Emigrant Trail

Emigrant Trail.

Well, Monday was a day off the bike. Headed to Reno to hit up the dodge dealer. The truck was telling me an oil change was required despite only having been 2700 miles at that point since the last oil change. I suspect the techs that did the last one didn’t reset the computer for the duty cycle determination of when a change is required. So, to be safe, I headed for a dealer to get I changed out and confirm my suspicion that indeed, it has to be manually reset each time the oil is changed. My suspicion was correct.

Next, I headed back towards Truckee. Just north of Truckee off Hwy 89 is the Commemorative Emigrant Trail. I had heard about that one and wanted to ride it. So, I looked for a place to camp. Along the trail, part way in and at one end are two reservoirs that have campgrounds. So, I headed out to check them out. Stampede Reservoir, the one at the end of the trail, was bigger and had better camp facilities. There were also many OHV trails/roads in the area, according to the map at least.

I thought I could score a free campsite off of one of the OHV trails…many of which went right to the edge of the reservoir. Nope. The entrance at each one of the trails had a “day use only, no camping” sign posted. Damn. It would have been nice to have my own little spot right on a beach. So, I head to the big campground…logger something.

Got up early Tuesday and was riding by 7:15. It was chilly. Since Hannah took one pair of my arm warmers and I couldn’t find the other pair, I had to start with a long sleeved jersey and had to wear that for about the first 45 minuets or so. The trail was fun. Little sustained climbing, a few rocky sections thrown in here and there, and some super fast, carve it up type of singletrack.

I had set out early because I wanted to ride the entire trail and checkout time at the campground was 2pm. Looking at the map and reading other users reviews of the trail, I was expecting about and 11-12 mile trail as an out an back. Totaling maybe 22 miles. Well, most folks don’t ride the section west of Hwy 89. What a shame. That was a nice section…thought that is where most of my climbing came from. Lots of water crossing, a fair amount of rocks, but even the climb to the southwestern end of the trail was fun. I should mention the first water crossing after leaving Donner Camp and crossing over Hwy 89. I think I crossed another road after that, but it was still the first water crossing after Donner Camp.

It looked like a pretty big pool of water…maybe damned up by beavers. As I was still climbing at that point, I was going slow enough to notice a ride around to avoid the deep pool. Well, on the way back, I was going quite a bit faster and had lost track of all of the water crossing. I came up on it thinking that I’ll just speed right through it like all the others. The faster I get through it, the drier I’ll stay. Nope. I rode in and suddenly the front wheel DROPPED! Into what felt like a very deep section. My worst fear might be coming true…hitting a suddenly deep pool of water at a high rate of speed. In most cases, the large increase in resistance to continued forward motion of the bike would send you over the handlebars instantly. And in this case, off the bike and completely into the water. Well somehow, I stayed upright and moving through the water. I did however create enough of a bow wave to send water completely up and over my head. My entire body was soaked.

Which probably turned out to be a good thing. It was getting warm and I was going to be worn out by the time I made it back to the camper.

Thus far, I hadn’t had an off the bike incident. Turns out, I got stung AGAIN! This time I think it was a bee and it was on my face, right at the jaw joint. I think I managed to sho the bee away quick enough that it wasn’t a full sting. It still smarted and I think I was a bit distracted as I came in way too fast on a rising left hand 90 degree turn that had a drop off on the right hand side. Well, to much speed and I was either going down, or riding right off the ledge. Down it is. I low sided going into the turn. Used my helmet as a skid plate of sorts. But, I got up with little to no damage to myself (slight scrape on the inside of my left leg…probably from the bike) and no damage to the bike. Up and back at it…as I still had 12 or so more miles to go at that point and it was getting hotter by the minute.

It turned out that from the campground, I had ridden 17 or so miles to the end of the trail. It was going to be a long day. Turned out to be about 4 hours of riding time and 34 miles. Somehow, gradually I suppose, I accumulated 2300 feet of climbing, never decnding less than 6k feet or ascending above 6.8k feet. I ran out of water just as the trail ended and I had about 1.5 miles of pavement to hit the camper. Overall the trail was just pure and simple fun. I got back to the camper, grabbed an accelerade, my Keva sandals with the cycling cleats in them and headed for the reservoir. It felt so good to take a dip after that ride!