After a nice week-end riding my bike, I decided to try to ride some more today and try to do the second part of my Saturday ride albeit with a much shorter climb. The trick was to figure out a way to climb all the way up to the Bastille and then proceed towards Mount Jalla again.

I thought I had figured out an itinerary but after climbing as much as I could, I got stuck and ended up having to backtrack. It wasn’t that bad in itself because I very often have to backtrack because I took a wrong turn somewhere even when I follow an established itinerary! However, it did contribute to lengthening the ride.

I guess I should now state that I decided to go riding after work and it was around 8pm when I left. These days, daylight in these parts is good up until 9:30pm or so. That was my first mistake of the day: taking off for a ride without knowing exactly how long it would take me when I knew I couldn’t possibly ride more than an hour and a half (at least, not on single track as I don’t own any kind of lighting equipment).

Anyway, everything was going OK. I had backtracked, found my way back up according to the directions I had read online before leaving and reached the end of the first part of the track, interrupted by a short flight of stairs. I carried the bike up and reached the Bastille without further issue. At this point, though, I started to get a little thirsty and that was my second mistake: leaving without my camelback, so no water and/or food. The reasoning was that it was supposed to be a short ride, so no need for a backpack. Wrong!

I finally reached the intersection I was looking for, climbing up from the Bastille towards Mount Jalla. Instead of proceeding to the top, I turned East taking the Vierge Noire (Black Virgin) track, which is the path I took on Saturday to finish the ride and that was very fun. I started to proceed down the path a little more cautiously than last time because I could feel I was getting tired and light was getting dimmer.

Even so, I had a great time up until the third of the descent. At some point, I started getting weird reaction from the bike: my back wheel was drifting. That’s when I realized that I had blown up the tube on my back wheel. Not sure how it happened and really it doesn’t matter. What did matter was that, here I was on a rather technical downhill single track, a blown tire, night starting to fall, still two third of the way to go and about 3 kilometers more after the end of the track to get back home. Not a pleasant situation to be in.

Not having my backpack, I, of course, didn’t have a spare tube or tools to change it. Anyway, I didn’t really have time (or really room, as the trail was quite narrow and steep) to operate on the bike as night was falling. I decided to wing it and spent the whole descent with my weight as much on top of my front wheel as possible, which wasn’t a very comfortable position to be in.

I managed to get down the trail and kept going, still with my weight on my front wheel, after I had reach the end of the trail until the road started to level up. I then walked all the way back home.

Here’s the overview of this little adventure, as usual:

The unforgiving virgin
The unforgiving virgin path (click to see the interactive version)

In the end, it wasn’t all bad. Still had some fun and thrills. I now know a short ride, close to home that wouldn’t take more than an hour and a half, provide some good exercise and a fun downhill component. More importantly, I learned some valuable mountain biking lessons:

  • Never underestimate how long a ride will take. Always make room for unforeseen circumstances.
  • Never leave without a backpack containing some water, food, a spare tube and basic tools to make minor repairs if needed.
  • If you’re going to ride close to dusk, either make sure that you will be done before night falls, or get yourself some night riding equipment.

More tips from singletracks.com on how to avoid disaster on the trail.

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