Sun Valley, Day 3 - Redfish Lake

(Sorry for the break in the Sun Valley reports - things have been busy lately.)

After the Fisher Creek ride we ate lunch and relaxed for a while at Redfish Lake. It's a beautiful place and the lodge and beach are nice.

Reading the guidebook I was concerned we weren't up to the whole loop. So I came up with the idea of taking a shuttle boat to the south end of the lake and riding half of the loop back. Sounded good.

The guys at the marina debated a bit if there should be an extra charge for bikes, but in the end they took us for the regular $8 / person price. We've never transported our bikes by boat before - gave it the novelty factor.



Dramatic views from the lake.



The usual route is clockwise, but the west half of the loop is reported to have some bad trail so we did the east half. We hadn't gone far when the trail got rough, lots of rocks and roots. But it was pretty.



The climb up to the east ridge was technical and steep. We walked a lot. And it was long. At least 1000 feet of climbing. Lots of mosquitoes too (and I forgot the bug repellent). This was not a fun section for us.



Finally made it up, but we were both pretty worked over. Can you tell?



The ridge was good. It's one rock garden after another but most were rideable.



The final downhill was fun.



The trail ended in a campground. We took the road back to the lodge and had one more refill of lemonade. Loaded up the bikes and headed back to our room in Stanley.

Day 4 was Elk Mountain - I'll get the post up soon.