I took The Crimson Ghost on a ride through Santa Teresa County Park this morning. I had initially planned to do a figure-8 loop to catch the Rocky Ridge trail and the Stile Ranch trail, but due to the fact that STCP is a maze of twisty trails all different, I ended up taking a wrong turn at Albuquerque and getting all mixed up.
Basically what happened was I took a left up Mines trail near the beginning, which I thought was the way I wanted to go, but in fact I actually should have gone straight and passed the bottom of Rocky Ridge on my way to loop around to the top. As a result, when I finished the "loop" part of the ride, I found myself at the junction of Rocky Ridge trail and proceeded into it, not realizing I'd arrived at the bottom of the trail rather than the top.
I rode up for a while, occasionally thinking to myself "gosh, this trail would be fun to ride in the other direction" until I got to the top and checked my map, and realized that yes, indeed, it would have been much more fun to ride in the other direction.
Properly oriented now, I headed back down Rocky Ridge, through all the rocks along the ridge that had made the climb so slow and challenging.
When I got to the bottom I considered swinging up to catch Stile Ranch now that I knew where both it and I were in relation to each other, but the slow climb up Rocky Ridge had taken quite a bit out of me and the heat of the day was starting to set in, so I left that one for another day.
The good news is that both my new dropper post and the top tube bag did a great job of doing their respective jobs, and I had plenty of fun on the trail despite my occasionally unreliable sense of direction.
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