Doctor's Park Death March

Well the ride was Scott's first so the obvious choice would be a nice relatively short "welcome to altitude" ride, but that's not what happened. We had planned to the Doctor's Park downhill, a great ride that we have done a couple other times. The typical way of doing it is either ride or shuttle up about 8 miles and a little over 1000 feet up Spring Creek Road where you ford Spring Creek then head up another 1000 feet on steeper dirt roads before heading back down, very reasonable ride. Not what we did. Howie and I had been concocting a way to incorporate a trail called Cement Mountain Trail as well as getting to go down Deadman's gultch trail. There was a road, Roaring Judy rd, that went up the mountain from near where we park for Doctor's Park up to Cement Mountain Road so we were all good. The issue was elevation gain, lots of it. The first couple miles were quite pleasant which did not bode well for the next few since we knew how high we had to get. We hiked most of the next few miles getting to ride some of it. 2 hours later and 7 miles later we were at Cement Mtn trailhead at about 10,500 feet. Not fun but not unbearable. Our next landmark was the trail intersection with Rosebud at 11,000 feet, 4 miles away, no problem. Well what we neglected to notice on the map was a saddle point between there 11,600 so it was a lot steeper than we had anticipated and the motorcycles had a lot of it too chewed up to ride. So 3 hours and 3200 feet later we crested Cement Mtn trail. The downhill to rosebud wasnt a lot of fun since it was steep and also really chewed up by the motos. At least at Rosebud we knew all was good for a while traversing open meadow hillsides and heading down through some pine forests. Although over all it was down hill to Deadman's we still had some ups that worked our tired legs. Deadman's, which we have climbed a number of times as part of the reno, flag, bear, deadman's loop, lived up to expectations and was a really fun downhill as its a gentle enough grade that the motos have not rutted and loosened it up like so many other trails. The first two pictures are on the lower section of Deadman's.

The bottom of deadman's funneled us out via a very rough road on to Spring Creek rd about 3/4 of a mile below where we needed to ford Spring Creek so up we went. There were two different groups of riders there, both having shuttled up to that point. Howie was completely out of water and Scott and I were low so we pulled out the filter and filled the camlebaks with Spring Creek water. It was "only" 1000 feet up at that point but I was feeling pretty spent. It was also getting pretty warm out and the sun was beating on us during this open dirt road climb.

Here's the view as you finish the majority of that climb.
A little bit more open road, then some forested road, up and down a bit, every up seemingly taking the last bit of energy I had.
We finally break out into the open that signals the start of the decent. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 8 miles, almost all downhill. It starts with some steeper switchbacks, then some exposed benchcut, a rocky sections then into some really nice smooth aspen sections

Howie was starting to loose his rear brake again so he was taking it on the easy side. The ride ends down a series of switchbacks basically carved into the side of the rock face, good technical fun. All told, 7.5 hours, 5200 feet of climbing and about 32 miles.
We finished the ride just as one of the other groups was finishing as well and as we were loading up the truck one of them asked if we were shuttling, that is had to drive back up Spring Creek Rd because they had left the keys to their shuttle vehicle in the car up Spring Creek, we said no, but we offered to drive one of them up. So Dana, a local of about two years, hopped in and we took him on up. He filled us in some other potential rides and the group also offered to buy us a beer at the bar at the little resort place at the bottom of Spring Creek. So we had an enjoyable time sipping on a really good ESB, talking with Dana, his cute redheaded girl friend, and a couple other guys sitting the tavern's deck overlooking Taylor Creek, a really nice way to finish a long day of riding.