Frederick Mini Epic - 7/26/08

32 miles of fine Frederick trails in 8 hours.

We, Aaron, Chris, Dan, Denis, Rob, and I, started off Hamburg going south, followed the blue, through the rock garden and straight down to the Valley of Death. When we climbed up to Gambrill, Denis insisted following the blue to the Gambrill lower lot. So, again blue we went. We suffered (except for Rob and Denis), we cursed, we even plotted some evil plan to attack them when regroup. We avoided the steep climb off the lower lot, went cross the road instead. The rest of Gambrill was done pretty much like we always do. Lawn mower was fun as usual. First -timer Dan really enjoyed it. Aaron cleaned the rock garden on his full rigid SS, crazy!

Dan peeled off after getting back to the Hamburg lot. The rest of us stuffed our stomach with Gatorade, Banana, bloks, gu, PBJ, and pressed on north bound. The rocky descent gave spring-less Aaron some hard time, at one point, he had a cramp in his left arm... Anyway, after the rocky Little Canaan and a couple nasty climbs, we found ourselves playing at the lollipop and golf ball trails. I'm not sure who cleaned what because I was way behind and couldn't see. It was already past 2pm at that point, so we decided to skip the Salamander. We flew downhill, crossed Fishing Creek and headed towards Supersweet. Chris' slime-filled rear tire finally gave out - that was the only mechanical on the ride, not bad. At the bottom of the Supersweet, Chris whipped out his water-filter again and thanked Brizn for testing it out the first time :). I overheard Denis cleaned the first big rock drop leading to the sweet candy - good job!

We came back to the 4-way at Thurmon overlook via upper ridge trail. We did the Brizn's nightmare climb as promised. I felt tired at that point, but Denis was just finally warmed up :). A couple guys on the ride experienced for the first time the exhilaration of flying down Death March - as a matter of fact, Rob was so excited he missed the left turn onto the Death March Alt :). The rest of the ride was just a plain story of going back to the cars.