basically gives up and shows white in a storm cell.
3, 4 times a week, some times during the summer. Shit is evil.
I'm actually grateful that for trail riding I've got to flats now so I don't have that nice little metal cleat under my foot when I'm hoping to not get zapped while taking temporary shelter.
Says guy riding a lightning rod.
Ahh...well at that point pray to jebus.
So the high country is drying pretty quickly this season, and it's pretty easy to stay 6' apart on a high country ride.
You guys want to do a Brown's Creek suffer fest in June?
You guys want to do a Brown's Creek suffer fest in June?
Little Browns. https://www.mtbproject.com/trail/7030380/mt-princeton-hot-springs-little-browns-creek-loop
Timing TBD by when it is passable at 13k feet, but from what it looked like up there over the weekend, it will probably be fairly soon.
Timing TBD by when it is passable at 13k feet, but from what it looked like up there over the weekend, it will probably be fairly soon.
I'm not in *that* kind of shape. 
Well, yeah, you're an old fart...I'm not in *that* kind of shape.
It sure is, and seems to be a common theme of trails in that area. The Canyon Creek bump at the end is so brutal as well.
It looks like the Canyon Creeeeek climb at the end was the result of a silly land dispute...you can almost see the road along the creeeeek, and then have to climb over a damn mountain to get back to the bottom. Is that what happened?If only I had lived back in the day when Canyon Crik (and Agate Crik) did NOT end in an uphill.
I can't remember the end climb on Canyon Creek....
June you say...
June you say...
I started a PM to cover logistics for the Little Brown’s Sufferfest and added a couple people. If you’re not in on it but wanna be, lemme know.
I'm probably too slow.
there is a *chance* I could attend. please include me in the logistics list. or maybe in will just pull an SS.
The climb is a Jeep road, so you’re definitely fine there, and Little Browns has low traffic. That whole area is packed with loud fuel burners, I doubt anybody would reasonably care if you’re riding an e bike.
