The rear tire on the 625 was completely shot. Almost a slick, so I trucked down to Nate at the Bike Shack, and picked up a sweet Pirellio Scorpion Pro XC. Big knobbies. Unfortunately while putting on the new tire, I realized I had a broken spoke. Nobody in town had spares, but Lincoln has a welder! With great skill, he put a nice bead of weld on the top of the spoke where it had broken off, and five minutes before the Saturday ride, I laced in the repaired spoke, and rode off!
Alex: Lincoln, Allen and I rode the access road up to Trail 417, which Lincoln believed was the other end of a nice trail he had ridden during the week. It had some pretty nice elevation changes, and wound up and around the mountian. A few loose boulder hill-climbs, and some off-camber technical section requiring some minimal moves. Mostly 2nd gear stuff, with some really tight turns requiring a shift down to 1st.
Alex: We had been riding about 45 minutes at this point through some tight rocky stuff. We stopped at this little outcropping, and Lincoln was uncharacteristically further behind us. When he got off, he said "Man, I need to take lessons or something! I'm horrible at this stuff!". As he was sitting there taking off his gear, I noticed that his rear tire looked a little... flexible. "I think you have a flat, bro..". %!&#@!
LTrain: So, flat tire. Used my long-dormant drystack stone wall building skills to work up a nice work stand, and got to it.
I was wondering why there seemed to be so much inner tube in the tire, and it turned out the previous owner had wrapped an extra cut up tube around the real tube as a pinch protector I guess. It was like 20 pounds of inner tube I pulled out of the tire! On top of that, we got to do it twice cuz the first tube got pinched on the install, neccessitating a 2nd try with a 2nd tube. That one worked, and off we went. I was sweated up pretty good though from all the tire wrangling...
Alex: After Lincolns tire was fixed, and we discovered that Trail 417 seemed to dead-end, we headed down the mountian, to start the climb up Garnet Peak. The trail up was pretty popular with hikers, and it felt weird to see other people on the trails. We came around the corner to a couple of horses too. We immediately shut the bikes off and let them pass. A cool dog came up to me with a stick and kept wanting me to play fetch with him. I eventually had to start the moto, throw the stick and take off so he wouldn't follow me!
Alex: The ride up was pretty smooth and flowing. 2nd and 3rd gear stuff, with an occasional 4th gear straight. There was a couple moderate inclines with rock gardens in the middle of them which kept things interesting. Some turns had some banking too, so we could rip off them effectively sling-shotting you around the corner and into the next. Lots of hooting and metal horns we're thrown.
Alex: At the top, what a view! We could see 191 (Gallatin Gateway) carving next to the Gallatin river between the mountains, and the huge valley off in the distance. It was pretty cool too look out where we started some 40-50 miles away, and see the mountians we climbed to get here.
Three "non-trail bikes" on some killer trails, overlookin
LTrain: Last stop: Korner Klub!!! MMMMMMM BURGER TIME!!!Alex: The new rear tire on the KTM really made the bike completely different. How sweet it is to have traction! Unfortunately I think I roosted Lincoln a few times. Every time I go out on this bike, I like it more and more. We learn little things about eachother each time, and I get more comfortable with her.
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