A couple of weeks ago several of us met at the Stove Prairie School, just west of Ft. Collins, Colorado and headed out for one of my favorite rides - the Old Flowers Road. It is indeed a road and there's no single track; but that doesn't make this an easy ride.
A good sized group of Steve, Michael, Ron, Dave, Mike, Todd, Scott, Mike, Bill, Mike and me started the ride. Yes, you read correctly, a four-Mike ride.
The spot where the photo was taken is the intersection of Old Flowers and Monument Gulch Road. We did some exploring in the Monument Gulch area before heading back.
Ron logged the ride and you can view it if you have Google Earth. (If you don't have Google Earth, it's a free download on the left side of the hot link in the last sentence.)
The file is attached to this blog. If you don't see the file, click on the title for the blog and look at the bottom of the blog.
If you haven't played with Google Earth, it is really fun. You can zoom in, pan the view and a host of other fun stuff.
On this particular ride, I was consumed by learning how to operate a new camera and didn't bring any gadgets along - other than the camera.
So...I'm going to ask for some help from the other riders. Mike - you collected climbing data, right? Can you post how many feet we climbed in how many miles on that first section?
Others, how would you describe the ride? Can we get descriptions from both experienced Flowers riders and first timers?
On this ride, I remember Bill F. saying something about the second section of climbs, "You know it's steep when you can't keep your front wheel on the ground."
On a past ride, a new Flowers rider (Bill Beyers) turned to the group after climbing the toughest hill triplet and said, "Don is the devil." (Don was the guy that talked Bill Beyers into doing the ride. Don is also the moto specialist from a few blogs ago.)
Steve Douglas posted some comments in his blog. (Notice Scott trying to push me out of the camera shot? He is such a photo-ham.)
Dave took more photos too. Dave can you post a group photo at the beginning in the comment box? I think that's possible.
In advance, thanks for the help...
PS...Mark Kuusick: This is the ride we finished last year when we met you and your buddies on your self-designed bike trip.
Gale,
I don't see how to put a photo here in the comment box, but here is the link for my Picasa album of all the photos I took on that trip: http://picasaweb.google.com/davidvnewman/OldFlowersRoad20080921
Also, here's a link to a web page I did on various Old Flowers Road rides, including maps and elevation profiles: http://home.earthlink.net/%7Edavidvnewman/oldflowers.html
The first ride described on that web page is much like what we did on the 21st, except that the web page doesn't include our explorations into Monument Gulch.
Dave