"Good luck getting out of here."

That was the support I got from a truck load of fisherman as I climbed Warm Springs from the back side and bottom of the 7 Oaks dam in gale force winds. They at least gave me a bottle of water (which I packed out), but didn't offer a ride. On any normal day the Warm Springs climb is nothing to blog about, but on Sunday I didn't even begin the climb until I was 4 hours into my ride and I was single-speeding it, 1x1, one-f'ing speed, as Trevor calls it. But even the lack of gears and the intimidating wind wasn't what made Warm Springs suck. It was the amount trash strewn along the two-track that made me want to vomit.

• Bud Light cans and boxes
• Coors Light cans and boxes
• Miller Light cans and boxes
• Natural Light cans and boxes
• Water bottles
• Smashed sewing machine
• Shotgun shells
• Medicine dropper
• Random car parts
• McDonalds paper cup

From all this trash I can only deduct that fisherman drink a lot of crappy beer, and litter too. Bastards.

So, anyway I survived. I started around 6:15 a.m. at Loch Leven, climbed to the Angelus Oaks turn-out in 40-flat, caught a ride from Johnson, Edward, & Kerrie up to the Jenks Lake East turn-out, rode up to poop-out (cleaned it), cut across to Glass Road and that's where things got interesting. Riding solo out of 7 Oaks (and with a broken spoke), I decided to explore unchartered 1N09. It was a sweet ride. I just didn't know where the hell I was for most of it. Reaching the back side of the dam was a welcoming site, but by that point, the wind was howling and I still had another hour of climbing ahead of me. When it was all said, done and downloaded, I had ridden that damn single-speed more than 49 miles & climbed more than 10-thousand feet in 5 hours flat. In my mind, it kind of makes up for my Everest Challenge failure. Kinda.

The moral of this story is don't litter when you're fishing behind the 7 Oaks Dam and if you want to get rid of sewing machine, take it to the Salvation Army.

On a lighter side, here's a photo of me from Snowmass.