Planned for Oct 14, 2017, CO. Come rally with us in an entirely new area of Colorado. We’ve scouted the roads and conditions and views are more than prime. Check out the planned route after the break and stay tuned to this page for updates.
Come join us for 110km (67 miles) of mixed terrain riding through Colorado’s high country during peak fall color.
Two route options will allow riders to keep things mellow and sublime on a route consisting primarily of gravel and paved backroads, or to chose a route that adds some of Colorado’s finest flowing singletrack into the overall mix.
This will be the first year of the Bailey Grind so we’re keeping it simple.
Please RSVP here so that we can get a sense of attendance. Registration is free.
We need to cap this ride at around 60 people per insurance and courtesy to other trail and road users. If registration fills up we can’t force people to stay away but it would be best to stagger the start.
To download maps or cue sheets click on over to Blackriver.cc below.
GPS File: LINK
Cue Sheet: LINK
We start in Bailey and take gravel roads towards Wellington Lake before descending through the Buffalo Creek area into Sandy Wash. The donation supported tent provides an opportunity to fill up on water and fuel before continuing out along the Platte river where the road surface varies between degraded blacktop and gravel. Mellow, undulating roads arrive in Deckers, CO for another opportunity to refuel before heading up hero dirt roads and gravel to the Hayman Burn area. Continue climbing and descending through quiet backroads and increasing stands of aspen before climbing up and over Stoney Pass. Hang on for the ripping fun dirt descent to Wellington lake and onwards towards the finish. After ride food options in Bailey will refuel tired legs and bodies.
GPS File: LINK
We start in Bailey and take gravel roads towards Wellington Lake before dropping onto a section of Colorado Trail Segment 3. Wipe the grin off of your face then climb up some of Buff Creek’s finest singletrack before descending the main North Side singletrack descent. Re-join Sandy Wash to the Buff Creek parking lot. The donation supported tent at the lot provides an opportunity to fill up on water and fuel before continuing out along the Platte river where the road surface varies between degraded blacktop and gravel. Mellow, undulating roads arrive in Deckers, CO for another opportunity to refuel before heading up hero dirt roads and gravel to the Hayman Burn area. Continue climbing and descending through quiet backroads and increasing stands of aspen before climbing up and over Stoney Pass. Hang on for the ripping fun dirt descent to Wellington lake and onwards towards the finish. After ride food options in Bailey will refuel tired legs and bodies.
Can you do Route 2 on a CX or gravel bike? Yes! We do all the time. It takes some finesse (and as big of tires as you’d like) but rewards the adventurous rider with an incredibly fun route where even the climbs are fun. Less experienced mountain bikers may need to dismount certain sections but there is plenty of flowing singletrack on this option.
questions? contact us through the site.
Here is a sampling of what conditions may be like on the ride. The route for this year is completely unique and not identical to these videos, but these both show the Bailey, Buff Creek, Pine, Deckers, and Stoney Pass area.
Don’t expect rugged hike a bike conditions on this ride. This one is all rideable and we were careful to make it so.
Join us Saturday, June 10th, 2017 for a Rodeo Rally in and around the heart of Shenandoah County, VA. While slightly less challenging than it’s big brother, the 135-km Gravel Ring will challenge adventurous riders with multiple traverses of the east and west Massanutten ridges as it encircles Fort Valley and surrounding towns.
(click title for full post)
We’ve been shouting about it pretty hard lately, but just in case you missed it, we launched the Flaanimal 3.0.
Straight away we started reading and listening to peoples’ reactions and impressions about what we’ve created. Some people were all-in from the start, with the first order coming in no less that five minutes after we launched. Thank you!
Other people were more skeptical. What is so great about our bike? Why should anyone pay attention? Could anyone trust our claims that a single frameset can be suitable for road biking, gravel riding, cyclocross, city riding, or trail riding?
Skepticism is fair. No harm no foul. But as I read through the comments one comment struck me.
“Yeah you can build a mountain bike with it, but is it a GOOD mountain bike?”
Sometimes the best rides come together last minute. This is one of those rides. The invite went out late in the day Saturday for an early Sunday departure. I didn’t know if anybody would be able to come. I didn’t even know if I wanted a big group or not. I was heading east because nowadays east is where I go to clear my head.
Sometimes you put out a ride invite and optimistically hope that only the right people show up. The “right” people are people that want to ride about as fast as you, that don’t mind stopping when you want to.
The right people are also easy to talk to, they laugh at your dumb jokes. You laugh at their dumb jokes too. The right people consider dumb jokes to be an art form.
The right people don’t mind wind, don’t mind flats, don’t mind washboard, and don’t mind getting up early.
Tom, Josh, Geoff, and Patrick were the right people on Sunday. I’m really glad that they showed up. It was a great ride.
Work and travel limited my holiday riding and delayed my start in 2017. Because of this, the first adventure of the new year had to be a memorable one. Riding through the Corrizo Gorge, along twenty-two miles of abandoned railway, was the perfect kick-off to the year of the Trail Donkey.
This particular stretch of the San Diego and Arizona Railroad has been dubbed “The Impossible Railroad”. Extreme temperatures, mountainous terrain, and damage caused by earthquakes and flooding make this a gnarly region. These tracks have not had a train pass in forty years, which has created the perfect location for adventure. The ride surrounds you with the beauty of wilderness, starkly contrasted by defeated machinery. An ever present reminder that the Corrizo Gorge could not be tamed.
Today is almost exactly the three year anniversary of when we started Rodeo Labs in 2014. On that day Peder Horner and myself had some beer and ate some pie at Denver Bike Cafe while dreaming up the beginnings of this circus. We scribbled some names on some paper and laughed a lot as we considered the possibilities that starting from scratch allowed us.
We’re working up something new for 2017. Traditionally an organized Rodeo ride is a Rodeo Rally, but for 2017 we want to do a couple of longer, more adventurous multi day events. Thus, the term Rodeo Roundup has been coined. We want to offer a few events big enough to attract out of town Rodeoers and non-Rodeoers alike for the sake of building community and sharing some of the gems of our state.
When people ask “Where are you from” it is always interesting to observe how the responses unfold. If a person has lived in the same place their entire life then the answer is of course quite simple but that seems to be the case less and less these days. Now we live in a transient world. People relocate constantly for any number of reasons. Where we are from is open to interpretation anymore.
As for me, I was born in North Hollywood, California… but I only lived there for a matter of months before my parents moved to my father’s childhood home in Ohio. We stayed there for a few years before, I’m not sure exactly how, my parents took a trip to the Northwest corner of the USA. I’m pretty sure the story goes something like “we saw the Columbia River Gorge and knew we had found our new home”. So, promptly thereafter we relocated in Vancouver, Washington which, if you look at a map is neither in Washington DC or Vancouver BC. It’s right across the river from Portland, Oregon but dare I say it is culturally much further than a few miles from Portland. Vancouver is a bit of a sleepy eddy next to Portland’s raging torrent. Things move slower there, it isn’t as “cool” in almost any measurable way, but I think the people who live there have a certain pride in their identity, of being a small town next to a big city. I spent most of my formative years in Vancover, but our family also detoured to Argentina for a couple of years in the middle of that. Argentina opened my eyes to the fact that the outside world is not the USA. The USA is very different from the rest of the world, a bubble of sorts.
The mountains are, by default, the place that I go to for inspiration and replenishment on a bike. The challenge, variety, and beauty of rolling hills and jagged peaks can’t really be matched by anything else.
Or can they?
