Big Ride at Alpine (Creampuff course) on Saturday

Did a big ride on Saturday with Dan. We rode the Alpine Trail, which is also the course for the Cascade Cream Puff 100. Of course we only did it once, they do it three brutal times. The ride worked me over! It's 16 miles of climbing to the top, then you do the descent, which has a bit of climbing mixed in as well. All in all, 5260' of climbing, in 32 miles is what I registered. By the time we got to the top (about 3.5 hours for me :(, I was pretty much wasted. I was also out of water, which really sucked, because we had about two hours to go! The Alpine trail singletrack descent is really nice though. Very narrow singletrack, super high quality. It wasn't technical, but it was fast and fun for sure. I used my GPS and posted the map.I am fairly eager to go back to Alpine, because honestly, I wasn't fully able to enjoy the descent. I was out of water, bonked, and so was mainly working to get down fast, not cramp (any more), and so on. It was also raining a good chunk of the time, although mostly the latter half of the climb, at the top where it was fairly cold (there was still some snow left). So, I know at minimum I'll be riding this again in August during Mountain Bike Oregon, and we'll do it as a shuttle, so that'll be very nice.Oh, last bit. This was the maiden voyage on the Lyric fork. It worked great so far. I did notice that it's a bit taller, and I don't have the Flood Gate dialed in, so it was diving under braking and steeper sections more than I'd like. I think when I get the Flood Gate going it'll be sweet, as when I played with it quickly, it clearly has the platform type effect.