Most of the time; when you are riding your mountain bike; it is either a training ride or racing, sometimes a combination of the two. You want to ride as fast as you can; to improve your fitness or to beat your riding partners in friendly competition. We are lucky enough to live in an area where we don’t know where every trail goes. We ride all the time; but it would take a long time to ride all the trails and logging roads around here.
When we have the time; we go for an “expedition ride.” We don’t have a particular destination in mind and we aren’t sure where we are going or how we will get there. We fill up the camelbacks and add water bottle cages because we don’t know how long we will be on the trail. This type of riding is where you really need energy bars and water. A GPS is mandatory here; we might not get lost for days; but it is possible to run into problems and wind up spending the night in the woods in our bike clothes; not something we prefer to do.
Most of the time we will start out on well used trails then take trails that are not used that often. Here is Don S riding along a ridge line into the boonies. The company he works for; Gorge Delights, makes fruit bars. On these rides; we can test these bars to see if they really work. All we take with us is water and Gorge Delights fruit bars to fuel our adventures. Happy to report the fruit bars actually work.
You never know what you will run into on these rides. There are no named trails that you find on mountain bike maps; these overgrown logging roads, unmarked trails and game tracks may not be on any map. You have to pace yourself in case you make a wrong turn and wind up in a box canyon, climbing over blowdowns or run into some unexpected climbing.
This is a great way to spend the day on a mountain bike; you don’t know where you’re going or how you’ll get there. Once in awhile you have to stop. look around and figure out where you are and which way you should go. There’s always the possibility you might wind up spending the night in the woods with the bears and cougars. Oh yeah; lots of spots with no cell phone coverage so don’t think you can call for help. Even if you could call somebody; a town of two thousand people is not going to send much help your way that quickly.
The “Thrill of Discovery”; that’s where it’s at.