Rock Lake is my favorite place to mountain bike. I've been riding there since 1991 when the only trails to ride on were the cross country ski trails. Then in 2001 CAMBA started to build mountain bike specific narrow singletrack trails to get the bikes off the ski trails. Today, bikes are allowed only on short sections of the ski trail, and CAMBA has plans to finish the singletrack project by replacing all of the ski trails with singletrack in the near future.
I am the self proclaimed worlds worst cross country skier. I'm so bad, I fell twice while just standing on the trail resting.
I knew the Rock Lake trails were more advanced than my sorry xc skills could handle, but Sue's a good skier and I knew she'd love these beautiful trails. This is the first time I've ever been on them in the winter.
And since these are the biggest hills I've encountered, I had to learn how to "Herring Bone" up many of the hills. I've never done that before.
Rock Lake has Loops of 2, 4, 7, 11.5, and 16km. We did the second shortest loop, the 4k. The farther you go at Rock Lake, the bigger and steeper the hills get.
I've been trying to ski, off and on, for 15 years now, but in northern Illinois it's pretty flat, and our snow usually doesn't stay around long enough to get in much practice on hills.
Rock Lake is groomed for "classic" style only, So going down the hills means just letting it go, and trying to keep the skis in the 2 grooves, and stay upright. There's no slowing down once you start.
I knew the hills would be the longest and steepest I've ever tried, But I gotta step it up, and try to improve, and for the most part I did pretty well.
Aside from the previously mentioned falls while trying to stand, I only crashed 3 times.
The first while chickening out at the top of a hill and trying to "snow plow" to scrub some speed. I've had very little practice at the "snow plow" technique and I really have no clue how to do it properly, so I just slid off the trail to the left and fell over,
My second crash was on a fairly long (for me) downhill. I made it down most of the hill and was starting to slow when I lost my balance and did a nice "Superman" dive forward into the cushy snow. Not too bad. Though I did only get a 6.8 from the French judge.
The third and final crash was of the spectacular "yard sale" variety. The hill didn't look too bad in the beginning, but then it curved left, then right, then it got steeper. Then the tracks disappeared on an off camber corner. I panicked and tried to scrub some speed. Bad move. I remember seeing my left foot twist about forty degrees to the left as I rolled on my back, then my ski popped out of its binding (something cross country skis don't do easily) and I slid to a stop.
There was a little pain as I stood up, but it went away immediately. I tried to clip my left boot into my binding,
but it wouldn't go. I had bent the steel bar on the toe of the boot that clips to the ski binding, so I had to walk the final half mile or so back to the parking lot. Everything seemed fine, but I figured that ankle/foot would be sore tomorrow. I was right.
My ankle/foot started to stiffen up and hurt a little on the trip home. And on Monday morning I was limping around pretty good. But it's already starting to feel better. Just a slight sprain.
It would be so much fun to be a good skier, but there just isn't time for me to get good at it. Unless I win the lottery and can retire.
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