[K2Crazy]

Hello All,

I'd like to make you aware of a new team in the Seattle area.
Recently, LUNA® Bar selected our application and we are now 1 of 17
teams for their national Team LUNA Chix program. Of these 17 teams,
some are mtb related, the others triathlon. The Team LUNA Chix
program seeks to invite, inspire and encourage women to get outside
and play, (in our case "get outside and ride!"), while raising money
and awareness for the Breast Cancer Fund

This team has come together because of a love of the trails, our
bikes, and our pure enjoyment of this sport. We have joined with
LUNA Bar as we share their commitment to social service and women in
sports. This partnership allows us to represent LUNA at various
races and events in the Pacific Northwest. We are committed to
holding 3-5 rides for women each month and for hosting 3-5 clinics
for women between May and October. . We feel that this new support
from LUNA will allow us to expand out and more aggressively
advertise and market this opportunity for women to get out and ride.

The expansion of the Team LUNA Chix program is new, and we were just
notified at the beginning of May that we had been selected as the
Seattle Mountain Bike chapter of Team LUNA Chix. We are in the
process of building a website, and I will follow up shortly with
more information on that. This website will be used to advertise
upcoming events and will include information that we hope will help
and encourage women to participate in the sport. The site should be
up in another month or so.

With the club’s buy-in, we are excited to be able to continue to hold
women's rides through the Backcountry Bike and Trail club. http://www.bbtc.org We all love this club and actually
met because of club rides. We hope to continue to bring more women
into biking and hope to garner more interest through
calendars and flyers in the local bike shops, local events, etc.

We will be posting June's rides shortly to the www.bbtc.org site. We hope that if you know someone that is new to mountain biking or that you are just trying to encourage to ride, please send her our way. We would be happy to work to build skills or simply a network of new women to ride with.

Thanks for your support, enthusiasm and interest, we are pretty
excited to get going on this!

If you have any questions or want to get on the distribution list please send an email to sclementson@hotmail.com, or you can also go to http://www.groups.yahoo.com and request membership to seattleteamlunamtb. We hope to have our website up in the next month and we’ll let you know when/where it is.
See you on the trails!

Susan

 

[TreeSaw]

Congratulations! Your program sounds AWESOME!!! I wish I was in the PNW.

 

[K2Crazy]

Well, they did put together teams all over the US. Not sure if they've got a new one in your area. I'll do a little research and let you know.

 

[TreeSaw]

Well, they did put together teams all over the US. Not sure if they've got a new one in your area. I'll do a little research and let you know.

Wonderful...thanks!

 

[geargrrl]

have any activities planned out Spokane way?

geargrrl

 

[K2Crazy]

Nothing in Spokane at this time, but whatcha got out there? Might be fun to head "East of the Mountains".

 

[geargrrl]

Nothing in Spokane at this time, but whatcha got out there? Might be fun to head "East of the Mountains".

what do you mean, whatcha got? Lots of decent rides right in town plus lots more mountain single track not too far away....including Idaho.

also, a new club, I'm the "mom" of it. http://www.fttrc.org

geargrrl

 

[K2Crazy]

Nice! That's awesome! Never been to the Spokane area to mountain bike. Would love to head out there and check out the rides. The calendar is full with weddings/a half marathon and rides for June, but I have June 19th open. You guys got anything going that day?

 

[geargrrl]

this trail head is about an hour from my house. Now that I know where the actual trail head is, I'd do the the ride a bit different...I did something like 17 miles and maybe 3500(?) feet of climbing, we went up almost to the top, twice...since they've been logging there, let's just say we couldn't find the trailhead right away, not that we got lost, LOL

Bernard Peak... I've been hearing for a very long time that this trail is
one of the finest in N Idaho. Mr. Adventure and the boys are off on the
Lochsa catching the whitewater season, so I'm on my own, for biking
naturally. I plan this outing with one of my new club friends and off we
go.

Armed with xerox's from the Falcon guide, we head off to find the trail
head. This turns out to be a somewhat elusive project. The maps from the
book are next to useless, and he routes you on 12 miles of road to the
summit to pick up the singletrack down, and we want to go out and back.
Cell phones do prove useful: I call my friend back here in town who looks up
the number of the local to the trailhead bike shop, where helpful LBS guy
kindly walks us though which gated fireroad to take, to stay right, but stay
on the main road, go up two sandy climbs and the trail will turn off to the
left.

Ok, sounds good. We were warned they had been logging in here, and sure
enough the main looking branch of the road goes right.....

bzzt.

Fricking road is obliterated. There are three skid road options, we trash
around muttering looking for anything that looks like a road or a trail...
and pull out the cell phone... "are you sure about that staying right
thing?" He lets us know that he is a total singletrack snob and it will be
worth getting there. Well, stay on the main road....

We back track, take the NEXT branch of the road, skip the left branch....
ok, here's a sandy climb... wow, what a mo-fo of a climb but they said the
trail head was at the top. I keep checking the odometer but we never found
anything. It's a fantastic day out, so by the time we hit 3.5 miles ( the
trail head is supposed to be 2.5) we said the heck with it, let's just see
where this goes. It's a nice old abandoned doubletrack, complete with fresh
bear scat. Being that it is an outstanding day, and that we NEVER have sun
on Memorial Day weekend, we decide to just take this doubletrack up and
forget the trail. A few miles up, there's a great view:

and we keep on going. .... Finally, the doubletrack starts to peter out

and a little farther on it just dies. Stops. Clark even hikes down the elk
trail heading off in the forest, but it's not bike able. We are almost at
the summit, but there's nothing to be done. So we head down, wheeeeeee down
the double track. Down a few miles, we decide it's early yet, let's try and
find the trailhead, since we are already here. We choose the most left fork
in the road, that's all that's left. It's beautiful as the fire road winds
through the open the forest. Hey, a sandy short climb! Bike tracks! And
another sandy climb! And some slash piles.... could it be...?

Of course, we can't just look at it. We decide to go up aways now that we
are here.

Ohh, la la! This is fine. Very fine.

This is real singletrack. Perfect conditions, pine needle carpet, spin up
the side of the mountain. Folks are spinning down the mountain too. We
(almost) run into some kids, "hey guys, it's considered courteous to let the
uphill riders go, down hill riders yield to them" I say in most mom-like
voice. We find evidence of their passing up the trail:

RIP.

We stop at a little creek for a snack.

and keep on climbing. It's five miles up to the summit, so we decide to
give it a go. So what if we already did a different five mile climb almost
to the summit on the other side of the hill.
The summit is not to be. We get to the lookout, and both of us are pretty
much out of steam. It's not like we didn't do a whole bunch of riding. ;-)
So we take a little break, enjoy the view

(Lake Pend Oreille) and then hit the singletrack allllll the way back down.
woo-hoo. Good ride, and now we know there the trail head is for next time.

 

[K2Crazy]

Nice, glad you scouted that out in case we head out there! Very sad about the chipmunk. If you're interested in 'hosting' us one of these weekends, let me know, would be fun to check that out real life!

 

[TreeSaw]

geargrrl those are some nice shots. That view is well worth the climb. We too have had to deal with logging on our local trails. It's a pain to have to rebuild, but it does give us an opportunity to better our trails.

 

[geargrrl]

geargrrl those are some nice shots. That view is well worth the climb. We too have had to deal with logging on our local trails. It's a pain to have to rebuild, but it does give us an opportunity to better our trails.

the problem we had is that there were new roads put in that made it hard to find the trail head on the "stay on the road " directions.

I take my camera almost all the time, I will try to remember to share my pics here, too. ;-)

K2crazy, I try and do something fun on my bike every weekend. I save the local rides for weekday, weekends are for adventure!

geargrrl

 

[K2Crazy]

I hear ya on that. If you are heading west, we’re going to do Skookum Flats on June 26th. It will be a women’s ride for intermediate/advanced. You are welcome to come on out.

http://www.imba.com/epics/skookum_flats.html

Here’s a little info on the trail. If you’re gonna be in town let me know!

 

[yonton228]

WOW, those pics are nice, I am tryin to covince my fiancee' to start ridin.