Today is my friend Jill’s birthday and I told her that I would do an epic in her honor. I said this because she is injured and cannot go epic … so I went epic.

I started the day going up a trail called Bozeman Creek. It is the drainage to the East of Hylite. Which means a hard ass climb to get over the ridge. Once over though, the scenery opened up and it was like a postcard.

Once in the Hylite Valley I headed up to Emerald Lake. The trail up reminded me of the Lolo Peak trail. It went up and up and had great switchbacks with great scenery at every corner. Soon, too soon, I arrived at the lake.

There were wild flowers in abundance and the streams were cold and refreshing. I only took a bag of Carbo Rocket so all I needed to do was stop to mix every hour. Then it was off to a lake up from Emerald called Heather.

Heather was tucked away in the upper reaches of the valley just below towering cliffs. The mountains just up from it were all 10,000 footers, Chisholm and Overlook.

To ride a bike in such beauty is hard. The trail is technical enough to require the utmost attention. But that is nearly impossible with all the beauty towering around you. So falls are totally acceptable … and expected.

After bombing down from the lakes …. wait …. more like totally blissfully hauling ass over twisty single-track bombing. Where was I , oh. I didn’t have enough so I spent the rest of the day poking around where I could. I even went up one ravine to find a rain forest like cove. Totally cool. In the end I hit up trails like they were chocolates. After it all was said and done 66 miles, 8,000 feet of climbing in a little over 7 hours http://connect.garmin.com/activity/108080480.

Mom always said, “Life is like a box of chocolates … eat them all and don’t forget to GPS  it so as to marvel at what you have done”.