Down the Barr Trail
In the mid of July, I experienced Pikes Peak in a different light. That weekend, I would mountain bike down the front of the Peak on the Barr trail. As with most activities, there was very little planning done to do this. I woke up in the morning and got a call from Jimmy that him and Paul were going down Pikes.
1 hr later ,we were at the bottom of the Pikes Peak Highway hitching our way to the top. We were lucky enough to get picked up by a family in a huge ford truck from Missouri. We all sat in the back of the truck with our bikes as the truck wound its way up the mountain. When we got to the top, I performed my normal pole stunt(Hi! Mom.), Jimmy bought donuts, and Paul pretty much frozen to death while guarding the bikes. Lots of people were a little freaked out by us, but soon we disappeared over the edge down the bar trail.
The 1st Mile of the golden stair case was summed up with little riding, fork eaters, and bike carrying. This went on for a little bit, but then turn into a ride-able super tech sections. We were passing all types of hikers coming up to the top. At one switch back, while passing some hikers, my bike got wedged in a fork eater, and I went tumbling down the mountain side. No worse for wear, I hiked back up hopped on and kept going.
Right above trees the trail smoothed out and became awesome alpine downhill, very fast and still technical. There were lots of rocks(boulders) that I’m pretty sure I shouldn’t have made it over, and over-commited to doing lots of sketchy stuff (I think we need a GoPro for this next time). We took a break near tree line and had a picnic of beer and deer jerky(Thanks Dad). After, the break we were all pretty loose and flew through the upper pine forest. We cruised by Barr camp and other bikers and then rolled our way down to Manitou. I managed to flat out once and paul’s chain guide stopped guiding. The last 2 miles of the BARR trail was mess as we flew by hikers from the incline on single track. Once we were finally down and to Jimmy’s the heaven opened up and a monsoon washed all the tourists away.
