Recently, we had some visitors from Colorado, Amber and Aaron who stayed with us for a few days of riding before heading down to the playa. We got the extra bikes geared up and then decided to try and push through the infamous (in my world, anyway) La Sierra route. It's a pretty technical double-track and single-track route that starts near Las Juntas (La Sierra actually) and ends someplace else to the east (nobody really knows). I looked on the topo map and it appeared to intersect a road near some town called Gorgonzola, or something like that. It's been on my exploration radar screen for a while so they agreed to trust me (big mistake) and give it a go.The ride starts in the small town of La Sierra (nothing there but a bar, so it's really got everything you could possibly need). The route heads east from there, upstream along the jungly and steamy Rio Aguas Claras, which it crosses about a million times. On this day there seemed to be a hatch of big gnarly biting flies that we were hoping were not "Bot Flies".........since I have not seen any fly larvae living under my skin yet - they were probably not Bot - just annoying.
Amber and Aaron tearing it up
I now say this is Volume One since we ended up only making it a few km's up this trail before we turned back and obviously never found the end. I really did not want to force our guests to endure of this the slop-fest hike-a-bike "adventure" just to satisfy my curiosity since they may have taken back the bottle of Tequila they brought for us a gift. I think Volume 2 will show the remainder of this route and how ridiculous it is to even consider this a "mountain bike ride". I'll probably have to push it on my own - and I'm there there WILL be lots of pushing. Those kinds of "rides" are not fun if you're not used to the heat and the mud and shit conditions.
Lots of hike-a-bike
