Continued from The Tower 300 Adventure Day 3

There was a bit of a debate the night before, where Ardan wanted to set his alarm for 5:00am, and Tom & I convinced Ardan to let us wake up at a more reasonable hour. We settled on the reasonable hour.

When we awoke however it still didn’t feel very reasonable. We packed up and hauled our bikes back down the stairs; each by our own power of course, grabbed breakfast from the hotel and got on our way.

Then we backtracked into Sundance to properly complete a section of the route that we missed the night before in our Subway Scramble. From there we hopped onto the city path and worked our way out towards Green Mountain. The morning clouds provided the perfect shade.

morning

After that we worked our way toward the hills, then back away again, then back up again by Fish Mountain. I hadn’t been this way before, and I’m certainly going to go back there. It was a beautiful ride all the way from the bottom to the top. We stopped briefly for second breakfast (some apple pies that Ardan convinced me to buy back in Hewlett).

apple-pie

As we navigated the scenery, we kept wondering when Jason would put another absurd cow path on the route. However we were presented with nothing but beautiful riding and fantastic views.

trees

The only thing we really were missing at this point was food. I had consumed all my beef jerky, all my nerds gummy clusters, and all of the peanut butter protein balls that Ashleigh had sent with.

I loudly lamented my situation. Tom & Ardan chimed in.

We peddled on for a few minutes. Suddenly I heard Tom yell from behind us “THE SANDWICH” as he stopped, opened his saddle bag, and pulled out a glorious foot long Subway sandwich. He had stuck it in the fridge the night before and forgot until now that he brought it along. That 1/3 of a sandwich was absolutely on par with the pizza from day 2.

After a few more miles of some of the best riding of the trip, we finally got up to Trails Head Lodge. Well, almost got there. We could see it from over the fence in front of us. Unfortunately there were locks on the gate. This meant we had to haul our bikes over the fence. It was quite a feat even for myself to lift my bike up and over. However Ardan, being a stickler for the rules, insisted that he lift his himself. After about 5 minutes of him struggling, and Tom and I watching helplessly, I finally noticed that the locks hanging off the gate were decorative… I unwrapped the chain, pulled the gate open, and much to Ardan’s relief, he rolled his bike through.

This was worth a reward of a hefty amount of food, including a lot of cheese sticks.

cheese

Next step from there was to finally roll back down to Little Spearfish Trail. This has been on my list of trails to ride for years, but I just never quite found the time. I will most certainly be going back.

We finally ended up down by Roughneck Falls Road, only to be directed into an odd feature…

hole

We poked our heads in, then back out again and up Rimrock Trail till we got up to Tinton Trail

tinton

By this point it was night. Any other trail system, and we would probably have set up camp. However, we all knew Tinton quite well after years of the Dakota Five-O. So we promptly ripped the last 15 miles of trail at a surprisingly fast pace. Coming down cardiac at night is one of my favorite rides, no matter the weight of the bike. We slowed down again after that, deciding to just take it easy.

Mother Nature, however, decided we should panic.

Several incredibly loud thunder claps later, including one that almost caused Ardan to crash, we ended up on Tinton road. After a brief look at the radar, we saw a gap of about 20 minutes before the next big red cell where we could try to get to Crow Peak Brewery - the finish line.

We raced back through town, seeing people waving to us by Killian’s and again in the middle of town. Finally, about 1 mile from the end, Ardan misnavigated the bike path and crashed. His single crash on the entire course, and it was on the path he’s ridden more than anything else. He picked it back up, and we proceeded all the way to the end.

Seeing Ashleigh and Ailis and Gus, and Tom’s parents, waiting for us was all the reward that we needed.

finish

Then the rain promptly dumped on us, and we headed to Taco Bell.

The end!