DuPont. In a word; cool.

Tuesday night, when Aaron and Erin got home from work, we all piled in the car and headed to DuPont. We scattered to the four corners- Erin went running with Tucker (the dog) and Kris headed out for a road ride. Aaron and I had brought the mountain bikes, but unfortunately not the pump, and my front tire was a little low. Lucky for me (and this has been an exceptionally lucky vacation) there were some other mountain bikers hanging out in the parking lot.

I'm pretty shy when it comes to approaching four unsmiling strangers, but I bucked up and did it. That's when I noticed that two of the bikes hanging over the tailgate had the red and black Answer bars that just came out. Gone was the shyness- I grinned and actually pointed to them, blurting out "I made those!" Pretty soon it was smiles all around as we talked about Answer and all that good stuff. I even got some flak about my brakes, the Avids I got with the XO group that I'm testing out. A pump was produced and the tires were set to go. It would have been cool to talk more with the guys, but we had to get going before the sun set.

We didn't get much riding in- just over 40 minutes of moving time- but I did get to check out the riding there. Pretty cool, with more of the neverending hills I've come to have a healthy respect for. We started out on a trail that looked like a giant cobblestone path. Big rocks set into the trail, but uneven enough to make it interesting. Here's the beginning of that trail.



After a few minutes, we were at the top.



One cool descent later, it was more climbing. Here's Aaron, looking awful cheery about it.



I tackled some cool technical stuff toward the bottom, but as the climb wore on I pulled out the rest day card and stopped to walk and take pictures. Aaron kept on going and made it all the way to the top. What can I say, he's made of the tough stuff.



Eastern Slickrock! It's pretty cool.



We made it to the top around sunset, which was really cool. The light didn't fade too badly and we made it down without incident.



It wasn't as much time as I was hoping to spend out there, but it was my rest day and I did get to check it out. When I came down here, I wanted to sharpen my skillz and come back with an arsenal. I'm doing a little of that, but it's really turned out to be more of a recon trip. I'd love to come back down with Cale and some teammates and hit the trails.