Intense Ride...

Today we went for a ride, and it turned out a lot differently than I expected. Once we got up to a high elevation, the ice thickened and was really hard. It was difficult to walk up the side of the road, and if you tried to ride, you would probably fall within 10 or 15 feet. On the way up, we passed a car that slipped off the steep bench cut. It was very lucky because it was stopped by 2 trees. There's no telling how far it would've rolled without those trees...

It was at that point that we decided that we could not continue our route, and we tried to think of the best way back down to a lower elevation. That only gave us 3 options: go back down the road, ride up to the top and walk down a kinda steep trail to where the ice gets softer, or ride down a very steep trail that takes us almost the whole way to the bottom. We chose the 3rd. I don't know if it was a mistake, considering that the other trail could've been the same, but this one was too icy and steep to walk down. So we went off the bench cut and walked straight down to the road. It was very difficult but we finally made it to the road, not far from the bottom. At the bottom, we took the 3 Bridges trail, which actually wasn't icy at all, just a dusting of snow. From there we went up Longberger trail. That was kinda hard, because it was either snow or deep mud from the water runoff. Then onto Upper Longberger, which is rocky and completely different from the lower section. I have to admit that it wasn't one of the most fun rides at this point, but the rocks on Upper Longberger quicky changed that. Across a road and up Tuxedo, then we planned on taking the Tussey Ridge Trail back across the ridge, then Camp trail down to the gap, and ride the road back home. Maybe 20 or 30 feet into Tuxedo, I noticed that my bike seemed to be dragging more than it should. I guessed that it was my brakes, but the wheel spun perfectly. Right away, I knew it was my cranks. Turns out that the small chainring bolt had backed out and was scraping away at my bottom bracket. They're coated in aluminum so I think the frame will be okay. This is exactly what happened to my dad at Iron Hill. It was cold and we would've needed to take the whole crankset off to get to the bolt, so we called my mom to come and pick us up. It was good that I was by a road, because I couldn't pedal at all. Checking those bolts every once in a while is something that everyone should do to make sure this doesn't happen. Both times, this was on Cannondale's SI crank, but I'm sure it could happen to any crank, so check them often.