Reno Flag Bear Deadman with bonus mileage

We had done today's ride a few other times and plan to do it with the rest of the crew once they are all assembled here in the gunnison/ crested butte area. But we had heard some reports that cattle grazing had seriously compromised one of the trails on the ride so we decided to go check it out ourselves. The ride starts about a 20 minute vehicle ride up the Cement Creek Drainage, then follows that up the road on bikes for another mile or so before turning skyward over the reno divide. 5 miles and 1700 vertical feet later you crest the ridge where we met up with some motorcycle riders and had a little chat. We headed down Flag Creek trail which was in fine shape just having to avoid a few cow patties and later on convince a few heifers that they really need to get off the trail and let us get by. Down past the beaver ponds then across a stream crossing before we started up Bear Creek trail. We saw a little evidence of grazing but the trail was in fine shape and up we climbed. Other than a few very steep sections, its a rather pleasant climb along the edge of a stream meadow valley. A quick ride along a dirt road and we headed down the continuation of Bear Creek trail. This heads across a wide valley at a mellow decent for a mile or so then starts to head down at a steeper rate along the creek. This intersects with Deadman's gultch were we took a right and climbed up again, great scenery along a stream with numerous beaver dams. Near the top of the ridge, a trail comes in from the left, Cement Mountain Trail. We had followed this the other direction a couple years ago when we did a bonus loop up Rosebud trail, but that climb really sucked as it was really loose and full of babyhead rocks due to all the motorcycles. We really wanted to Cement Mtn again but did not want to do Rosebud so we did an out n back from Deadman's. The first half mile was rough, almost all hike-a-bike but then mellowed after that affording us views like this


The bonus riding added about 7 miles or so taking us to a total of about 27 and an extra 700 feet or so of climbing.
Howie broke a spoke on the initial climb so after the ride we headed back to camp to clean his bike up and then head into gunnison to see about a spoke as well as potentially getting his rear brake bled. We also decided to check in on a favorite pizza spot from our previous visits, still just as good.