Takesi: Bringing Me Home

 I have found the perfect trail in Bolivia for Pisgah Alumni. For Jubi's birthday we gathered a crew of friends together and headed out for an epic ride along an ancient trail. Throughout Bolivia and Peru there a few ancient roads built before Columbus ever set foot in the New World. Takesi is one of the most well preserved routes and has become a popular hiking trail and occasional mountain bike ride.

With a group of eleven, we hired a bus driver that often works with us at Gravity. His job was to drop us off at the trail head and pick us up at the end. The trail head starts at the base of Mururata, a flat topped mountain near La Paz. Legend has it that Mururata used to be much taller and conical, but Illimani became jealous and cut off Mururata's head. All the red soil around La Paz is supposed to be blood from Mururata's head as it was flung off towards Chile. I was surprised at how far Marco was willing to drive his bus up the mountain. The roads we drove along seemed more fit for a four wheel jeep than a large bus with bikes on top. The first route we tried was blocked by a landslide, so we had to turn around (no easy feat either) and try a different way around the mountain. As we finally neared the trail head, we came upon another landslide that would not let the bus pass. Instead, we hopped off and pedaled to the trail head.

From the trail head itself, we started off pedaling, but quickly found it too difficult. At home, most of the uphill would not be that hard. Between the steepness, the roughness and mostly the 14,000 ft of altitude, we found it much too difficult and pushed our bikes for an hour to the summit of a high pass just below Mururata at about 16,000 ft. At La Cumbre (the summit) we huddled away from the cold wind, took a break from the exhausting climb and stuffed some calories into our stomachs. Its mostly down from here so we brought downhill bikes, but I was definitely cursing the heavy bike and bulky full face helmet on the way up.

The trail down starts off with some pretty easy well preserved sections of Inca paving. The Incas didn't make use of the wheel and so thus their roads are not very conducive to the rolling wheel. Big paving stones with large cracks of plant growth in between. Perfect for mountain biking. Every few meters there's a row of flat rocks oriented vertically across the road designed to slough water off to the side. This means rolling down is a rather bumpy ride with the occasional row of vertical stones to bunny hop over.

Of course, it is also rainy season here in Bolivia. This means the rocks are not only rough and uneven, but super slick also. Parts of the Inca road felt like I was riding down a paved river. As we dropped lower down the trail and entered the high jungle, the sides of the gorge also got much steeper. This meant the trail got much rougher. Suddenly we were really glad to have brought downhill bikes and full face helmets. Much of the trail turned into massive rock gardens, often with rivers of water running straight down the middle. At this point, I felt as if I had come into my element. Some of my friends in the group are normally far faster than I on dry sandy Bolivian trails, but today I was only losing some speed in sections that they would get stuck on or have to get off and walk. I entirely attribute this to having honed my riding skills in the rock gardens and root structures of a wet Pisgah National Forest. However, there was a large difference. Trails at home such as Pilot Rock or Black Mountain have sections of gnarly rock gardens that last minutes at a time. This trail was at least 60% huge long rock gardens and took hours to get down. We all crashed at least once. I crashed twice and others crashed too many times to count. For my first crash, I was riding down through a dense jungle forest on a rock slab titled to the left. With the off camber tilt of the slab and the extreme slickness, my wheels were sliding every which way. I suddenly came upon a sharp 180 switch back, but the turn itself was a three foot drop. I tried to make the turn, but my wheels slid right out and I went off the drop on my side. I'm really happy we all made it down without somebody really hurting themselves or their bike.

After a particularly crazy river crossing, we eventually came to the trail's end in the jungle at around 6,500 ft. About a mile of flat concrete sidewalk led to the road where Marco waited with cerveza for eleven exhausted souls. Once my body heals, I can't wait to get back out there. I would really like to do the trail again soon with a smaller group and work really gnarly sections for some sweet photos. As a large group, I found we were already stopping enough and I didn't want to stop in the fun sections, so the photos I do have look like we were walking bikes up hills and resting more than actually riding. Awesome day though with a bunch of awesome guys.

More epic photos here