The Monarch Crest Trail is Stupid

It's likely that you've been hearing for years about how the Monarch Crest trail is stupid. If you've never ridden it, you may be wondering what exactly could possibly make it so stupid.

The first dumb thing is that you should probably take the $20 shuttle from Poncha Springs, which leaves at 8am. What that means is that you more than likely will need to get to the Salida area at least the night before, and what that means is that you'll probably end up camping in some dumb, ugly mountainous place where you can see all the stars and meteorites and wildlife and stuff. There is not even one streetlight or like blasting stereo in the distance to help you keep your bearings whilst wandering around after dark. At night time, the mountainous places near Salida tend to look something like this:

Nothing to see but the eyes of the stupid predator about to eat you.

You'll end up sleeping next to a stream or a lake or something else irritatingly pleasant, and circumstance will more or less force you to have some kind of campfire and the campfire will more or less force you to have some kind of conversational interaction with whomever you've brought with you. There is no TV to watch, no Facebook to pet, and nothing to buy. It's downright communist out there. 

After your long night of aggravatingly good sleep, you'll have to wake up and prepare for the entire day you're about to waste on a mountain bike. You'll have to pay extra close attention whilst packing to make sure you've dutifully included all of the items on your checklist, such as a can of beer, an asiago portobello sandwich, Toblerone, et al. 

Then you'll have to ride your bike all day through some of the ugliest country out there. 

You can't even hear the light rail station from here. It's so stupid.

Honestly, this crap is 100% un-shredable.

These people wish they'd stayed home and spent the day changing furnace filters and sweeping dust out from under the sofa with a paper towel rubber-banded to a yardstick. 

This person is keeping himself entertained by imagining he's watching cat videos.

This person is drinking away the regret he feels about coming on this ride.

We don't know why this person is smiling. He is probably deranged.

Prepare yourself for grueling hike-a-bikes across vast, barren moonscapes.

You, like these people, may tire of staring at dusty, blown-out trail, and may have to stop and gather and convene about whether to slog on or just mix up the poison Kool-Aid and end it.

So if you're one of the very few insane people in the world who feel like riding your mountain bike all day on tacky soil for very little money, then please be our guests and go ahead and ride the Monarch Crest trail, but don't say we didn't warn you. 

Merino Wool Pre-Order

Don't forget that you have one week left to submit your order for our customized merino wool gear. The deadline to order is SUNDAY, AUGUST 17th at 4:00pm. Garments will not be available in the store, so that will be your last chance. If you like any of the mock-ups below, give us a call or stop by the store to make your order. It'll take a while after the orders go in for the printing to happen. We're not sure when we'll be able to get the final products to you, but we're betting it will be 6-8 weeks(ish).

Have you worn merino wool before? If you haven't, get the notion of scratchy, heavy wool out of your mind. It's the softest, most comfortable, least stinky thing you will ever wear. If you were Obi Wan Kenobi, merino is the material you want to die and then come back as a Jedi ghost in.

The t-shirts will be coming from our pals at Icebreaker. We're working on getting sizing charts for their Tech T's. Men's shirts come in black and red, women's in black and patina. T-shirts are $70 apiece.

The merino jerseys and hoodies are made by Surly. The long sleeve jersey is the only item that is available in women's sizes. Please use the men's sizing chart for the short sleeve jersey and the hoodie (and, if you're a man, the long sleeve jersey, obviously).

Short sleeve jerseys are $125. Long sleeve jerseys are $145. Hoodies are $180. 

Here's the sizing chart for everything but the t-shirts:

lease hit us up with questions. A few of the Surly items are in stock in the store, if you want to try one on for size.

Video of the Week

Merino Wool Pre-Order

Hey. Do you like looking good? Do you like feeling good? 

We're just about to run out of our logo t-shirts, and it's time for us to order up some more. We thought that we might take this opportunity to do something with merino wool, which is the key component in all of our favorite cycling garments (as well as sitting, walking, eating, breathing, and etc. garments). So, for the next two weeks we'll be taking pre-orders for merino garments. The deadline to order is SUNDAY, AUGUST 17th at 4:00pm. Garments will not be available in the store, so that will be your last chance. If you like any of the mock-ups below, give us a call or stop by the store to make your order. It'll take a while after the orders go in for the printing to happen. We're not sure when we'll be able to get the final products to you, but we're betting it will be 6-8 weeks(ish).

Have you worn merino wool before? If you haven't, get the notion of scratchy, heavy wool out of your mind. It's the softest, most comfortable, least stinky thing you will ever wear. If you were Obi Wan Kenobi, merino is the material you want to die and then come back as a Jedi ghost in.

The t-shirts will be coming from our pals at Icebreaker. We're working on getting sizing charts for their Tech T's. Men's shirts come in black and red, women's in black and patina. T-shirts are $70 apiece.

The merino jerseys and hoodies are made by Surly. The long sleeve jersey is the only item that is available in women's sizes. Please use the men's sizing chart for the short sleeve jersey and the hoodie (and, if you're a man, the long sleeve jersey, obviously).

Short sleeve jerseys are $125. Long sleeve jerseys are $145. Hoodies are $180. 

Here's the sizing chart for everything but the t-shirts:

Please hit us up with questions. A few of the Surly items are in stock in the store, if you want to try one on for size.

The Video of the Week

Colorado Trail: Copper Mountain to Searle Pass

If you're tired of riding trails where it's unlikely you'll see a marmot, it may be time to head up to Copper Mountain Resort and ride the first portion of Section 8 of the Colorado Trail. The trail is rated anywhere from intermediate (MTBR) to black diamond (mtbproject), and is about 15-17 miles long, depending on whose report you trust. The ride is most easily done as an out-and-back, which means you climb for over seven miles, gain 3500 feet of elevation, turn around, and shed it all. By some accounts, this ride will take you six hours, but it probably will take you closer to four. Five if you dawdle.

Park at the Copper Mountain Resort. The trail begins just east of the American Flyer lift. The thirty second ride from your car to the trailhead will be the last flat portion of ground you see for a few hours. Take a picture.

Getting dropped already.

There's a belgian waffle restaurant just out of frame to the left. We would've planned around it had we known. Please learn from our mistake.

The trail starts as an unmarked service road. If you look all over for a Colorado Trail sign and don't see one, you're on the right track. About a mile or so up the hill, you'll see a white rock about the size of a beach ball with the Colorado Trail marker etched into it. There are a couple of forks in the trail early on, but you'll know you've made a wrong turn if you stop climbing. 

So, there's a lot of climbing. First, you climb through a bunch of pine trees. You'll cross a couple of small creeks and pass a group of old men who won't want to let you pass. Then you'll climb up a bunch of stuff that looks like this:

Getting dropped never felt so steep.

Stupid, ugly place.

You'll continue this business of climbing for quite some time. It's not as bad as I may be making it seem. If you can ride front range trails, you'll have no problem. Take delicious snacks and some oxygen and you'll be just fine. 

There are a few short technical sections, and a few punchy little climbs that are probably not all that steep, but since you'll likely have been climbing for over an hour, they will seem just downright mean. It's nothing you can't handle though. And what the hell, walk them if you want; it's pretty darn pretty up there. 

Eventually, the trees will get short and then disappear entirely. Once again, your friends will get smaller and smaller until they disappear entirely.

There is literally not even one direction in which to look that is not eye-rendingly ugly.

(Somewhat Uncalled-for Editorial Aside: You know, there have been several things circulating on the internet recently involving motorist-on-cyclists road rage. If you've seen them, you know what I'm talking about--death threats that include anyone who's even thrown a leg over a top tube. If you haven't seen them, it's probably for the better, but just know that it's a bunch of jerks who can't stand cyclists for unarticulated reasons, and promise high-speed encounters between their assuredly truck-nutted Suburban and your spandexed body. It's blanket hate bred from ignorance and/or an unexplainable fear of spandex. I'm wondering, however, if there's any way that a cyclist-hating potential hit-and-runner could maintain their stance after riding just a portion of this ride. It's that good.)

So, above tree line, the trail gets a little wetter, and you may even encounter large snow fields to serve as your canvas for some design or another that might not thrill your mom.

"Just a moment. I do believe this would be an ideal spot for an exaggerated likeness of some genitalia!"

"Tee-heeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheehee."

Unless you enjoy carrying your bike, you might as well leave it a couple hundred yards below the summit. The photograph doesn't do the terrain justice, but let's just say this would be an easy place and also an inconvenient place to break a collarbone. 

The view from the top is obviously terrible, and it will make you glad, if you live in the city, that you live in the city. You will hate the clean air and dumb fuzzy alpine animals. It will be more or less the low point of your week, altitude aside. You'll eat a sandwich or something up there, and then be like, "I could be eating at Masterpiece Deli right now (sigh)." 

The descent is a smile-till-your-face-hurts-like-there-is-a-lobster-hanging-from-each-cheek kind of descent that lasts for a very long time. Should you pass that group of old men again, and should you be at the back of the pack, they will call you something unflattering and emasculating and tell you to go on and catch that other guy. 

If you ride this trail and don't have the awesome time I promised, I'll refund the fee you paid to read this blog. Guaranteed.

Video of the Week

Bigfoot

This blog post is going to be a kind of loose-end-tying, loose-end-making, rambling jumble with poor transitions. You have been warned.

This blog is going to go silent for a week, so we'll see you back here on Monday, July 28th. We promise that we have good reason for this sabbatical, and it will serve for this blog's eventual imbetterment and goodification.

We've been updating our Custom Builds Page with lots of juicy info. Surlys are great bikes right out of the box, but they are very easy to customize to better suit you and your riding style. You'll find pictures of staff and customer bikes, as well as blurbs about why we built them up the way we did. You can check it out here!

This Friday past, Banjo Brothers held one of their Tiny Bike Shop Concert Series concerts here, featuring King Mulhacen. If you like folk music, please check them out. If you don't like folk music, they will make you like it. Check out their website and listen to some music while you're there: http://kingmulhacen.com.

Here's what happens when baseball teams drink too much lemonade on the team bus:

Here is proof that Bigfoot rides a bike:

See you back here in a couple of weeks.

Video of the Week

How to be a Newbie

It was one of those days that we sometimes have where the temperature is perfect and you are warm but sweat-free, and the breeze is blowing oxygen from the forests of the Rocky Mountains onto the plains, and the mountains look like they're only blocks away because the breeze has blown the haze away and brought with it the smell of soil and sage.

We had been inside all day, the three of us, and being indoors could no longer be tolerated. A ride had to happen. We weren't really prepared for a ride, but there are times when caution is only for throwing to the wind.

Showing up to for a ride without a pack full of supplies, tools, and inflation gizmos feels weird. Bad stuff happens to all of us on the trail, and so we carry more and more stuff to prevent those long walks back to the car, things such as spare headphones and a welding kit. Wearing denim cutoffs, a t-shirt, and (gasp!) underpants, and water-loading at the car because you don't have a bottle you can carry will make you feel like equal parts rebel and newb. This feeling will in no way be mitigated if you are joined by a real-life newb who's never put tire to trail before, let alone at dusk.

We lowered seatposts, moved some pedals around, and managed to put four bikes together that were functional but by no means "dialed." We did balance the riders/helmets equation. 

Ordinarily, I don't like comedy-of-errors stories, and as we left the trailhead I imagined that would be the only kind of story I could write about this ride. "Four Riders Marooned on Green Mountain for Three Days Finally Rescued."

Fortunately, I was wrong. The ride couldn't have been better. It felt more like an adventure than any other ride I've had in years, even when we got a little lost in the dark. We rode like kids ride after dark: aimless and full of enthusiasm. 

As it turned out, our newbie had more helpful things to say about mountain biking after one ride than the rest of us combined.

1. Equipment matters. Borrowing a bike that's unfamiliar but up-to-date is going to be far more advantageous than riding a bike that's familiar but fifteen years old. 

2. Speed helps even though it's scary. 

3. It's damn hard, but well worth it.

4. There was lots of stuff I didn't ride, but I feel like I accomplished so much!

I think I'll be leaving the welding kit at home for awhile.

The Video of the Week