The Sinai MTB Epic ride, December 2010, Part III (final part with video!)
This is Part III (the final part) of our December 2010 Sinai MTB Epic ride.
The following day, we woke up a little before 8:00 a.m.
We packed out our camp...
Put our the gear on the support truck...
...followed by our bikes. The plan is to drive out to the ride starting point at higher elevation.
Then it was time for breakfast! A meal which experienced the fate of all other meals on this trip: Total Annihilation! (did I say that Bedouin bread is soooo good?!)
On the short drive to the ride starting point, we stopped to see Mossalam's home village. He told us about how Bedouins can spot and extract water from seemingly arid locations in the middle of the desert.
We arrived at the start point and quickly off-loaded our bikes and riding gear...
...and the rest of the riding adventure started!
After some "easy" riding through some valleys, we got to this...
It was time for some (or a lot of) hike-a-bike...
...which was rewarded by long stretches of fast singletrack and generally awesome riding! I will not talk too much about the riding now because you'll see it in a video.
All was going well and we were making good time as per the ride plan...that is until Mossallam broke his derailleur hanger. I was riding right behind him, pedaling up a gentle incline when I heard that horrible sound: CRRRAKKKK! and looked down to see his derailleur jammed between his rear wheel's spokes. Luckily he stopped before the further damage happened to his wheel.
With no spare hanger (yes, we were pushing our luck, non of us had a spare hanger), I converted his bike into a "singlespeed". Without horizontal dropouts or a chain tensioner, you can't really properly tension a chain to singlespeed properly, but in the middle of nowhere with no spare hanger, you just do what you can. Mossalam didn't seem to mind. After some cursing his spirits where up as if nothing happened. And, I might add, this didn't seem to slow him down. Maybe a little bit, not too much 🙂
At one point, the ride into a multisport activity: we had to go down an EXTREMELY STEEP "trail", simaltaneously trying to carry our bikes, not to slip off to the side and plummet down some 200 meters, and descend with any sort of dignity 🙂
Yep. It's steep.
Did I say steep? To compound the problem, it was also very loose.
That was followed by some more amazing riding that ended with us riding all the way to our beach-side camp at sunset. An amazing mountain biking adventure. While I don’t have any good photos of the rest of the ride, I do have what’s even better: a video!
