Little Park Creek, Inez, and the Dean Stone area

The newest happening for recreation in Missoula is the Mount Dean Stone project. A few years ago, The Nature Conservancy and Five Valleys Land Trust acquired some land in Miller Creek and on the north side of mount Dean Stone, basically in the south hills above Pattee canyon. There is still a gap between the two sides, but the project has opened up quite a bit of new land to explore and some new trail has been built on both sides, most notably the Barmeyer trail.

The other side of Dean Stone, in Miller creek, is where most of the new access has opened up. The map and overview provided by Five Valleys unfortunately doesn't give a complete picture of the roads and routes and property ownership on that side of the project, however, the inez trail, route from there to the top of deer creek, and the route down into little park creek are on trailforks, along with some other roads in the Miller creek area. Taking it a step further, I went and overlaid some land ownership squares into caltopo, which conveniently also has a public land overlay. So you can see what is TNC/5vlt, what is state, what is forest service

https://caltopo.com/m/42T5#

Lost trail not-shuttle fest

Went and did some riding by lost trail pass south of town last weekend. Lost trail is the border between id and mt on highway 93 and also right next to the continental divide. The main trail is called warm springs ridge, it starts behind the ski area at about 7800ft and goes north. It's a pretty remote, cool backcountry ride but with a shuttle almost anyone could ride it. The climbing is fairly minimal, the trail is mostly smooth, and you wind up right near the highway at the end. Every year, lost trail ski area hosts a bike fest and runs shuttles from the end of this trail and back up to the top. In addition to the ridge trail, there are a few others that drop off to the other side. The shuttle fest was last weekend though. Phil had found a route on trailforks and asked me if I wanted to go try it

https://www.trailforks.com/route/mtbm-warm-springs-route-backcountry

Philipsburg 2019

I had a pretty busy last couple months of racing - 4 of the Wed night series, the mullet classic climb, and Spirit Bear in Kalispell. Nothing really went that great for me, but I did get 4th a the Blue mountain race and due to actually going to them all was 3rd overall in the series, so that was neat. Spirit bear was a little disappointing though, with a 9th place finish. I have some words about most of all that written down elsewhere so maybe I'll copy/paste it here eventually. Anyway, this post was to talk about Philipsburg.

After all those other not really great results, I've been a little less confident in my fitness. I'm also slightly heavier than I'd like. On the plus side, June was all big weeks, racing, and hard efforts for the "Pete Mitchell Inverted Enduro," and I've been doing alright at Wed Worlds.

Bearmouth Road Race 2019 recap

Bearmouth was brought back last year, and is pretty much the only road race in the state. MSU does still put on theirs, and this year there was a UM crit the same weekend, but I didn't make it out in the open field for either. I do wish I'd gone to the road race, it looked like a great course out by Lewis and Clark caverns.

One thing I am starting to appreciate for road racing is a fully paved course with minimal traffic. At bearmouth, we basically have the roads to ourselves. The first out and back is a nice, rolling frontage road along the river and interstate from Drummond to Bearmouth, the second out and back goes over a pass to Helmville. No one has much of a reason to drive on those roads.

On to the race, there were about 25 in our open field. There's a long 1/2/3 race, and a short 4/5 race. But because of the difficulty of getting a road upgrade around here, an "open 4/5" category was added, which means anyone can race in the big race if they want. I managed to actually get myself a cat 3 upgrade last year but there are a number of really fast, experienced racers around who still are 4/5s on the road.

Oh right winter is over

Lot of snow and cold days this winter. I didn't get outside on a bike until march 19th, which means not a lot of miles this year. Thankfully I did not let myself get too fat or out of shape over the winter and have a couple of good weeks in my legs. We've had a few Wed worlds rides, and I went to the death ride, which was a miserable, cold, wet day (in a fun way though), but hadn't done a real race until yesterday.

The end of the season

Here in Montana, once rolling thunder happens bike season is pretty much over. The week before it got a little cold and rainy and then the week after I think it snowed for a few days. Since then I've gotten out a few times but not a whole lot and I'm already starting to feel fat and out of shape. I definitely need to get a couple of pairs of skis and a fat bike to be a little more active during the winter. And I do plan on lifting weights a little more often. I got into it in feb or so last year and I think it made a pretty big difference as far as the race season went, especially the first half.

More new tires - Challenge Baby Limus tubulars

I think I previously mentioned that I had planned to race cyclocross on Clement/Donnely MXPs again this year, ideally on wide, tubeless wheels. But that wound up not happening, because Alex at Missoula Bicycle Works had a set of tubulars sitting in the back. Seeing how everyone is now on disc brakes they weren't doing him any good so I got some new wheels.