Black Diamond Ride Recap

On the weekends of March 26th and April 3rd, 2011 I rode the trails at Black Diamond. Both rides were wet but the trails are so much fun I didn’t mind the wet or the mud. The area does get muddy but it drains well so it doesn’t stay wet long.

Travis & Mike

The first weekend I rode with my two buddies Mike and Travis. They rocked their single speeds while I was on gears. We mostly stayed on the trails you’ll find on the map here. It can be tricky to navigate with all the turns and close proximity of all the trails. We didn’t have the mentioned map so we didn’t explore as much as we could. Little did we know that there were more trails on the other side of the power lines/rail road tracks to our east.

We ended up doing about 9 miles. I took to silly falls and the second one could have been really bad. I landed right on my shoulder but luckily it was soft ground over I would have broken my collar bone. Shortly later Mike broke his chain. It was rainy heavy by now so we were already on our way back to the cars. Once there we changed out of our muddy clothes while trying not to get soaked. Dressed and some what dry we busted out a 6 pack of Rainier Tall Boys. We stood under the trees and drank. I guess it’s a ritual for Mike and Travis.

Travis getting it done.

Mike raking it in.

We would drive back to Seattle and I was amazed how the two of them were completely unaffected by the two beers while I was borderline drunk. Mike informed me he was more buzzed from the 8 cups of coffee he had that morning before the ride than from the two beers. We drove to West Seattle and caught happy hour at Talaciros. We scared our waitress and I’m pretty sure she thought at least two of us weren’t right.

April 3rd

The follow weekend we decided to go back to the same trails but with someone who supposedly knew them. It rained most of the week so it was even wetter than the first time. We promised James, my roommate it wouldn’t be that muddy as he had cleaned his mountain bike to near complete perfection in preparations to give to his wife. We were very wrong.

The ride consisted of Mike, James, Robert and myself. We were under the assumption Robert knew the trails well. He did but he kept telling us he didn’t. We started the same way we had done the first time but once down to the flat area Robert took us east across the power lines and railroad tracks, through what appeared to be an attempted at an orchard, past some retention ponds and finally back to some sweet single track.

The trail entered the woods and switched backed it’s way up a hill. We were in mostly virgin territory since Robert had only been here once. We ended up going the opposite way he had the time before but we managed quite well. The trails were drier up on the hill but we still managed to find some muddy spots. After exploring the east side of the tracks we double back to the main trails.

Everyone was soon bonking from what for all of us was a long ride at this point in the year. We ended up doing Holly Roller 2 before taking the dirt road back to the cars. No beers awaited us this time but we did drive down the street to a pub, where we had the poorest service I’ve had in a long time. The food wasn’t much better. Weekend to weekend, the first one had better food and refreshments, where as the second weekend had better riding.

All in all we had a blast both weekends. The trails are worth the drive down. For my trail review with directions, maps, and more, click here.

———-

Scatman

Get out there!