Rabbit Mountain
Today was an absolutely perfect day to do some mountain biking. I’ve been in Colorado for over four months now and the weather has been less than optimal to say the least (it always seems to rain on the weekends here). This weekend was an exception. It was 77 degrees, mostly cloudy, and breezy. It’s been dry all week, so the trails are excellent condition. Nothing was going to hold me back from taking out my new K2 Lithium 3.0 mountain bike this weekend.
I headed out to Rabbit Mountain in Lyons. I’ve gone to this trail a few times before. This is the trail that is closest to my home. It is also a fairly beginner course. While I did do quite a bit of trail riding in the hills of North Carolina, I’ve only biked in the mountains a handful of times. I am definitely a beginner here.
This was by far my best showing on this trail. For the first time, I didn’t feel like I was going to die on the way up because my lungs were going to explode, and I didn’t feel like I was going to die on the way down because I was going to go flying off a cliff. I’m starting to get the hang of this Colorado mountain biking. I took a few pictures with my new digital camera as well. Unfortunately, they don’t really capture the true essence of these trails. When you look at the pictures it looks as though the trail is basically flat as it goes off into the distance. This couldn’t be further from the truth. The portions of trail in these pictures are fairly steep and very rocky. To make matters worse, a lot of the rocks are loose. And this is a beginner trail.
To top the whole day off, my final treat of the day was on the way down. I was coming down at a pretty good clip (just under 10mph) and there was a snake laying across the entire trail. It was too late to do anything about it, so I had to run over it. I didn’t bother to look back and see if it was alright (looking back while coming down a mountain on a bike is not a good idea). The other reason I didn’t stop is that this mountain used to be called Rattlesnake Mountain, but they changed the name to Rabbit Mountain for PR reasons. That didn’t, however, change the reason that it was called Rattlesnake Mountain in the first place. I’m not exactly sure how big it was since I didn’t see its head or tail, but it must have been at least 3 feet long. I’m just glad I caught it on the fast downhill rather than running into it on the slow uphill climb.
