Shrine Pass/Commando Run/Two Elk Trail/Vail

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A spur of the moment, Saturday ride with Rach. Drove up to Vail Pass rest area and got there to start riding around 9. The plan was to ride Shrine Pass Rd down to Red Cliff, then on paved Rt 24 to Vail and up the bike path back to the car over Vail Pass. 
Awesome day for a ride! Mostly blue skies, fresh air after last night's rain, temps in the 60's. Headed up the road after packing up while van loads of peeps were getting dropped off to ride back down to Frisco along the bike path. We headed up the dirt road towards Shrine Pass instead. Memories of skiing the Commando Run came back and when we got to the turn off for that trail, we opted, ominously, to turn the day into more of an adventure than a mellow road ride. 
Up we climbed, steep switch backs for 2 or 3 miles on nice single track, though too steep to ride in places. Once you crest the ridge, the work pays off with a short mile or two of ridge top riding with 360 degree views: Gore Range to the north, Holy Cross to the west, Mosquito and Ten Mile Range to the south and east. 
A bit of a technical drop down towards the back bowls of Vail and Two Elk Trail for a nice lunch in the meadows. Had to do some phone triage to get Leah to Urgent Care to take care of an ear infection. Good experience for the girls to do that on their own and realize that these things are a hassle but easy to take care of.

With clouds building, but no worries since we were off the ridge from here on out, we headed down the Two Elks trail towards Minturn. This was not on the original agenda so no knowledge of what this trail would bring. Well, initially it brought pretty cool single track winding down through the meadows below Outer Mangolia and Blue Sky Basin. Very cool!

Then the trail started side hilling as the valley constricts along the creek. Not bad but in many places, a slip the wrong way means a tumble down a steep slope. Ooops. Rachel tumbled. And pretty for real too. Somersault down a 45 degree slope, clipped to the pedals. Ouch. Handle bar in the lower left ribs. Shocky, nauseous. Scary. Took a while to get things sorted and to evaluate whether Rach could get back on the bike. Not too good. Pretty gingerly motion on her part. I opted to ride down to the last lift before the 5 miles of back country to Minturn and see if a lifty was around to call ski patrol. Sure enough, there was and he radioed for them to come out and take a look at Rach. Ran back up the hill to help get the bike and Rach down.


Rach, stoic beast that she is, started riding around the lift area while we waited for the patrol. After 5 minutes of riding, she gave herself the thumbs up to just ride out and not wait. So off we mellowly rode, gun shy of side hilling, with lots of mounting and unmounting to get through any place that posed any threat of a fall. 2 hours into it, lightening, thunder, rain and another hour to get down to Minturn. The trail was kind of meh, with lots of constricting rocks and loads of side hill riding. Kind of alright but not when you have 4 cracked ribs. Yep, 4 of them it turns out. But we didn't know that until 3 days later. 

Stoically making her way down the wooded single track of Two Elk Trail.





Down! And now 23 miles of pavement to get to back to Vail Pass. But we bailed on that once we got to Vail proper after 5 miles. The skies just let lose, temps dropped, no clearing in site. And one very very sore Rachel. So in Vail, I caught a ride with  a shuttle service on the way to DIA and got dropped at the car. 

We'll go back to that loop again. We'll probably stick to the road :-)





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