The day before returning home, we had Wheeler Lake planned, which is the second toughest trail we had planned for the week.  It's mostly due to 3 obstacles that are at the beginning of the trail and you can get a little tippy on them.  The damaged rigs were out and a couple others decided they didn't want to risk any damage the day before driving home.  Well, they all missed out on the favorite trail of the week as my friend Ray and I tackled it by ourselves.

Entering the trail, you drive under a mill that is fed by a waterfall and stream. What a grand entrance to the trail it was.  From there, you are immediately greeted by large slabs of rock and some off camber climbs on them.  I didn't think the first obstacle was very difficult but the second one presented three different challenges.  We chose to take what we determined to be the more difficult path and I spotted Ray up.  It was a bit slick due to loose or pulverized rock and it took him a couple tries to find the traction he needed to crawl up.  I made it first go with a little skinny pedal.

The trail itself was quite beautiful as you can tell from the photos.  It had lots of rocky sections, water crossings and off camber scenarios that made for an exciting climb to the top.   The trail ends at an alpine lake and waterfall and once there, we had some lunch, flew my drone and took some photos.  We even dunked our faces in the cold lake, because that is what you do, apparently. 

It's an in and out trail so we made our way back down.,  Some of the climbs in were now steep descents going down but we navigated all just fine.   Took us 4 hours to complete start to finish.  It was an awesome trail that I would love to do again.  Later in the afternoon, we did Peak 10, going up to 13,400 feet.  I'll detail that trail in my next blog post.  Enjoy the pics from Wheeler Lake.

Probably my favorite image from the trip.  Flexing coming down one of the obstacles.