Ollie wanted to ride on the Peninsula so I offered him a bunch of options and he chose Big Basin. Then I gave him some route options and he chose this one. So… any “not fun” we had, it was his fault for choosing this route. 😜 The day got off to a late start because of the Half Moon Bay Pumpkin Festival causing traffic havoc on 92. It was also colder and grayer than I thought it would be. Also weird was the headwind going south on 1. We got the ride back on track by starting it off at Pie Ranch for some pumpkin pie. As always, it was delicious. Chalks and Whitehouse Canyon into Big Basin, although gray and foggy, was really nice. So was Gazos Creek down to the park HQ. I had said that I would never climb Middle Ridge again but with the available trail options in the park, it just made the most sense. Plus, I only remembered the first part being steep and maybe it wasn’t as bad as I remembered it. I was SO wrong. Somehow, I forgot about all the other steep pitches or that there were so many of them. I thought once we were on the ridge, it was fairly flat. Clinton, for his first time, didn’t do too badly. He was good up to 20% and had to walk stuff steeper than that. Ollie cleaned almost all of the pitches despite running Pathfinders and the surface being loose. He crushed it. I cleaned all of them but thought I was going to have a heart attack at the top of a few of them. It also strained my one thigh a bit and later I had to stop twice because I was about to cramp. Butano was WAY sandier than I remembered it at the top. And then once we got off the sandy part, it was muddy, and for the guys, slippery. That trail and pretty much all the trails have been graded smooth. For the most part that’s great but on Butano Fire Rd. it was not. It must have happened really recently because there were no tread marks on the trail. Everyone’s tires were caked with mud and later there was so much mud flying off our tires. After the airstrip, it was dry again and we had a great time descending the rest of the way. In the transition from sandy to just before the muddy section of Butano Fire Rd., Clinton stopped to get photos of banana slugs. They were everywhere. I lost count but there were probably a couple dozen all around us. It was Slugfest '22. Capped it off with burgers and tater tots at Highway 1 Brewing Company. An excellent day.