Biking + Caching + Sierra Foothills = Heaven

Last weekend I had the privilege and pleasure of attending a most excellent geocaching event: the MET Downhill Bike Ride: Let's Try This Again, held in a beautiful area nestled in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountain range in California. You can click on the first link above to see the detailed event description, but to summarize, this was simply a 20-mile downhill bike ride (4,200 feet of total descent, to be exact), with stops along the way to look for the 27 or so geocaches hidden along this stretch of the Mormon Emigrant Trail (aka, Iron Mountain Road).

And the event (which went off without a hitch thanks to the tremendous work of the hosts; Scoobert, Bahb, and Cold Springer) was a complete and total blast. If you enjoy caching by bike half as much as I do, then you would have loved this event. Here are some pictures taken along the way. More photos, and other peoples' recaps, can be found in the cache logs.

We all met at the bottom of the hill in the morning, where the event hosts were well prepared to load and carry our bikes 20 miles, and 4,000 feet, up the hill to the start of the ride:


The event log book, plus a travel bug, all in one:


At the top of the "hill", getting ready to roll:



Typical view of the Sierra foothills on the way down to the bottom:


Needless to say, a great time was had by all. I'll certainly be keeping an eye out for similar, upcoming future events.