East Mountains...no, wait, White Mesa

Recovering from Quemazon's beating on our legs yesterday, Denise and I had planned on another ride today in the East Mountains. We were thinking possibly Cedro, Otero or a 10K loop of some sort. Denise and I had coffee at Donna's before leaving Los Alamos yesterday, so neither of us got to sleep at a decent hour last night. We decided to meet at 10:30AM at Einstein's for the ride.

Both of us had been watching the weather and there was about a 60% chance of rain in the mountains. Marc, Denise's other half, was riding the White Mesa today, so we decided that may be a better bet. Afterall, looking out at the sky, there were storm clouds to the east, and blue sky with puffy white clouds over White Mesa....so that's where we went.

Interestingly, with all the cloud cover, the clouds never really seemed to block the sun today...except at the end of the ride. Regardless, we headed out on Dragon's back, leaving the very nicely built parking lot created by FooMTB. This was the first time I've been to White Mesa since the surgery. In fact, the last time I rode out here was with Matt and the KC boys--Scott, Brad, Q and Mike. Anyway, we finally approached the super steep hike-a-bike area and contemplated going around, rather than up. We'd always had a guy at the top of the climb who would pull our bikes up for us...we decided to give it a shot, and made it! Guess we had more upper body strength than we though we did. The pic doesn't do the climb justice, but if you see the trail in the upper left hand side of the 2nd image, you can get an idea of how steep the hike was.

It was a great time! As usual, White Mesa delivered the awesome scenery and climbs we needed to thoroughly wear us out. We did a LOT of climbing today. In fact, up to the soda dam area, we climbed BOTH ways to the top; 1 way on double track, the other way on the more traditional route. Why? Cuz we wanted to. We weren't pooped out at that point. We took a break at the high point; the very large sink hole--it had a lot more water in it than usual; refreshing pic, huh? Makes you want to go for a swim. Denise knows a rock climber and said she wanted to see him climb down the hole and back up again. I think it would be rather entertaining too. After a snack, we continued on...

We lucked out having Marc out there riding before us; we followed his tracks most of the day. While we knew the general routes through the White Mesa, there were some new areas I hadn't explored and Denise had only ridden once. Did I say that we did a LOT of climbing?!? With all the sun and probably some slight dehyrdration from yesterday's ride, we were not the fastest today, but we still managed a hard ride that left us feeling like we'd definitely gotten a very good workout for the day.

So, we stopped in Bernalillo for some beverages--yep, we finished off the Camelbaks today--then made it back to the cars. Matt had left me a message on the phone just about the time we were done unloading. He'd finished his day in Durango and was heading home.

Ride Stats

• Total time: 3:27 hrs (trail cleanup)
  
• Ride time: 2:33 hrs
  
• Distance: 15 miles
• Average speed: 6.7 mph
• Max speed: 24.3 mph
  
• Calories: 1231 (356 cal/hr)
  
• Average heart rate: 145