photos/21/
By Alan Silverstein, ajs@frii.com (page updated Wed Mar 16 18:29:12 MDT 2022)
Parent directory/folder = photos/21/
My next hike -- was more bike than hike (grin): Red Mountain (county) open space (15,780 acres), on the Wyoming border north of Fort Collins, three days before they closed for the season (along with the huge Soapstone Prairie (city) natural area adjacent to the east).
So yeah, it was brown, like Eagles Nest a week earlier, but still a cool outing with nice scenery and great exercise. Although it's "only" 34 road miles north of home, it takes an hour to get to RMOS by car, including many turns, and the last 10 miles are gravel. So I'd only explored there once before, 1.5 years ago. But seeing how smooth the trails were, I wanted to try riding it on my "fake" mountain bike (no suspension, less-than-perfect steering).
I was pleased I didn't have to walk the bike much, mainly uphill on steep sections, gravel, or rocks. I managed the 11.3 mi loop (but the Strava app reported 12.2 mi) in under 5.5 hours. The weather forecast was for calm at home, and not bad up in Laramie (on the other side) either... But actually I encountered 40-50 MPH headwinds most of the way! Oh well, it was "interesting".
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