str8jakett

Thanks, I'll definitely be thinking about this one for a while. Looking the bike over and assessing damage, the shifters and hoods are scraped badly, right pedal cosmetically damaged, saddle scuffed. The rear wheel is undamaged and true, tire is visually fine. Removed the front tire (one handed!) and returned the wheel to the bike. It's slightly out of true but it looks like the exploded tire was keeping it from going through the brakes. Even the scuffing to the rim looks mostly cosmetic and is above the braking surface.

After crashing, my riding buddy finished the remaining four miles to his truck to retrieve me for the trip to the ER. I looked at the road. It was dry, no patches of gravel or leaves or pine needles, all of which was present in other areas on this mountain. I did notice some rubber brake buildup on the front edge of the rear brakes, maybe this is the cause of the rear lockup. Will get a better look at it once I can get someone to remover the rear wheel.

For some background, this was at mile 41.6 of a 45 mile loop with 4100 feet of climbing, and 3000 of that was two gravel climb/descents. Last week I did the ride on the gravel bike with 38mm tires but I didn't want to pedal that tank over the reverse route yesterday, and opted for the TCR with 25mm tires. It did spectacular until the final gravel descent which was long, unstable, and had several solid outcroppings. By the time I got to the bottom I was worried about the bike and wheels, but after a good check over, continued the remaining 10 paved miles (6.6 miles to crash). At first I had worried that the ride itself did some damage which maybe caused the lockup, but I can't find any evidence of that on the rear wheel or tire, and the front damage to wheel and tire wasn't present at the 35 mile check.

Anyone else have any insights or ideas?

More pictures of the damage and the gravel climbs.