After spending Saturday doing more recon than riding, we were pumped to finally hit the orange trail headed out of the Wolf Gap campground on Sunday and begin the mile+ climb up to the ridge. Once at the top, views opened up to valleys east and west of us, and rode/scrambled over the rocky ridgeline to the Big Schloss split. Although my faulty map reading actually took us up the white trail to top of Big Schloss (the blue trail was not to be found up there, as I’d erroneously projected), but the view was great from the rocky ledges. Once again though, timing was forcing us to cut our ride short and head straight back down to the parking lot rather than continue theMill Mountain loop like we’d hoped. Total mileage would be under 5, but were glad just to have gotten some riding in.

But, on the descent, disaster struck. Apparently, unfamiliar trails and high speeds don’t mix though, and I found myself off the side of trail about halfway down when I went too wide on a left-hand curve. Upon reentering the trail, I hit a rut (or something) and starting bucking around a bit, and finally realized that I was no longer in control of the bike. My feet eventually lost the pedals; and, next thing I knew, I was airborne. A classic endo, with my arms extended in front of me and the bike getting ready for a bouncy ride. When the crash was over, I instantly knew something was wrong with my arm, but I wasn’t sure what. It hurt badly and I was short of breath. Lewis caught up to me pretty quickly, but hadn’t seen the crash because I was ahead of her in the turn. When she got to me, I told her that I thought my arm was broken; since, by all counts, it wasn’t hanging quite right. Without knowing exactly what the issue was, we started rigging together a sling out of an inner tube; but, before we got too far, the group of hikers showed up. And, by some stroke of good fortune, the group’s leader just happened to be an MD who had dealt with situations such as mine before. He knew that my shoulder was dislocated and quickly set to work trying to get it back in place. Initially, he tried to raise my arm over my head to get it back in place, but that wasn’t working. So his next move was to lay me on my back, put a foot into my armpit, and pull straight out on my arm until the shoulder mercifully–and audibly–popped back into place. After that, we slinged it back up, returned to the house to let my parents know what the situation was, and pack up for the trip home to the INOVA ER.