Epic.... avoided?

I guess I'm just getting old.

On Monday, I threw in the towel after struggling through 10 miles of snow and rode back to the car. On the road, mind you. I dodged a potentially painful solo epic. We all carry our tales of truly amazing anecdotal rides with us everytime we roll -- no matter long ride or short -- and each ride measures up to the yardstick of our Epics.

I was lucky. I had a few rabid biker friends growing up who would do stupid shit and always get us lost. I recall my first true epic: we started in Ringwood, rode through to Ramapo, and rode so far into the trail network there that we found the edge, the end of the woods. Some town in Bergen County, totally ignorant and with no bearings whatsoever. I asked a woman who just walked out of her duplex towards her car, "what town are we in?" When she replied, none of us ever heard of it.

These are our much hallowed and revered rides. We often share Epics with people who are our best riding buddies. Sometimes after the epic, you notice they don't ride with you anymore. I can only think of one* of my epics that a friend mutually shares as one of his.

We started off in the morning just above the city of Lugano, Switzerland, on rental Trek Y bikes. Vintage baby! Begining first on cobblestone switchback roads, we headed up through some local singletrack to some smaller towns and up still to dirt roads. We thought we knew the way. As the path got narrower, it also got much steeper. Here our different pace caused a separation that got wider and each suffered alone. We knew UP was the only way to be going, so we spoke nothing of it and ploded on.
Eventually bikes had to be shouldered and carried, and as the grade increased the trail became a thin footpath. Up and up and up we went, up past the treeline into the grassy slopes.
I was furious at this point, and let my partner in crime know it. Part of it was me pointing the blame, and part of it was me being irrational from being caloric-deficient.
We pressed on and were rewarded with amazing knife-edge singletrack along that ridge a mile away behind & above us. Precariously perched atop bike, a fall to the left would leave you at least 15 feet down (if you were able to arrest your fall on impact) in Switzerland, and a fall to the right would do the same only in Italy. Sweet! I've never been to Italy... Joking aside, we were in a bad spot physically but had to push on. I found wild blueberry patches, and with 15 solid minutes of work managed to scarf down about 1 full handfull. Then we spotted the hut. Oh glorious hut! Stocked with beer, wine, soda & water. We gorged ourselves soda, left some Francs and continued on.

To give you an idea of the scale of the riding over there check out these photos:

Those tiny little tufts of green in the top right? Scrubby trees bigger than me.
Lets zoom out some...

And now some more...


We survived to the top, where the gondola we saw on the map was supposed to be. The problem was, the gondola wasn't running. It was a weekday. Luckily, much of the ride down was manageable, though white-knuckle all the way to the first town.
From there we had to ride road as the sun began to dip behind the mountains. I think in the end I counted 8 towns we had to ride through to make it home, and there were still some hills to face.
You may have noticed the * above. 2 days later during the same trip we did an 8 hour death march (on road, but on the same POS bikes) capped off with the absolutely most brutal climb I have ever done. 45 minutes of hell with blind corners than made drivers ponder the friction coefficient of their tires and the fortitude of their brakes.

A thank you goes out to Ian & his family for hosting me for an epic adventure.