May 17, 2006
It all started 3 days ago when I bought a new mountain bike. Now I have owned and/or ridden all sorts of bikes, motorcycles, 3-wheelers, Quads, and personal watercraft in the past so I'm not totally new to riding a bike in the dirt. I had been riding my Dad's 1990 era Specialized Hard Rock Comp for the past year and decided it was time for an upgrade. I purchased another Specialized mountain bike; this time with front shocks, disc brakes and better components. Much lighter, much smoother...I like my new bike.
So I'm up in Soaring Eagle Park DNF'ing all the waypoints on the Moun10Bike Maze Multicache. It's approximately 6:45pm and I'm cruising east on the Iron Gate Trail. It's a nice straight, narrow, and smooth section with a little downhill slope so I'm cruising at about 15mph and enjoying life. All of a sudden, I catch a glimpse of something that doesn't register immediately. It's the business end of a fallen tree that wants to take me off my bike like a knight with a joust. Picture a fallen tree that's propped up on another so it's balancing with the top 5 feet off the trail. Now break the top off so there is a jagged end about 3 inches around pointing at you like a spear. That's what I saw. I grab the brakes hard and lean and duck to the left to avoid this thing. I remember seeing the end of the tree wizzing past my face and then THUD!
I remember ducking and I remember the THUD, but I don't remember the fall in-between. I do remember laying on my face in the matted-down shrubs however. My visor had come off my helmet, my leg hurt and my chest hurt. I sat there stunned for a few moments and then tried to gather my senses. I checked out my bike which came through undamaged and snapped my visor back onto the helmet. I walked over to the tree and tried to move it but it just kept springing back into place just above the trail...waiting to claim its next victim. I hung a piece of cloth on the tree to make it more visible to others. I marked the location and got back on my bike. (alciato would return the next day to remove the offending tree. Thank You!)
Now I'm thinking it wouldn't be wise to continue on down the trail since I have never been to this area before so I turn around and start heading back the way I came. My car is parked down at the south end near Beaver Lake and I have ridden 4 miles to get to this point. By the time I get to the area around the North waypoint (which I DNF'd earlier), my chest really hurts and I didn't want to chance it by trying to ride all the way out. I pushed my (broken) ego aside and called my Dad to come pick me up at the trailhead on NE 8th.
The next day after work, I'm climbing the stairs to the parking garage and my chest begins to hurt worse than ever. I drove myself to the Swedish ER in Issaquah and they check me out. It turns out I have a chest wall contusion (bruised ribs and such) and am sent off with a prescription for some good drugs. A few weeks later I was good as new.
The cache is an ammo can placed just a few feet from the crash site. You can even see the tree that nearly got me just across the trail under the bushes.
Update: May 17, 2013 - On this 7th anniversary of the crash, the leaky ammo can has been replaced by a smaller round loc-n-loc.
You can find a trail map here and if you would like to see trails in your GPSr, check out the Northwest Trails Project. Both are courtesy of Moun10Bike.
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