Bonus Ride

Well we had the first mechanical of trip with regards to the RV. I had found one of the tires on the rv rather low before we left from fruita and pumped it up. This morning I discovered that it was pretty much totally flat. The plan was to empty the waste tanks to lessen the load of jacking up the rv along and bring in the slideout, the flat was on the back side. The truck has a 4 ton bottle jack that I was planning on using to get the axel up and the tire off but as we were getting things together, the nice gentleman across the road from us came over and offered us the use of his 20 ton bottle jack. Although I was 99% sure the 4 ton would work, the 20 ton made lifting it effortless. The biggest issue was just getting the jack back to the middle axel of the triple. So we got it off and into town, the first place was closed on the weekends but the place across the street was open so we rolled it over there. Turns out the only issue was the valve stem needed tightening and they didn’t even charge us. By the time we got back and the wheel on, Howie made the decision that it was really too late to bother getting started on the long trip back so we decided to head over to the Monarch Crest Trail and stay another night here. This starts at the Monarch Pass, about 11,200 feet and follows the Continental Divide Trail that crosses there. Normally the rides here are done as shuttles, with a vehicle left at the bottom of the valley at any number of finishing points but with our lack of planning and only one vehicle we had to “settle” for an out and back on this amazing piece of track. It starts with a bit of a gravel road climb then about three quarters of a mile of bench cut before a half mile grunt up a rather rutted gravel road but then its pretty much single track heaven for the next eight miles. You end up climbing/descending 1000 feet each way for a total of 2000 feet of climbing over 19 miles. Most of it is at or near tree line so the vista/ views are incredible.

In a number of spots you see the ribbon of single track just laying out before you, at one point I sort of measured and you could see the track over a half mile ahead of you. The last couple miles before the turn around were through forested benchcut, rather rocky and rooty and included a skree field that puts anything in Pennsylvania to shame. We ate our fluffer nutter sandwiches then started back. The climb up through the trees was not nearly as bad as we had thought it would be as it was so much fun coming down through them, it seemed like it had to be steeper than it was. Across more ribbons of alpine meadowed single track and we hit the one section we were dreading, it was a loose steep downhill the first time, motorcycles are allowed on the trail and have beat this part up pretty bad. So it was a quarter mile of mostly hike a bike, but all in all not bad. Then off we were across more amazing single track with the views in the opposite direction from earlier. Too soon we rounded the last turn and we caught sight of the parking area where the Beast lay. Another mile and half or so and our western riding was at an end. There is a private “visitor’s center” there and I went in to use the restroom and thought howie was following but when I came out, still no howie so I got some ice cream and went looking for him. I figured he went to use up the last of film in the film camera as the sun was going down and the lighting was good. As I walked out though, I realized they were closing up so I hoped his shots were good as they cost him the potential to get ice cream.

Back in Gunnison we stopped at Garlic Mike’s, a place recommended by Russ at the office who had stopped there a number of years ago when he was out here. It lived up to his recommendation, most excellent Italian food.

The Best for Last

The weather finally cleared, beautiful blue sky with a few wispy clouds around. The plan was to revisit a ride we did last time, a combo of a gravel road climb, Reno divide, and a few single tracks, Flag Creek, Bear Creek and Deadman’s gultch. There was also the potential for adding on an extra bonus 5 miles with some extra climbing near the end. This is another classic Crested Butte ride, right there with 401, just tougher to get to the trailhead and a tougher ride in general, but simply amazing. We started from the Deadman’s gultch trailhead with a temp of 49 degrees. The first five miles are a gravel road climb, starting at about 9600 feet and ending at 11200. It starts easy gaining only about 400 feet in the first couple miles then it gets steep but at least the road is in good shape so it’s a smooth grind. We ran into 4 guys from Georgia at the top before we headed down one of the most amazing sections of single track ever. It was a rather wide meadow to start then funneled into more of a creek canyon where beavers had dammed up the creek into a series of small ponds. We crossed flag creek and started up one of its tributaries. 2 and half miles later and some climbing we found ourselves on a gravel road. This seems to be where we screwed up last time but managed to make the right navigations this time heading up to Bear Creek trail. This is where things really became magic.

This started one of the best downhills howie and I have ever been on. It rolled through a mile or so of alpine meadow then started at a little steeper pitch but still a ton of fun. It opened up a bit again for the last bit of bench cut down to the intersection of Deadman’s Gultch trail 15 miles into the ride.

At this point the choice was either go right and up, with 5 miles back to the truck or head left and take 10 miles to get back. We were both feeling good and in love with the ride so we opted for the bonus miles and went left. We headed down the trail another mile along the creek until we hit Rosebud trail. There were a few hunters getting ready to head into the bush as some sort of bow hunting season started the next day. The trail was not a lot of fun, the motorcycles had really beat it up and it was very loose with lots of baby head and baby fist sized rocks everywhere. 2.75 miles and 1400 feet of vertical and a bunch of hike a bike later we were at Cement Mountain trail with promises of downhill rides through open alpine meadows with amazing views. For the most part it was true although there was also a few small climbs in there as well.

There was also a section that went through some dark forest that was still quite wet and didn’t seem to ever dry out very well, slippery and lots of puddles, not much fun. That was short lived and across more alpine meadow bench cut before intersecting with Deadman’s gultch trail with a couple hundred feet climb to the top before a 1000 foot vertical drop in 2 miles on switch back trails back to the truck. In hind sight, the miserable climb up Rosebud really was not worth the extra alpine views across Cement and we’ll just head up Deadman’s next time. Besides the rosebud climb, the only other detracting point of the route was the number of mud puddles in the trail from motorcycles.

401

Although the title may sound like a knock off household degreaser, its actually the name of one of the classic Crested Butte trails. It rained us out yesterday so we took a drive into town and checked out one of the local bike shops. We picked up a Gunnison sticker for the RV and asked about the Crested Butte trails, how quickly they dry and he said pretty quickly. It rained a bit over night but not much and the weather forecast looked more promising so the plan was to head to CB in the morning. It was quite a pleasant morning here but still quite cloudy towards CB but we packed up and headed out. It was still quite cloudy over the ridges as we headed into CB but no rain in site so we continued on through town, through the ski resort area and up the gravel road to Gothic. Im not sure what all goes on in Gothic but like howie said, it is straight outta little house on the prairie. Anyways, about a half mile past there the loop starts/ends so thats where we parked. Like most good CB rides it starts with a long gravel road climb but this one isnt too bad, about 5 miles and 1100 feet. The truck thermometer had the outside temp at 54 degrees and it was quite breezy. Heck of a thing, just a few days ago we were riding in the high 90's. It rode alot easier than 6 years ago when we did this, thats for sure, but any climb at 10,000 feet is tough and we warmed up quickly. And its about one of the prettiest gravel road rides you'll ever make as well, up this beautiful valley along some small alpine lakes. At Schofield pass you pick up the single track trail and really start climbing. About a mile or so later and 500 feet higher you break out into the alpine meadows.

The gravel road had some puddles on it but was basically dry but I still wasn't sure what the trail would be like. Amazingly it was in great shape, a few puddles here and there, but otherwise perfect. We climbed a bit more through the meadows then headed back down along the valley we climbed up, just a bit higher.

I think this is what makes this ride so special, a few miles of slightly downhill benchcut trail with some of the most beautiful views you will see from a mountain bike. Its smooth enough and not too steep so you can actually enjoy the view rather than have to concentrate so hard on not killing yourself you don't see anything. Eventually you have to loose some altitude on some switchbacks through a nice aspen grove. A little more trail and you take a bit of gravel road down towards the road you climbed up but then start heading up on the side of the valley over a creek and through a meadow. The trail goes through some private ground which is used for grazing cattle and unfortunately there was a bunch around, so they were a pain to get around but even worse they really beat the heck outta the trail with the recent rain so it was quite muddy. We got through all that and back to the truck about 3.5 hours and 15 miles later. We both remarked on how warm it was, truck said on the way out it was 64 degrees, but since we both figured we would be in jackets at the top, it was a pleasant surprise.
We stopped in town to pick up a sticker and something to eat, CB is one cool little town. All the locals cruise around on "townie bikes." I was actually surprised it was so busy for a weekday after labor day, but there must still be people out vacationing. Back to Gunnison with a quick stop at Wally World for a hose nozzle since the water pressure through the camper's outside hand shower was not good here and the bikes were quite muddy. I think next year we'll get a splitter and an extra piece of hose for cleaning bikes.

Tuesday

Yesterday we decided to take the day off. The 97 degree heat and lots of short anaerobic bursts took a toll on us so we took advantage of the cable and watched some of the US Open Tennis tourney and took a quick trip to the Over The Edge Bicycle Shop. I also made it out to the hot tub and ran into 4 guys from Australia and New Zealand that had been working at a summer camp near Asheville NC and were working their way back to their flight home via some great mountain biking sites. I also got a chance to clean the bikes up pretty well and patch my flat tubeless that I had been running a tube in. This morning, Tuesday, we packed up and headed for Gunnison Co, just outside of Crested Butte, one of the mountain biking meccas. The drive over was a little more adventurous than I had anticipated, up and down and twisty, but other than holding up a few cars at one point, no issues at all. We were actually held up by some chick in a jeep that we actually saw holding a camera out the window while she was driving at one point snapping pictures. We got to camp and Howie had set us up with another pull through so getting in was a snap. We got things set up and saw that the afternoon storms had set up in the mountains so heading up to Crested Butte seemed like a bad idea so we settled for Hartman Rocks, just outside of Gunnison. We got a little screwed up to start and after an initial hike a bike we ran into a gravel road that we rode down looking for all this supposed single track. After a couple miles and some disappointment we finally found a signed intersection with some real single track. We traversed down then up through some washes and small canyons then across the mesa.

We could see storms on three sides of us but it was still sunny where we were. At the next intersection we decided the smart move would be to start heading towards the vehicle and we actually did the smart thing. We ran out of trail and consulted the map but were not sure which end of the trail were at so we headed down the jeep trail to find another trail marker to figure it out. We found the start of Rattlesnake trail, I think it was named more for the twisty nature of it rather than critters found on it. It was starting to get dark and we had not really checked the map, but it seemed like it was headed in the right direction. It was definitely the most technical of what we had rode, up and down through some pretty sweet rock formations and seemed to keep heading where we wanted to go. It started to rain on us and the trail still was not ending, causing a bit of consternation, but we soon saw a marker and found a jeep trail that we were able to follow back to the vehicle although the rain had slopped thing up a bit and got the bikes and ourselves quite messy. We headed into Gunnison for some pizza then grocery shopping at a Safeway that had probably been remodeled in the early 80’s at best. Back at camp we have no TV again so we are checking out the video footage from Fruita.

Return to Kokopelli

Today we took Ho to the Kokopelli trails, again either the first or second, and third ride I did on our first western trip. This system of loops runs along a really nice canyon section of the Colorado River just west of Fruita. As we rode it, it starts on more less of an old jeep trail called Mary’s loop. We happened to be getting going about the same time as another traveler, Don, from Arkansas was and he asked if he could ride along with us. He had a nice bike and seemed to know what he was doing so off we went. He certainly didn’t hold up and he didn’t seem to mind our pace. We passed a family with a couple of younger kids, stopped at a view point for pictures, they passed us again, and then ran into them at the intersection of Horsethief’s bench.

There was a bit of a hike a bike down to this few mile loop of really nice singletrack, combo of slick rock, riding in washes, and smooth dirt track with more amazing views of the canyon and river. A tough little climb that had us out of breath and we were back at the hike a bike back up to Mary’s loop. There was some blowhard scoping out the hike a bike down “figuring out” his lines that he was gonna take as he rode it down, he had a blur LT, nice bike, but he was too old and the bike was at least 2 inches short in travel on both ends of doing this piece of track. We stuck around to see what happened and he bailed at the same point we did when we headed down earlier, we just didn’t waste nearly as much time. More of Mary’s loops, and we hit the intersection of Lions Loop. Basically the loops were half on the river side of the ridge then went back on the “boring” side. Don had told his wife he would be out 2-3 hours so he figured he need to head back as we were almost 2 hours into the ride at this point. We headed out Lion’s loop, single track, loose bench cut above the river. Great views, nice technical sections, lots of fun. This ran us into a jeep road that we took up towards Troy built loop. We took a left on Troy’s while Lion’s headed over the ridge on the jeep trail. This was more single track, down towards the river then bench along the river, more smooth than the Lion’s loop’s bench. About the time I-70 came into view we started heading around the end of the ridge. Some down hill bench with a little run down a rock wash then more bench and we were at the end of the jeep road that runs the “boring side” of the ridge. Typically people just do one of these loops and we had more or less done three. We could have taken the jeep road back up and down to the truck without too much effort but there is a route called Mack’s ridge that we had decided to do. That required heading up the jeep trail that Lion’s loop comes over on, Im not sure what the elevation gain was, but it was tough, totally open, as everything out there is so the sun was beating on us, easily into the 90’s as it was 97 by the time we got to the truck an hour or so later. Howie had killed off the water in his camel bak so I gave him the water bottle I had to put in there, he still had his water bottle full of gatoraide. We had about 7.5 miles left at the start of the climb. We found the intersection with Mack’s, another jeep trail heading towards the vehicle. More climbing and we arrived at what seemed to be the top of that world, amazing views of the river canyon and all the single track we rode below us.

The route turned to single track as we routed along the edge of the rim, really sweet track. We could see where we needed to get down to and were curious how this was gonna happen. There was a couple of exposed hike a bike sections but for the most part it was ridable bench also some little finger sections. We reached the intersection with Mary’s loop with the potential of one last trail back to the vehicle, Moore fun, but we were outta water so back the 2.5 miles on the gravel road to the truck.

We headed back to the RV, got a shower then headed to Grand Junction so Ho could grab his rental car to head back to Salt Lake to catch his flight back to PA tomorrow. We also managed to find some good Mexican food in GJ.

Opps, outta order

Im updating finally with a good internet connection, but missed last thursday so here it is as I had written it but not been able to put it up.

Well today was to be the Virgin River Rim trail ride. This was the first time that I actually saw howie try to talk us outta doing the whole ride as written. It was supposed to be about 30 miles and 4000 feet of climbing, but howie was proposing cutting it down to 20 miles and 3000 feet. It was to be a shuttle either way, just depended on the end point. After some negotiation we settled on the shorter route with the potential for some bonus mileage at the end. Ho was not feeling up to riding today so he stayed back and did the housecleaning. That left five us, the perfect number for the Beast as a shuttle vehicle. Off to Strawberry Point to drop off the bikes and Bernie and Rick, I navigated, howie drove the beast and Scott drove the van to the end point, Teah campground at Navajo Lake. We left the beast and drove back to Strawberry Point and started the ride. The first mile or so was a nice downhill switchbacky single track from the elevation gained on driving up the mountain. We then started climbing up a nicely graded single track, some loose rocks but not bad. That joined up with a jeep road that we were supposed to take up about 0.3 miles but took up about 0.5 then had to back track a bit, BONUS mileage and climbing. That went down to a drainage then more climbing. We finally got up to the rim after circumnavigating around some private ground and a bunch of climbing. It was a rather impressive sight, some nice redrock cliffs and the whole virgin river valley including Zion in front of us. It started sprinkling on us and we could see some serious weather to our right but we seemed to be on the edge of this mountain induced storm cloud. The issue was the trail would turn to “gumbo” if it got too wet and it had seen some rain the day before. We rode along the rim with peeks of vistas and heard thunder off to the right but no serious rain. We picked up the pace a bit and didn’t really stop for photo opps. Scott got a few pictures but his stupid Olympus camera has an XD card and won’t take my mini USB cable so we don’t have any pictures from today. We had a nice downhill to a potential hike out to some waterfall type vista but again the weather looked scary so we continued on. We had made it as high as about 9400 feet then dropped down to closer to 9000 before the painful climb up to about 9500 then a bit of a drop then back up to about 9700 around Navajo Point before the last decent to Navajo Lake. Overall it was about 20 miles with about 3000 feet of climbing all on single track and much of it on relatively loose track, some at upto a 10% grade. The nice part was all the downhill was really sweet, nothing too steep and no super crazy switch backs. We really got lucky with the weather, we could tell it had rained on the last few miles of track we did earlier in the afternoon, a few “muddy” spots but not bad, just tacky and by the time we returned to the start, it had rained there after we had gone through. All in all not a top 10 ride, howie and I are so spoiled but another ride that did not suck. Back at camp Ho had cleaned up the RV, did laundry, and had the baked potatoes ready for the rest of the steak meal we were gonna cook.

Friday and Saturday

Well Friday was the last ride for Scott and Rick, they needed to take off by 7am the next morning so the plan was to hit something close then get back and take down the swamp and they would just use the two cots in the garage area of the camper Friday nite. They wanted to do the Cassidy trail again so we did an out n back on it to Casto canyon, turned out to be a great ride although by the time we were done, so were they.

Saturday morning we packed up the RV and headed for Fruita CO, just across the boarder with Ho as the remaining survivor. The ride was quite nice, just up a river valley to I-70 then a surprisingly scenic ride across, not as flat as I had anticipated but not bad at all. 5 hours later and a couple of extra pit stops due to Ho’s tiny bladder, we were pulling into the Monument RV park. Howie got us another pull through site so no issues in getting the RV placed. We got hooked up including cable TV this time and off we went to the Bookcliffs aka 18 road area to ride. This was actually the first or second ride I did on my first western trip with Howie 7 years ago and was really looking forward to the return. We got out there about 4pm, still 93 degrees out. There were a few other silly people out riding in that heat but not many, especially for a Saturday. We headed up Prime cut towards the cliffs, a nice gentle climb in and out of a wash along 18 road. It started to get a little steeper as we reached Chutes and Ladders, think the game when you were a kid, up and down and up and down. Really fun tight twisty stuff with a few ups steeper than our tired eastern legs could muster but what’s a ride without at least a little hike a bike. A fun blast across the desert with a stop for pictures, the lighting was really sweet that late in the afternoon/evening

And we were back at the parking lot ready to make our next ascent to the cliffs. We did a similar climb up the other side of 18 road to frontside. I had a recollection of a really cool spot where you are in and out of these spines without much of a vista for a while and the all of a sudden you come around one corner on a bench cut and things just totally open up and I remember coming to a stop with an audible WOW. Im pretty sure I found the spot of 7 years of doing this has spoiled me and it was not quite as impressive as I remember, but still pretty darn cool. We were keeping and eye on some rain in the distance

And modified our plan a bit incase it made it too us, skipping Joes Ridge for the moment after doing our out n back to Western Zippity and just heading down Zippty Do Dah. This is one trail that anybody that rides it will never forget, it starts down one of these spines, I would say 45 degrees on each side, maybe 100 feet to the desert floor. At the end of the first spine you make a 90 degree turn and head straight down. I actually got a series of pictures of Howie wrecking on it last time but to his credit, after I successfully made it down, he conquered it this time. Down and up another spine with another 90 degreeish turn into the downhill, this time both Ho and Howie bailed, it was a little more tricky as the turn was more into the downhill, hard to describe but I got a little worried as I went through it but once I got her pointed straight downhill I knew I was home free. It had cooled down a bit by that point, about 7pm, some clouds etc. We were pretty much done by the time that put us back at the parking lot so we headed into town for what turned out to be pretty sub standard Mexican but we were really hungry so it was OK. A quick walk through “downtown” made us realize there was no ice cream store to be had so we ended up stopping at the grocery store for Bryers.

All About Bernie

Today was all about Bernie. Since Pooh Bear left we have been shifting around who “its all about.” Basically that means that we don’t let that person do much around camp like dishes etc and offer to get him drinks, clean his bike etc, then do our best to make him feel guilty about all the attention. The other part of it is we saddle that person with any on trail route decisions such if to do a certain out and back or which trail to take if they go to the same place. The first decision Bernie recused himself from the decision, didn’t really have a reason but he’s a judge so we let it go.

Anyways, the ride was to be a downhill shuttle from Brian Head to the bottom of Bunker Creek. Everybody shuttles it but Howie is always looking for ways around shuttles. He checked out the grades then made his pitch to the boys to try and convince them but to no avail. So off we went and dropped three of us off with all the bikes at 11000 feet and went to drop off the van and the Beast then returned in Bernie’s car. As written its about 13 miles or something with a total of about 300 feet of climbing. Only this crew could turn that into over 20 miles and over 2500 feet of climbing. It started at the first intersection, about a mile down the singletrack. We wrongly assumed that if we went on the written trail it was all downhill back to the vehicles and we would be done in about an hour. So first decision, the one I mentioned earlier, to do an out and back down this other trail or not. The consensus was to do it so up a tiny bit then down about 700 feet over a mile and half. The trail was nothing special, pretty loose, some ruts, a couple meadows but no views to speak of. I managed to poke a hole in the rear Nevegal, no big surprise and it was too big for the bubbling stan’s sealant to plug so I had to put in a tube. Bernie was out front as it was all about Bernie and I let him go down a steep little bit at the very end while I stopped, so he had to walk back up it as we all decided that was a good turning back point. Back on the trail as written we ebbed and flowed up and down some minor grades as we followed the ridge, culminating in a magnificent view of an alpine lake and valleys all around.

We continued along the ridge catching the tops of a couple meadow drainages before hitting the trailhead for the left and right branch of the Bunker Creek. It was a little strange since we were at the top and they name the branches as the come together, the trail for the left branch was on our right and vice versa. So the left branch was supposed to be more technical so that’s the one we let Bernie choose, because I think you all know by now, its all about Bernie today. It was a really nice downhill hill, about 3 miles and losing 1500 feet. We got the bottom where we had a few miles of dirt road back to the vehicles. We all had some legs left and we let Bernie decide that we should head back up the right branch, which was now on our right. The plan was to go up as far as we were comfortable with and then head back down.

The grade really wasn’t bad and after only a few short hike a bike sections and 1500 feet of climbing we found ourselves at the intersection we had left about an hour or so ago. After a quick bite to eat we turned the bikes around and headed back down the right fork which was on our left at this point. It was a great downhill, smoother than the first but definitely a challenge. We hit the dirt road out, Bernie in front, you know the drill, and he came around a blind corner and almost ran into a bunch of grazing cows in the middle of the road. HO got see some of it, or at least the aftermath of the cows scattering. The road back was actually a lot of fun with a decent downhill grade so we didn’t have to work hard, some woop de do’s to catch some air on and few puddles to negotiate.

Back in town we stopped at some BBQ place in town, the Cowboy Smoke house or something, recommended by somebody at the gas station the first nite we were in town. It was pretty good, not Clem’s but what is. Seems like a quite nite here at camp, Bernie just bailed back to his hotel room, howie’s about asleep, the conversation not near as lively as last night for sure.

sorry about no posts

The internet connection here is awful and I have not been able to get any pictures uploaded so keep checking back and hopefully ill get a solid connection one of these days

Gooseberry Mesa

Howie and I had done this ride about a year and half ago when we were in St George and knew that this ride lived up to its hype and really thought the other guys should get a chance to ride it. It was a pretty long ride to get there, about 2.5 hours but part of that drive was through Zion National Park, slow but worth it for the amazing views. We also found out a negative about driving a dually, there is a narrow tunnel in the park so they make any "oversized" vehicle pay an extra $15 because the rangers have to stop traffic and turn the tunnel into a one way for a mile and half. The kicker is they have so many "oversized" vehicles, they are pretty much stopping traffic all day long, but what the heck. Howie and I had approached the trailhead from the other side last time so we were not sure how the first 6 miles on dirt road were gonna go. The Beast had no problem but it was a credit to Scott's driving that he was able to get the rental minivan up through the crummy dirt road. The GPS came in handy figuring out which right to take out to the trailhead off the "main" dirt road since there was no sign at this point, so another 3 miles of fun and we got on the bikes for the last mile of really bad road to the trailhead. We headed out on the southrim trail through a mix of sandy dirt trail and white dots painted on slickrock, large masses of more or less sandstone. The name slickrock is a misnomer as your tires really stick to it like glue allowing for you to go up some seemingly impossible short steep sections. I am however afraid to look at my poor Nevegals as they wear quickly on dirt and I can't imagine what this stuff was doing to them.


Here's Ho on top of some of the slickrock formation with the Zion in the background. We continued like this for a few miles, not gaining anything in overall altitude but all the short ups really start to add up. There is also almost no shade and the sun beat on us pretty much all day. It wasn't too hot by Gooseberry standards, high 80's to low 90's but still hot.



We ran into a couple cuties, locals from down in St George, so we stopped to chat with them for a bit.

After about 4 miles you hit the first of the rim view points, a southern view that includes highway 59 and the town of Huricane down in the distance.

After another mile or so you make it out to the point with at least a 270 degree view including the one below
The ride out to the point was an out and back then after a bit of memory searching howie and I remembered that we took a degraded gravel road for a little bit then picked up the Yellow trail, a bit more technical than the first section, but similar slickrock. We crossed back over the road and caught the northrim trail


We could see the storm clouds starting to form in the mountains and began to get a little worried as the access roads turns to muddy impassible soup when they get much rain. We cut the ride a little short taking the most direct route back to the vehicles, but still a great ride. We were hustling to get things packed up and on the road when up drove two pretty clueless chicks drive up in a sporty little car, not sure how they made it back that far, but Craig had to go over and start chatting them up and then was a little upset when we were all ready to go, yelling at him to get a move on, and nobody had put his bike in the van. They took our suggestion and headed out too. We took the shorter, easier route back to pavement crossing our fingers the light rain didnt get any harder before we reached pavement. All went well and the route out left us with a longer mileage distance and no views of Zion, but it was the safest choice.

sorry for the day delay on the blog but we were having internet connection issues last evening. Our first "real" ride down south was a concoction of a couple of rides from the guide books. It was in the red canyon area, near Bryce Canyon, similar red rock formations. These are also the canyons that Butch Cassidy and his gang were supposed to have hid out in between train robberies in the wild west. It is an amazing landscape, totally different than anything we have ridden in before. The trail tred was from hard packed to sandy, lots of shorter ups and downs. The whole ride was between 7200 and 8000 feet but it was some where in the neighborhood of 2500 feet of climbing. The first part of the ride was more or less up Cassidy trail to Losse Canyon trail. There was a nice view point of the canyon from above before we actually rode down though it. there was bit of gravel road from the base of Lossee to the base of Castro then up the ATV trail through Castro. The track was nothing exciting, basically a loose double track along the wash at the base of the canyon, then down through it, then back on the other side. We passed a few groups of ATV's going the other way but they were quite curious, no issues at alls. The ATV trail went the left and the single track headed up the canyon to the right which we took then bending around eventually hooking back up at the top of Lossee canyon. They built a more technical trail that sort of criss crossed the cassidy trail back which we took, alot of fun. Back to the car was about 24 miles, and being out in the sun for 5 hours really took it out of us.
We rode Gooseberry mesa today, but i dont have the pictures on the computer yet, so that will have to wait till tomorrow.

A Western Trip First

Well first an update from yesterday, the Harrisburg boys got in as well as Ho. They only had one day in Park City so we decided to show them the two best trails we had ridden, the Wasatch Crest and the mid mountain. In order to do that we took them on the ride Pooh bear and I did earlier, 29 miles, 4400 feet of climbing. They all did OK but all but andy and mike were sucking wind pretty good, Craig asked a couple times if we were trying to kill him. Andy even managed to ride, dabing once, a hike-a-bike we had surmised on earlier rides was unridable. The excellent track and amazing views were greatly appreciated by all.

We packed up this morning, the first time we really packed up the RV after having “lived” in it. It actually went pretty well, we left within a half hour of when we had planned to. I was a little apprehensive about the drive as we had to head down through Provo Canyon, a ride we had done a few time in just the truck. The curves and bumps due to construction were the issue. But luckily we got behind a big dump truck that was going even slower than I really wanted to and with all the weight on the truck, the bumps really were not bad at all. A few hours later down I-15 and we faced the next challenge, pulling the RV over the mountains on Utah 20 to route 89, our first chance to go over the mountains on a non-interstate road. Again it went much better than I had expected, the Tow Haul mode of the Beast which kicks in engine braking worked extremely well.



We found the “Hitchin’ Post” RV park pretty easily, just on the edge of the thriving metropolis of Panguitch. Its really not much to look at, but we got the RV in pretty easily and hooked up and there was nice spot to set up the “Swamp” tent for the Harrisburg guys. We had a less than stellar dinner at the local café and then headed out towards Powell point for sunset.

It was the first time we set out on a ride that we purposely knew we would be heading back to the vehicle in the dark. Howie and I both brought our night riding lights and most of the ride back was on gravel road so no big deal. We got there a bit past what would probably have been prime photography time, but the sunset was pretty amazing with about a 300 degree view. When we got back to the truck, we could see a wildfire down in the valley burning, pretty amazing as well. By the time we got back to town it was after 10 and everything but one gas station/ mini mart sorta place. We picked up a couple of candy bars and some bread. We had some smoked tuna in packets in the RV so we made up some tuna fish salad on toast with cheese

South Skyline trail

Well we finally headed up to the Ogden area to ride one of the skyline trails. We headed down to Salt Lake City, then up I15 to Ogden, then up Ogden Canyon to Pineview Reservoir. I was still feeling the effects of yesterday's ride, more mental than physical but my legs were less than fresh as well. I quickly found myself breaking our first rule of riding with our group, no whining, so I shut up and got ready for the ride. We had the route downloaded on the gps from a website so at least route finding should be easy. We found the start of the trail, a silly steep 30 yards or so, not a good omen. But the grade quickly leveled out to a more reasonable pitch that I could keep a good spin going at 1-3 or so. The two miles covered 800 feet, more than reasonable as we have determined over our trips that a grade of about 500 feet per mile is about all that we want to climb on a sustained basis. For those of you that ride Rothrock, thats about the over all pitch of lower Sassafrass but throw in the elevation and its tough. I found myself needing to stop at that point and eat a bar. Another mile of slightly more pitch and we were at the first big overview of the Ogden valley, like a "agrarian quilt." We had about a half mile of up and down then the sustained climb started again, topping out at 8000 feet, 3000 feet higher than when we started. We had the opportunity to take a 2 mile out and back to Lewis Peak, about 200 more feet of climbing, but Pooh was "finished with climbing" so we passed, because it is All About Pooh around here. There was also a minor issue about timing as we need to pick up Ho at the airport at about 7. We had slight climb to the final peak before we headed down. The first section was down along the ridge, nice views but a rather loose tread. From there it got steeper and stayed loose. There were some opportunities to catch some air over roots but without any knowledge of the trail and what the landings might be, I took them rather conservatively. We also ran into a couple of hikers on their way up and soon realized why as there was a major trail head parking at the end of the section. We felt a little jiped as we didnt seem to get enough downhill for all the stinkin climbing we did. From that trail head we headed down an old double track that was probably more single than double. Pooh was first down, stopped at one point and yelled back at me something unintelligible so I slowed down a bit and quickly realized he was trying to warn me about a dead deer laying right across the trail, YUCK! We got howie stopped in time and around it. Some more double track some of which was quite rutted then we hit pavement. A couple miles on pavement and found the pineview res. trail. It was sort of an overgrown rail trail with some wide bridges that ran around the edge of the water back towards the trail head, nothing to write home about about but better than the alternative major highway. It put us back on the highway at one point and Pooh decided to just ride pavement back while howie and I took the mowed path that kind of continued around the water. It ran us into a boat launch area about a half mile from the the truck and we took a look for its continuation across the parking lot. We found two trails and took the better looking of the two but that just took us down to the water. The reservoir was kind of low so we decided to just ride the edge which seemed reasonably firm around to the truck. At one point near the end, we found out later that Pooh was able to see us, we had to hike a little bit as the water went around a little point. Pooh apparently found great humor in this and got some strange looks from others in the lot as, apparently, he was about crying he was laughing so hard. We had run out of recovery drink mix after yesterday so all we had was cokes. It was about 4 or so and we were starving so we stopped at some Italian fast food place in Ogden on our way back to the interstate and had a "snack" of pizza. We were in good shape to hit the Radio Shack, I need some pieces parts for the video camera set up, and then make it to the airport by 7 to pick up Ho. That was before we hit the back up due to a lane closure. We got a call from Ho that he was on the ground and we let him know we would be a bit late. We got up to the next exit and decided to take surface roads around for a bit and between my maps and Pooh's gps we got around and back to the interstate before the exit for the airport. We found Ho pretty easily but were tempted to see if any of the nice looking ladies needed a ride instead. Back on the road, we stopped at Radio Shack, english was not the first sales guys primary language, he was watching soccer on the dish. I found what I need on my own and got outta there pretty quickly. Back on the interstate headed for camp, we decided to hit the mexican place for dinner then a quick stop at the grocery for breakfast stuff and back to show Ho his home away from home for the next little bit. We got ahold of the folks from Harrisburg and set a time for breakfast in the morning.

Mt Baldy Etc

Well todays ride was written up in two different guide books/ websites and was pretty close to home so we decided to do it. The ride started from Jeremy Ranch, just across I-80 from Park City. We headed down the East Canyon road through cattle grazing territory for about 4 miles to the trail head for the Mormon Pioneer trail. This was part of the route the original mormons took when they came to the Salt Lake City area. It was quite a nice trail, about 4 miles, 1400 feet of climbing up a dry creek bed. The trail surface for the most part was hardpacked. There was a nice ladder ramp over a 2 foot deadfall and an alternate log ride line that we didnt take about half way up. Pooh bear stopped and said he saw a couple moose that move off into the brush. I started to chalk it up to hallucinations again but as we stood there and watched this downed tree he insisted was one of the moose, it moved. We saw his tail and ears move, then finally got a good view of her head and did confirm it was moose, very cool. We hit the intersection of the Great Western Trail and made a bit of a navigational miscue. There was a giant sign for the Great Western Trail Head right next to a nice single track so we assumed that was the trail we wanted. The guide book's elevation profile showed it as a climb out of this intersection but this went down, so after about a mile and 400 feet of decent, we stopped and realized we screwed up. So back up we went, bonus mileage we call it. We found the right trailhead blocked by a couple of phone service trucks up a short gravel road. So up we went. Pooh bear had the climbing legs and I think cleaned the 400 foot climb. Howie road a fair amount of it and walked more than I rode. We got to the top and it was quite a spectacular view although there was a fair amount of haze in the distance towards Salt Lake. After a stop for the required pictures we headed down towards our next climb, down 400 feet then back up 400. We had a few fits and starts of climbs that didn't materialize but we finally got to it. The guide book said this would be a hike-a-bike and it was. The trail was very rutted down the middle and very steep. If anybody had legs of steel they were still screwed as any ridable areas were full of baby head sized rocks. We walked up about 300 of the feet then hit a ridable section then a last push up to Mt Baldy. As you might surmise, it was free of any trees or for that mater shrubs. It provided a 360 degree vista, pretty spectacular. We had a fairly loose decent before another bit of climbing. Up and down and across bench cuts we went on a fairly loose trail. We had a bit of discussion at one of the trail intersections, but ended up making the correct choice. We arrived at the final decent, a bit of double track then some switch backing single track and benchcut run above the Jeremy Ranch development and back at the truck, 5 hours, 21 miles and 4000 feet of climbing later.

Return to Bench Creek

Well first, apologizes for no pictures. I arrived back at the bench creek trailhead after being turned away by weather last time, but with a new partner for the ride. After the epic yesterday, howie decided to give his back a rest, it was not bothering him but he did not want to push it. Pooh and I did the few mile paved road section to the dirt trailhead without issue. We headed up along Bench Creek, staring out as a nice buff single track. As the ride description told us, we ran into a number of relatively short technical ups in between the the buff sections on our way up the canyon. Pooh tried and made more of them than myself but still had to walk a bit. It was a fairly constant grade up, more or less middle ring near the upper end of the cassette. After about 5 miles and 1500 feet or so of climbing we hit the reroute the forest service put in a few years ago to keep the trail off of private ground. It was quite steep, I walked the majority of it but Pooh valiantly rode a good portion. at the top we crossed over a dirt road then onto the intersection with Camp Hollow trail. Down we went through a few meadows then along the creek, lots of fun. We hit a short up, we both were struggling a bit with it when I said something and he was glad I did because he thought it was just him. Still cant figure it out, it didnt seem too steep. After that we had a bit more down and we were at the intersection with the Little south fork that we had come down a couple times previously, but no sheep dogs. I forgot that David's mud puddle was coming up and Pooh saw it too late, he got slowed down enough to keep from going over the bars like David, but sunk his wheels and one foot in deep to the point he had a heck of a time pulling them out. The rest of the trip down was pretty uneventful, a few of the rocky sections caught him off guard but all in all a great ride. We hit Agony hill and Pooh cleaned it, I slid out on a rock about 20 yards from the top of the steep section, but continued to ride it up. A rocky downhill and some jeep trail and we were back at the truck. It took us about 3 hours to do the 17.5 miles and 2600 feet of climbing. It felt a little wimpy but 10.5 hours over 2 days riding isnt too bad.
Back at camp, howie had done laundry and we headed first to the hardware store then to the grocery store as Pooh went fishing. Joanne happened to call howie as we were checking out at the hardware store, he mentioned where he was and she got scared until he told her he was there with me. BBQ chicken and burgers were on the menu for the next couple nites. Pooh made it back claiming to have caught a few more but again with no proof what so ever. Currently we are watching the last of the Family Guy first season DVD's I brought along. We still havent figured out what we are gonna ride tomorrow but will tomorrow morning.

The Epic

Well the term epic ride is thrown around alot, means different things to different people, but 7.5 hours in the woods counts as one for us. We concocted the ride plan last night, combining the two rides our new best friend at the bike shop showed us on the map even though he said we shouldn't try to do that. We headed down Provo Canyon in the Beast, took a right up past Sundance then another right on the first paved road and proceed to look for this parking area we were told about. After a couple mistaken stops, we found our spot, which I quickly proceed to mark on the GPS with a Waypoint in case things got ugly later. We quite easily found the first trail, not on the map originally but drawn in by our buddy. We got passed my a couple throttle twisters, motorcycles are allowed on most of the single track in this area, but the trail was in remarkably good shape for having them on it. The first climb was not bad at all, a couple miles, not quite 1000 feet, a couple checks of the map and were were in good shape. We found the Ridge trail and headed out along that, running into another group of mountain bikers at a really sweet vista

We headed across the ridge trail for a bit more then down Mud Springs trail, a fun downhill, loosing about 2000 feet. Parts of it were nice mellow downhills and parts were steeper, somewhat rutted and washed out from the moto's but all in all not bad at all and alot of fun. We ran into a couple more moto's on their way up, no big deal then caught up with a couple of horses, a dad and son. The first time Pooh saw them, dad was drinking a beer, the second time we caught them, after waihting a bit since they did not want to let us get by, dad was getting another beer outta the saddle bag. The trail finally widened enough that we could get around them and down to the creek at the bottom of the trail in the American Fork Canyon. This was where we started up the gravel road to the next half of the adventure. Other than the fact that this road seemed like an interstate for ATV's it was not a bad ride, middle ring climb for about 6 miles up a pretty canyon. We also saw a few jeeps, a few rock crawlers, and some pickups on the way up, and one stock grand cherokee with a couple of women in it that I think were in over their head. We caught up with a local on a mountain bike going for a geocache that steered us up the right road since it was not labeled the same as on our map. That ended the casual climb. I figured out what the rock crawlers were up there doing at that point. We passed a pretty well equipped Jeep, I would say 4" lift or so, 35" tires, heading up and even though we were in granny gear, we left them in our dust. Not quite Amasa Back, but a heck of a challenge in a four wheeled vehicle. Anyways, we went up this, riding the majority but walking some for a couple of miles and over 1000 feet of vertical. We finally hit the holy grail of trails, Trail 157 at about 8900 feet. We thought we would be all set at this point but obviously didn't check the contours on the map very well. Im not sure how long we hiked, but it was steep hike a bike and we picked up another 600 feet of vertical before it got ridable again.


This is where we were supposed to pick up the trail according to our buddy at the bike shop. The views were superb and we climbed a bit more but it was mostly ridable, amazing bench cut trail on both side of the ridge. At this point we were a good 4.5 hours into the ride, but just about 20 miles. The trail 157 rode quite nicely for the most part for the next few miles, there was pretty loose downhill section but ridable. We made it to the point where our buddy would have had us heading down off the ridge trail on Pot Hollow trail, but we need to continue on the Ridge trail to get back to the truck. I have not looked at the ride elevation profile yet, but we did a bunch of up and down, some ridable, some not over the next few miles. Darkness was starting to become a concern but we finally seemed to top out and from what I could see on the GPS and map it was mostly down hill back to the vehicle.


We came through the low point in the picture above, about 9200 feet. If you click on it and look at it in a bigger frame, you can see another singletrack heading the other way around this bowl.



We were starting to feel confident that we were gonna make it back to the truck before dark so we waited up for howie to take a few pictures at this point. We had one more small navigational SNAFU starting down a trail that we thought might be correct but figured out it was wrong so back up we went and down (and a little up) the right trail till we hit the correct downhill back to the truck. It was "only" 27 miles but a long day in the woods. The one climb was 3000 feet itself so Im sure the total climb was well over 5000 feet but have not checked out the elevation profile yet, Pooh bear forgot to bring his GPS that tracks total elevation gain. Since we didnt have anything for dinner at the camper, we hit the mexican restaurant in Heber city, luckily it was open on a Sunday nite.

The ride that almost was

Well we woke to the pitter patter or rain drops on the camper roof. I checked the radar and didnt seem like it had rained too much and it looked like it didnt rain to the east at all. So we kinda hung out, howie made pancakes with unsolicited input by pooh bear, as we waited to see what was gonna happen and let things dry out a bit. Pooh managed to fix up howie's brakes, big kudos there. Since it had not rained to the east and nothing was showing up on the radar we decided to do the Bench Creek trail ride. Pooh Bear made the right choice and just went fishing on the Provo river, right across the street from the campground, supposedly world class trout fishing. He got all dressed up, looked like a model straight out of the Cabelas or Orvis catalog. Howie and took the 20 minute drive or so, got parked and headed down the road toward the trailhead. The weather was not looking healthy on the horizon but we kept going. Lack of any kind of signage for the road up to the trailhead cost a couple miles of paved road but we made our way back and up to where the single track took off up the creek valley. At that point it was looking REALLY ugly up on the ridge that we were heading to. We waited a couple minutes to see how things were blowing but it started raining and everything that was blowing over the ridge was still really ugly so for only the second time in all our trips, we let the weather keep us off the dirt. It started raining a bit more on the road ride back and thunder was echoing around the valley big time. We got everything packed up in the truck and by the time we were a mile back down the road it was POURING cats and dogs, wind howling, we made the right decision. Instead of heading back to camp we decided to explore some of the area that our new friend from the bike shop told us about yesterday. Although we didnt have the detailed map, we had the GPS and the Utah state atlas so up we went from Midway. It was a bit of a crap shoot to start but turns out we headed up the right road. It quickly turned to dirt, but a nice dirt road, at least as good as those in Rothrock. Right after I commented (and jinxed us) on that fact they turned less than passenger vehicle passable. The Big Tire Jeep would have made things a little less nerve wracking at points, but the Beast, captained by Howie, ended up doing just fine
We were passed by a handful of throttle twisting dirt bikers and a couple of jeeps while we were parked taking pictures.
An educated guess at a four way intersection, some more rough dirt road and we finally made it back onto pavement headed towards the Sundance ski area. We saw some some really sweet single track trailheads that we plan to hit tomorrow. Up until just this moment we had Pooh believing that we did some monster 50 mile plus gravel road ride on the bikes. He just started to catch on, and is not sure what to believe at this point. Anyways, we arrived back at camp just after Pooh got back from fishing. He claims to have caught a bunch but had nothing to show for it. We threw the hot italian sausage on the grill and howie made up another batch of potatoes. The Def Lepord CD that we have been listening to EVERY night during meal prep finally seems to have bit the dust so I managed to make my Ipod broadcaster work with the trailer's sound system so we have some new music in the camper tonight.

Flying Dog

Well the weather once again scared us out of the hour and half drive upto Ogden to do the Skyline trail so we hit a high desert ride just across I-80 from Park City. The loop is named the Flying Dog, not sure why, but pretty cool name. It actually incorporated some of the "stolen ride" howie and I did on the Glenwild loop a week or so ago. It started at the back of a nice golf community and rose rather quickly at first but then mellowed to a more reasonable grade after a mile or so. This is a shot about half way up the first climb at what we would be riding in.



The first climb was about 1200 feet, more than I had realized prior to starting but all in all not a bad start.


You can see in this second picture that its raining off to the east. We ended up getting sprinkled on a bit on the way up, but nothing serious. The way back down was alot of fun, good stretches of flowing slightly twisting track between switchbacks. It was also Pooh bear's first time on video. I was starting to notice that the previous day's ride had taken more of toll on my upper body than on my legs. No big deal, just felt the triceps a little more than Im used to. We met up with the far point of the ride that howie and I did previously and headed around Cobblestone trail. Howie developed some awful noise that seemed to emanate from his brakes so we stopped to check that out. His rear brake pads were about shot so we tried to change them but due to some technical reasons, we couldn't get them in but got the brakes working well enough. We got down to a decision point, either head right the way the ride description went and climb up similar terrain that we had earlier or go left and do more open desert riding. We decided to go left and have some fun there. We worked our way around the ridge and stayed high instead of heading down to the trailhead from our previous ride. More up and down bench cut riding on the face of ridge until we finally met back up with the trail we originally came in on. Down the the mile and half we churned up and we were back at the Beast. 19 miles and 2800 feet of climbing.
We made a quick stop at the grocery store and then to the bike shop as howie was having some issues with his rear wheel. We met up with a local that started telling us about some epic ride areas, so out came the map, highliters and a pen to mark arrows. I was having flashbacks to our trip to Sun Valley ID when we had a similar conversation at the Elephant Perch Bike shop and then did the death march that was the Boundary Creek ride that took over 7 hours. Well howie found some of what this guy was talking about on his spread sheet of rides so it doesnt sound too ridiculous, but time will tell as we are probably heading up that way tomorrow.