Chick-a-Saw Ride

Saturday was a really great day of fun cycling topped by good training.


We started at the Sawtelle Resort parking lot and worked our way south through Island Park on the old Yellowstone Highway and then over to the old Yellowstone short line rail trail.  Usually we'd go down the Old Chick Creek road from the USFS station but with all the rain and spring runoff, we thought it might be impossible to ford Chick Creek without soaking our feet.  So the old rail trail provided a nice bridge to keep our toes dry, and plenty of skills work dodging trees, rocks and puddles that had formed during the heavy overnight rain. Once we reached Chick Creek road we headed east and eventually up switchbacks to the top of the Pitchstone Plateau.

Only Joe had the talent to pull of the "riding selfie"

Our little group all stayed together at conversation pace, and so I didn’t end up doing a SS interval then, but just enjoyed the verdant hills. After reaching the intersection with Fish Creek road we headed north along the eastern edge of the plateau, and then eventually descended back down to the forest floor until we met the road to Big Springs. We opted to take the tarmac to Big Springs and then looped over the water there to the north and then west again to head back to the Sawtelle Resort.


After a brief natural break and bottle refills we headed further west to the base of Sawtelle peak and the end of the pavement. There we all settled into our own paces and worked our way to the top. About one-quarter of the way up we ran into Greg Roach on his way back down.  Earlier he'd told us his plan was to do back to back climbs (a double Sawtelle).



Eventually we all made it to the top, and though dark clouds had gathered earlier, we were happy to enjoy mostly sunny skies, and relatively little wind at the summit.  The only mechanical of the day was a little air lost out of my rear tire on the descent, and was easily fixed with a little CO2.  We topped off the day with a visit to 511 Main in Ashton, and seeing as we’ll be doing nearly twice the same about of climbing in two weeks it felt like a perfect day.