More Love From The Teanaway...

It used to be, as unevolved climber-types, we would not even look left or right, as we drove the long road to get to the Ingall's Lake Trailhead. Oh, what jewels did it possess, we never thought to look.

Once again, the valley that is the North Fork of the Teanaway River offered up a wonderfully diverse mountain bike descent. I had been wanting to descend the Stafford Creek drainage, since it is around 2,000' of continuous descending back to the car. Mike and TopGun got it before I could, a couple weeks ago. Now, when Mike says he'd ride something again, that is a sure sign that fun is to be had.

We escaped the rain, yesterday, and found slightly better weather in Cle Elum. Properly fueled by the Pioneer Roasting Company, we headed up the road. We left the truck at the base of Standup Creek, and started pedalling up the road; once at the trailhead, we started pushing. Into the steepness, beautiful subalpine meadows and valleys opened up as we pushed. We topped out at around 5,500' and then got ready for the first section of down.

Traversing slopes on off-camber trails and tight switchbacks have never been my favorite, but life was good and my new WTB Weirwolf tires were doing a great job of keeping me on the trail. We crossed Standup Creek and started hiking up the ridge to drop into Stafford Creek. This hike was dispatched, shortly, and we were back in descensionist mode. The scenery was beautiful, but innate senses of self-preservation kept my eyes glued to the 25-30' of trail directly in front of me. Picking a line through the rocks was an interesting exercise in bike control and blind faith. At certain points, as Mike put it, "you just had to take aim at the smallest rock and take your hands off the brakes." In between rocky sections, there was buff singletrack with dips, turns, and switchbacks. The recent rain had tacked up the trail and we had no dust issues. We took a couple breaks, but as the trail started to flow faster, we just kept pushing...pushing for speed, pushing to test our skills, pushing to see how close to that edge we could get.

Soon enough, as all great rides do, this one spit out onto the road and we pedalled the couple miles back to the truck. Another one in the bag...but always, always there is unfinished business in the Teanaway.