Picture of the day - Close up with a Fox

Consequently, I was out riding on Saturday by myself, and I thought I saw someone dog up ahead on the trail. It kept trotting right down the trail at me, and I realized it was a Fox. I have bumped into lots of them on my local trails but this one came right up to me. It finally pulled off the trail and did some marking to tell me who was the boss!


Like the Fox was really going to be afraid of this geek looking biker!

I had a very pleasant ride and there was not a soul out doing much of anything. I did one my favorite mountain bike rides up a local popular singletrack (which most people only go down) which connects up with a fire road, I then followed the road up onto the Mule trail. The grunt up the road gets the legs and heart nice and warmed up for the unrelenting lung busting grind up the Mule trail. It's never very steep but it just keeps going and going. The hill is a good aerobic lung buster and had my entire cardio system maxed out. The temperatures down in the trees were pleasantly cool and there was a few patches of snow off the trail but nothing to be worrisome on the singletrack. I took a nice long breather at the top, and bundled up, and started the GoPro Hero video camera on my helmet for the long downhill section. Unbeknown to me the camera battery died, and I got an entire 2 minutes of the trail, stupid camera and batteries. The downhill is very pleasant and is mostly fun with fast singletrack flying through the trees. One of those trails that just makes you hoot with joy! The trail has a few minor technical sections thrown in, the first is an angled rock slot drop that is a bit scary, it does not have much margin for error. Then the trail gets steep and twisty with some very sharp switchbacks that will have you delicately and very slowly turning around through the turns, the brakes get good and used on this section. The trail then drops through a minor rocky streambed and then goes over a large double set of logs. The drop off on the backside is pretty big and the hill and log sort of tilt one direction, it had me scared for the longest time until I just went for it one day. The Mule trail, then meets up with an older trail and it winds down a canyon before heading off to another side trail. The side trail is very rocky and steep with a begining section that climbs for quite a long time. It has four technical switchbacks on the uphill portion which is where I bumped into the Fox. The downhill keeps that same rocky and steep character with a few technical rock gardens thrown in for fun. By the time I got back to the car I was tired and cold and ready for a cup of tea.