The Adventures of Stappler and Bakke

Can you pick where? Probably not. The likelihood that this has been cyclo-crossed to before is very small:

Craig and I had a big idea to ride Powderface loop, but only managed to achieve a partial set of goals - exploring and coming home in a state of tiredness. We call BS on googlemaps until we can revisit a road that couldn't be found - there's no clear "wests" of Hermitage road that "easily bridge over to 68, look how obvious it is". Instead, we battled massive headwinds, scouted around, then took matters into our own hands. Yes, highway 68 must be only a few miles that way, over those two sets of foothills and through that forest. Needless to say, we found plenty of paths, although mostly of deer and moose path quality (yes, we saw both - have you ever seen a moose jump a 5' high wire fence?). We did hike a bike, bushwacking, virgin terrain to tack onto the headwind experience. Not satisfied that we'd had enough, we did more headwind climb out to Powderface, then realized if we tried to complete that loop it would probably be 3 hours just to Bragg, and we were already out 4 hours. We looped back, but didn't want to cut ourselves short of any adventure, so we hit some mountain bike trails on the way back - I'd actually say between Stappler on the climbs and me on the descents, we didn't just "hit" them but we "shredded the shit" out of them. From there we coasted back eastward, until battling a few headwind stretches, and in pursuit of mutually assured destruction, attacked the climbs. How else to layer in any more fun into a day? Go hog wild in the PetroCan convenience store to replace executed calories. Love it!