The next day it was time to think about heading back to Seattle. But not before we got in a rollicking tour of Sun Mountain — the Sun Mountain Race Course.

Sun Mountain reverie: A standout 2010 season.

Time was when Winthrop was a prime Washington State race destination, with spring and fall events on the calendar year in and out. Not so much any more. The cross-country race scene is pretty anemic, and in the fall at least the early winters kept infringing on rider comfort. The annual Methow Valley Mountain Bike Festival, now the Bike and Film Festival, has dropped racing from its calendar.

But the course is still in fine fettle. You follow the signs from Winthrop up to Sun Mountain — there’s a famous lodge right on top by the same name — and park at the Chickadee Parking Lot. (You can park at the Lodge higher up if you like, but the riding to and from the lodge is nothing special.) From there you’ve got lots of options all around the mountain on really nice, flowy trails. We decided to head up Thompson Road, a medium-steep fire road that rises all the way to the top of the ridge. After a short leg burner we turned right onto Overland Trail and were on our way.

Usually in late September and early October the trails around Sun Mountain have been pummeled to baking flour, but not so this time out. Rains the week before, and an unusually wet summer overall, had left the trails tacky and packed. We zipped down Overland, crossed over to Rodeo, hooked up with Black Bear all the way around the north side of the mountain, did a short stint on Patterson Lake Trail, doubled back via Rader Creek (the wrong way to go on Rader, the fastest trail on the mountain, but what the heck, we were just out for a ride), climbed up Thompson to the top and then came down some gnarly unmarked trails to the Inside Passage and back to the car.

From above: It felt as good as it looked. (Generated by MotionX-GPS and iPhone.)

It’d been at least a decade since I’d ridden Sun Mountain, and I’d forgotten what a hoot the trail network is. It was especially fun tailing Jim, who’s done countless races there and knows the trails like the veins on the back of his hand. Jim literally rides like he’s on a rail, flying around corners, ripping down G-outs and flitting up switchbacks. Most of the time I was happy just to keep him in sight.

You can pretty much ride the whole network in two to three hours. It’s a lot of fun and is a great workout. It’s not high-altitude, above-the-earth’s-curvature type stuff, but you get bucolic views of the valley and can easily navigate around occasional foot traffic. Winthrop is such a cornucopia of monster rides that it’s easy to forget the more modest Sun Mountain in the equation. But our romp was perfect capper to a great weekend — as well as the 2010 high-country riding season. Already we’re making plans for next year — Colorado, Idaho, Utah, Oregon. But always, always, Winthrop will be there, right in the middle of the mix.

[Distance: 15.6 miles / Elevation gain: 2,101 feet / Maximum grade: 10.4 percent / Time, including pondering Year 2010: 1 hr, 45 mins]

Two years ago Team Mojo scaled Falls Creek, only to encounter a passel of hassle. It’s not a bad trail, particularly the first four miles or so. There are some creek crossings, yes. The trail gets sketchy here and there, yes. But it’s beautiful country, no one’s around and the terrain is challenging, varied and rapturous.

Still, we eventually had to call it quits. After emptying out into a broad meadow sliced by a babbling creek, we simply could not find the trail. When you ride with Jim the Lyon King, that’s saying something. A onetime professional mountain guide, Jim can point out trails on ridges miles away that look like nothing more than seas of trees. After spending nearly half an hour wandering around, Jim finally picked up a scent. There it was — a rocky, eroded line of rubble climbing straight up the hillside. It didn’t look like much fun, and the sun had disappeared behind the ridge. We decided to leave it for another day.

Do you like to hike-a-bike?

Fast forward to our Winthrop weekend of 2010, and there we were again, this time armed with two data points: 1. We knew where the disappearing trail picked back up again. 2. Joe had told us that the horsers had done some maintenance up there.

To get to Falls Creek you drive up West Chewuch Road), past Road 5130 on your left, taking Road 5140 on the left. It climbs for a long time, but get this: It’s all paved! We’ve run into this from time to time, typically on logging roads that also serve as fire-access roads. It’s pretty nice; you can make twice the time as the typical rutted, water-bar-laden fire road. Eventually the road dead ends right at the head of Trail 518, and you’re in business.

We got an earlier start and made great time to the point where the trail steepens. After that it was a matter of grunting, pushing, cursing and carrying — but all with the knowledge that we weren’t that far from the 8 Mile Ridge line — and from there it had to be all downhill.

Up high the larch were exploding.

There had been some maintenance, yes. But the trail wasn’t any great shakes. A lot of loose rock, and solid rock, and big rock.

Finally we topped out at Burch Mountain and took a few moments to look around. You’re at 7,400 feet at that point and the world looks pretty reasonable. This time, I felt sure I wasn’t going to get any phone calls.

There’s a nice big fat sign at the trail top reading “Eight Mile Creek” and sitting abreast what looks to be the start of a nice downhill run. And for a few hundred yards, it was. Then it got a little thin. Then we ran into a couple of blocking blowdowns. Then a couple more. After half a mile there was hardly any indication of a trail, logs lay strewn about like matchsticks, we’d descended more than 500 feet and it was time to reconnoiter.

Judging from the sign, there's a trail.

But dude! We’d climbed nearly 5,000 feet! We deserved this downhill! We’d earned our verts!

“Actually, we may have to climb another ridge,” Jim said. “That is, if we can keep track of the trail at all.”

I’ve never been much for common sense, else I’d probably have given up on mountain biking a long time ago. But this time the handwriting was not just on the wall. It was on the trail, the bikes, the ridge and all over the sky. We literally did not have any choice.

Somewhere there once was a trail.

We trudged back up the ridge — this is called blowing your verts — and, once at the top, started the ride back down. It wasn’t going to be a great ride, at least till it leveled out at the meadow below. But at least we knew we could get back to the car.

As I said, we were basically riding rock. I love this kind of stuff, challenging and absorbing, and took off down the ridge with whoops and hollers. Jim yelled something after me that I couldn’t hear, I was having too much fun.

Unfortunately, I soon got a bit ahead of myself. I was JRA, Just Riding (more like bouncing) Along, when something happened and I went over the bars in a big hurry. I slammed my left side into solid granite and felt my arm buckle under me. I sat there in a yard-sale heap for a few moments, tangled up with my Mojo. Then I started to move, hoping nothing would signal broken bones.

The worst off was my elbow. Already a big lump had formed at the crook of my arm. My forearm had a long stretch of raw skin beginning to bleed. I felt short-winded and nauseous. But my arm seemed to work OK.

It seemed like an eternity before Jim — who was wisely walking his way down — caught up with me. His first words: “Didn’t I tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

“Right before you rode off. I said, ‘Discretion is the better part of valor’.”

What the? What was this, the mountain bike Quote of the Day? And anyway, I hadn’t heard him.

Admittedly, Jim had been right. “Um…uh,” I mumbled. “What do you think? Is my arm OK?”

Jim had me do some rotation and clenching motions. Everything seemed to work. I slapped some Neosporin on my forearm and we were good to go. I felt pretty washed out — shock will do that to you — and from that point on took it a bit easier. Please don’t tell my wife about this, as she never reads this blog.

After the trail leveled out it was pretty much a scream back to the car. I couldn’t fully enjoy it — something was catching at my left rear rib cage and Jim speculated I’d pulled or torn one of the little connector muscles. But given what might have been, I felt happy to be upright and rotational.

The ride nonetheless felt like half a loaf. We’d dealt with the unfinished business of two years earlier, to the extent that we made it to the top of the ridge. But we felt woefully cheated out of a killer ride down 8 Mile Ridge. Mayhap the horsers or Methow Valley Sport Trails Association (MVSTA) will find the wherewithal to clear 8 Mile Ridge and we’ll get to complete the job some day.

Back in Seattle, we ran into Peter Morgan, acting executive director of the Cascade Bicycle Club. Peter mentioned he’s proprietor of the Methow Valley Inn and invited us back for a stay. We’ll be sure to check it out the next time we go riding in Winthrop. After all, we still have that unfinished business calling out our name.

[Mileage: 12.2 / Elevation gain: 3,236 feet / Maximum grade: 16 percent / Time: 4 hrs 39 mins. The Falls Creek/8 Mile Ridge trails are tricky to track on Green Trails. You'll need Map Nos. 52 (to show access roads), 51 and 19.]]

[Note: In their farewell ride to the high country for what turned out to be a grand 2010 of epics, our sanity-challenged duo decides to spread its wings a bit and pays the price with a passel of hassle.]

Day One: North Twentymile Creek Grind

Sometimes you have to try something new even when common sense militates against it. That was the scenario for Team Mojo’s recent foray to the Methow Valley. For our final high-country epics of the season we wanted to explore new ground and complete some unfinished business. Our destinations: Twentymile Creek and Falls Creek/8 Mile Ridge — both up Chewuch Road north of town. For the capper we’d do Sun Mountain’s bevy of loops — the old race course.

Above North Twentymile Creek, and the world.

A group of clued-in locals are trying to reboot Winthrop with a nod to what Oregon’s once-similarly-underappreciated town of Oakridge has done. Oakridge’s “Mountain Bike Oregon” festival is drawing raves and making the town a prime destination. Winthrop has all the terrain and tools necessary to pull off a similar campaign; all that’s needed is leadership and some elbow grease from the Methow Valley denizens.

Stoked to cap off a great great 2010, Team Mojo was blessed with the best weather this late in the year that we can remember. Sunny, mid-70s, balmy at night. Having been rained on in days previous, the trails were tamped down and tacky — really perfect for riding.

Methow Cycle & Sport: Right on way into town

On the way into town we stopped in at Joe Brown’s new Methow Valley Cycle and Sport digs right before the barn on Highway 20. You can’t miss it, and it’s worth a stop if for no other reason than to take the Surly Pugsley — with its morbidly obese 4.0 tires and low-rider geometry — for a test ride around the parking lot. It’s a perfect snowmobike or sandmobile. Other than that, it’s just something completely different to ride.

Smilin' Joe Brown tried to warn us off.

Joe’s recommendation was Horsehead Pass-Foggy Dew, a monster circuit with a blazing downhill that unfortunately pretty much requires a shuttle. Since we had access to only a single vehicle, Jim’s CR-V, that was out. But we’ve done the Horsehead Pass loop (up Martin Creek Trail to Cooney Lake, over Angels Staircase, around Boiling Lake and back down Eagle Creek Trail) numerous times and were more up for exploring some untrammeled stuff.

We asked Joe about Falls Creek and North Twentymile Creek, the latter the scene of the tragic forest fire a few years ago. He kind of hemmed and hawed and tried to warn us off — not much trail maintenance up there, lots of blowdowns — but would we listen? No way. We hadn’t come 198 miles from Seattle to be influenced by common sense.

After touring the Twisp farmers’ market Saturday morning, an attraction we never miss given its $1 a pound apples and tomatoes and lots of fresh bakery items, we headed up West Chewuch to the Camp Four campground, turning right over a bridge onto Road 700, then left on 740 to park at the North Twentymile Creek trailhead. There’s actually a sign at the trailhead, and be sure to pay it some respect. It’s the only sign you’ll see on the whole ride.

Like I say, Joe had tried to warn us.

The only sign you will see.

The lower trail is climbable and quite pleasant. You ride the ridge above Honeymoon Creek and have respectable views to the west. It’s rocky in places but the trail is in pretty good shape.

Climbing through the burn.

Alas, things don’t stay that way. After a couple of fairly benign miles, it all goes sideways in a hurry. We started running into blowdowns every 100 yards or so, several of which we managed to clear with our own gloved hands. But some we couldn’t and just skirted. Further up we encountered some nasty switchbacks, made all the more unpleasant by boggy drainage. We even ran into a three-foot culvert. God knows how it got that high up on the ridge.

Trail clearing with our bare, er, gloved hands.

Bottom line: The trail had turned completely unrideable. But we slogged on. After a mile or so, lo and behold, things took a turn for the better. Literally. The switchbacks got rideable, the slope got more friendly. We were close to topping out. Up here the fire damage was more noticeable, but despite it all the trail was recovering and vegetation making a nice comeback.

Near the top I checked my iPhone and MotionX-GPS tracking software. We’d gained 4,000 feet in just over 4 miles. If you’ve ever climbed 1,000 feet in just one mile, you know what real pain is. We’d done it four times over — average speed, including trail clearing, 1.2 miles an hour.

MotionX-GPS topo rendition hints at our pain.

You’re up around 7,000 feet, you can’t see any signs of civilization anywhere, the wind is whipping around and the mountain is stone quiet, and you think hey, isn’t this great. Far away from computers and email and calls. Then the phone rings.

The Lookout: So close, yet so far.

The ride back down turned out to be a real hoot. The upper stretches of trail were rocky, rooty and challenging while still offering a fair degree of speed and flow. The middle section forced dismounts of course, but at least it went a lot quicker going down than up.

As for the final couple of miles, they were a real rip. The closer we got to the trailhead, the higher the doubles became. Someone has put a bit of thought into the lower trail. It’s a ton of fun. If I lived in Winthrop I’d go out there a couple of times a week just to do the lower section over and over.

We hated to miss the lookout, but we’ll file it under unfinished business. The next day we had some more to attend to.

[Mileage: 8.6 / Elevation gain: 4,220 feet / Maximum grade: 22 degrees / Time: 5 hrs 14 mins.] North TwentyMile Creek Trail can be found on Green Trails Maps 52 and 20.

Day Two: Falls Creek/8 Mile Ridge and a world of hurt

Day Three: Revisiting a favorite — the Sun Mountain Race Loop