What’s Around the Corner

What do you suppose is around that next bend? I’ve asked that of myself—or my riding partner du jour—hundreds of times. There’s an allure to the invisible, to what’s just over the next rise or around the next corner, hidden behind trees, a boulder, or the shape of the hill you’re riding toward.

I can’t count the times I’ve been riding for a long while on an out-and-back trail. I’m getting tired, I’m already at (or past) my turnaround point, and for some unknown reason, I want to keep going—simply because there’s a corner I can’t see around. The hidden curve keeps me from knowing what fun piece of singletrack might await just over there!

And of course, it’s a lovely corner, too. Enticing. All smooth and flowy, maybe just a little damp so your tires are extra grippy. You just know that sweet corner must become a straightaway where you can hammer the pedals down in an ecstatic speed run. Or maybe there’s a set of corners that interconnects with the one you can see, leading you to S-turn heaven. Or jumps! Maybe jumps! Perhaps an incredible view? It’s a mystery—and there’s only one way to solve it.

Maybe I’ll ride just a little farther… But then there’s the next corner, with more promised fun just out of view. This is where you can get yourself into trouble. “Just one more corner” can turn into many more miles of solving trail mysteries when you push your end point out farther—and then have to retrace your tire tracks back to the trailhead. Did you bring enough water? Nutrition? Do you even have enough energy to get back?

When you’re at the halfway point, you’re generally feeling quite good still, so adding a few more corners couldn’t hurt, right? But the last few miles of your ride could end up being a suffer-fest when you’re completely tanked from doing “just one more corner” ten to twelve times!

Even a trail you’ve ridden before can do this to you. If a trail has had a weather event—like the deluge-like rainstorms we often get these days—the next section may have changed drastically since the last time you were on it. What’s it like now, just around that corner? Is it rutted? Are there new lines? A new rock garden to navigate? Sometimes I just need to find out!

As luck would have it, while writing this article, I encountered this exact predicament on a ride. I went out to see if I could find a long-neglected trail that I hadn’t been on in quite a few years (I think you can see where this is going…). The last time I rode it, it took some route-finding just to get around it. It was vague then, to say the least.

Now what’s left of it resides close to the Southern Corridor Highway, where off-road traffic has really increased, and the trail I was looking for has either faded away or been turned into a moto or side-by-side trail. That didn’t keep me from trying, though. Maybe just over this next hill, or just around that ledge, I might find traces of the original trail…

I didn’t find it. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t have fun trying! A great thing about mountain biking is the adventure—and that adventure often comes when you ask, “What’s around the next corner?”