El Colorado

Today started off misty and then rained. We made a group decision to take it easy, get things organised and maybe go for a quick lift assisted blast of something local later on in the day. After a chat with John, the hostel owner, we discovered the where abouts of some single-track created by local mountain bikers. It sounded good from his description, so we decided to try and find it and maybe give it a go if it looked any good.

Turns out that the trail was absolutely amazing, and was completely different to anything I have ever ridden. The trail head gave nothing away; it was tucked off the side of the main road, easily missed if you didn’t know about it. Once over the brow of the hill the trail swooped through wooded single track before sending you out into the open and onto a series of strange shaped rock slabs. Each slab was different, but the all flowed really well and could be ridden much faster than expected. It was a real rush and kept surprising us with more fun features, including some mad off-camber rock traverses. The most fun feature without a doubt was the double humped rock that rode like you were on a ‘big-dipper’.

This trail dropped us conveniently onto the road to the top of La Mesa ready for our next uplift. You’d think being a wet day all this rock would get treacherous, but it’s the complete opposite, the rock remains as grippy as ever. La Mesa descent was even superb the second time around, knowing when the dodgier bits were coming was great and meant the whole thing flowed much better. Maybe the fact it was my first day out on the Kona had a part to play. The Kona was absolutely superb and took no time at all to get used to. Within an hour I felt completely at home on it and could already see an improvement in my riding. I’ll let you know how I get on with it as time goes on.