Back to basics: Hitting singletrack every day during summer '24
Carbondale, Colorado
I've always found summer to be the perfect time to push the envelope physically. The days are long, the weather is beautiful, and the high country is dry, inviting epic adventures deep in the mountains.
Every summer I choose a theme and set a challenge, and for 2024, that theme was "Singletrack Summer." Instead of just completing one human-powered mile per day, I decided to up the ante by challenging myself to cover at least one mile of singletrack each of the 94 days of summer 2024. I did at least 95 days, just to be safe: June 20 - September 22.
Heading into summer, it felt like potentially an overambitious goal. I was still recovering from two injuries sustained over the winter: torn ligaments in my ankle, a partially torn MCL in my knee, a small meniscus tear, and a deep bone bruise on my tibia. I was on the path to recovery, though, so I decided to push my boundaries and see if I could find a way to hit singletrack every single day.
Then, just two weeks into the project, disaster struck: I had a brutal crash on my mountain bike while ripping down a trail in Montana. It was a classic pedal catcher: my trailing pedal caught a small stump sticking up from the side of the trail. It launched me into the air, and I hit first on my right knee at high speed. Despite wearing knee pads, my knee was torn up, and the impact caused my knee to swell up and displace the kneecap. To make matters worse, of course this was the same knee that I've had two ACL surgeries on. And of course, the same knee had suffered the MCL, meniscus tear, and bone bruise as well.
Durango, Colorado
I expected to bounce back quickly from the crash, so I kept on hiking and riding like usual. But after about a week, it became clear that I wasn't going to recover nearly so easily. The stiffness and pain in my knee were hampering my movement dramatically, and almost three months later, I still haven't fully recovered from that crash.
It would have been so easy to call it quits after that traumatic crash. Climbing and descending on singletrack, whether hiking or biking, is much more demanding on the knees than walking on flat ground. But once the Singletrack Summer idea got stuck in my craw, I couldn't let it go — and so I persevered, busted-up knee and all.
The challenge proved to be much more difficult than my standard Outside 365 goal during several other instances as well. On long road trip days, we'd have to plan exactly when and where we could stop for a singletrack mile. While visiting family, I had to excuse myself several times to drive to a nearby park to get a quick hike in. And before a cross-country flight, I woke up at 4 a.m., strapped on my headlamp, and got a quick hike done before heading to the airport.
Durango, Colorado
The importance of living near singletrack
This challenge drove home how incredibly valuable — priceless, even — living close to singletrack is for my well-being. On several trips this summer, we'd head deep into the mountains to get out into nature, but then find ourselves having to drive to get from our campsite to the closest singletrack trail. In comparison, even though we might live "in town" now, we have access to at least 5 different trail systems (depending on how you count them) without having to start the van. Furthermore, our closest singletrack trailhead is less than a quarter mile from the house.
Are we privileged to live close to singletrack? Definitely — it's rare. But I'll tell you what: this sure as shit didn't happen by accident.
There are plenty of reasons to not live this close to a trailhead. The cost of living is higher, to the point that we may never be able to afford to buy a house in a Colorado mountain town ever again. The houses are smaller. The house lots are closer together. Shit, even finding a house to rent instead of an apartment is a real challenge.
However, this is a classic example of how your own personal values should drive your decision making, and not somebody else's idea of what you "should" do. If we allowed ourselves to be brainwashed into thinking we needed to own a house, we might wind up tucked away in a nice subdivision many miles away from the closest trail, pretty though it may be.
But one of my most important values? Spending time on mother fucking singletrack.
And I know it. I can articulate it eloquently. But I still think many other people haven't done the hard work of identifying what their values truly are, and so getting on singletrack every single day might prove to be a much more substantial challenge.
Leadore, Idaho
By the numbers
I went on plenty of walks, road rides, and gravel rides that didn't touch singletrack during summer '24, but I went through and tallied up every adventure that did hit singletrack. I found that 32 of my hikes were on trails accessed from one of the two trailheads located less than a quarter mile from my house. I took additional rides from the house on other in-town trails, but I didn't include those rides in the close-to-the-house total.
All told I went on 73 hikes and 45 singletrack rides, for a total of 118 singletrack adventures over the 95 days of summer — way overshooting my goal with multiple rides and/or hikes on some days. These 118 adventures totaled 879.4 miles of distance, for an average of 9.26 miles per day. Now, not all of those miles were on singletrack, as these adventures do include some approach mileage to reach the singletrack, but regardless, it was a fairly big summer season.
If you need to spice up your Outside 365 challenge and focus on reconnecting with nature, consider trying a Singletrack Summer challenge next year!
