Well we finally crawled out of our voluntary hiding. That Moab sickness and the weather had driven us to the couch and nobody was into riding. I gradually enticed a few of the gang out with the promise of beer and a shuttle.
It was going to be our first ride with lights for this season. We did ride Slickrock at night while in Moab but that is very different than riding single track. So, we decided to take a simple trail and just test out our lights and our eyes. Our choice was Cemetery Trail followed by Bones and then a Tour de Redstone. The first two sound kind of spooky for a night ride but they are classic single track without any technical sections and perfect for working the bugs out of the bodies and lighting systems. Tour de Redstone is just a workout riding around Rossland's wonderful mountain style golfcourse cart path. Don't laugh, the ups and downs on the cart path can get your heart rate up there.
I decided to try out a Magic Shine light system that a buddie had lent me. My first time with a LED type light. My previous system was old style halogen and the light was quite soft and yellow in comparison to the Magic Shine's bright white light. I think I like the old halogen light better. It produced better shadows and the lenses spread the light in a wider pattern than the Magic Shine, but maybe I will get used to it. I never felt that I needed a helmet light before but now I seem to need another light on my helmet. Must be the focused bright light of the Magic Shine. I think it is all about the lens and the reflector. Maybe you get what you pay for. The light was satisfactory. Might have to work on centering it on the handlebar. Jury is still out.
Cemetery trail is definitely in for night rides. It flows nicely and seems to go by even faster at night. We had an fantastic ride. Bones was spooky because of the tall grass and this added some spice to the riding experience.
Caught a moon rise on the tenth hole of the golf course and finished with a new switch backed trail that is part of the Rossland cross city trail network. This growing trail network is very useful and a ton of fun.
Hope to get more riders out as the Kootenay indian summer seems to be continuing.
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