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.

The Longest Ride Yet

Well initially we were going to make the drive up to the Ogden area and do the Skyline South trail today but Howie's back was not quite up to snuff so he decided he needed to give it a rest today. Rather than make the 1.5 hour drive up there without him, Pooh and I decided to stay in Park City. I had crafted a plan for a ride on one of the long climbs yesterday, trying to put together the Wasatch Crest trail and the Mid Mountain trail and after looking at the map, it seemed reasonable. Pooh asked how long the ride would be and I guessed at 30 miles. So off we went to The Canyons to repeat the start of the climb we did yesterday. On the way up we saw some sort of grouse, they dont seem to like to fly and are not too bothered by people so we were able to get Pooh's camera out and snap a picture

After the first 1200 feet rather than heading down the mid mountain to the right like yesterday, we headed left toward the ridge connector. We ran into a couple equestrians letting their horses graze for a bit as we reached the Wasatch crest trail and chatted with them or a few minutes. We continued the climb on the Crest finally topping out about 9400 feet, about 2500 feet higher than we started and about an hour and half later. I got to take in the sights a little more on this ride as I was not carrying the video camera so I didnt have to try and keep up with whoever was in front of me. We passed the point that we had turned around at when we did the Crest trail with the boys last week and headed down a dirt road to parts unknown.


I was able to pick up the track from the last time we had done the mid mountain trail on my GPS so at least we sort of had a heading to shoot for and the map seemed pretty accurate. We turned off the main road onto a very degraded jeep trail and found the Shadow Lake trail right where the map said it would be. Once we reached Shadow lake, really more of a smelly pond, I trusted my memory of which way we needed to head and cost us a little bonus millage and climb, but I figured out I had screwed up pretty quickly. So back down the road, past Shadow Lake again then picked up the Comstock trail. It passed by a couple of old falling down mining operations before it intersected with the Powerline trail which took us down to the Mid Mountain trail and back towards The Canyons. We passed a couple riders that then caught up to us when we took a little break and turns out they were from Philly, out here on vacation as well. During the last mile or so of the mid mountain trail it started to sprinkle on us but not even enough to really settle the dust on the trail. It sprinkled again a bit on our decent down Holly's down, but again not enough to really even get us wet. I almost never go through my whole camel bak of water, but I kicked it as we crested the last little rise over which you see the ski resort's buildings, very good timing. 29 miles and change, all but about 3 miles of it single track and about 4400 vertical feet of climbing later we were back at the truck. It was a great ride, but we were both glad it was done, really the first time this trip that I really felt "done" after a ride. A quick stop at the grocery and the bike shop, Pooh Bear now needed a new front derailer and we headed back to camp. We had thawed brats for dinner and howie grilled them up for us. I think Pooh maybe heading across the road to do some fishing this evening, but not sure.

Pooh Bear's First ride

Well Pooh Bear, aka Dave Pontzer, made it in last evening and today was his first ride. He had his bike shipped out and arrive yesterday and even got it delivered right to our site. He went to put it together this morning, the only issue being that for some reason he complete removed his derailer when he packed his bike. Well he had recently replaced his shifters with sram x9's and had never replaced a cable on them before. The cable that was on the bike was frayed so he need to change it and after a brief search on the internet we determined that it was necessary to take the shifter pod apart to do this. The thing they dont tell you is you need to hold the bottom of the pod on or else everything kind of falls out, which happened here. We gave the bike shop a call and they said they would take a look at it. Unfortunately, despite White Pines's best efforts, all the kings men and all the kings horses could not put this humpty dumpty back together again. Pooh ended up putting a new shifter on and off we went. In the mean time some storm clouds formed up on the mountains complete with thunder and lightning. Luckily we were gonna ride a few mile down the ridge from there so off we went. It was Pooh's first ride at altitude so we decided to keep the rate of gain reasonable and left from The Canyons. I was able to stay in the middle chainring all the way up the climb to the mid mountain trail and Pooh Bear stayed right with me then took the lead on the second half so we didnt have to worry about him. We took a ride out the mid mountain and did an out and back

First some background on Dave's nickname. Dave is a tall guy, 6 foot 3 or so, and typical bike tops dont fit so well, and his shirts tended to ride up a bit and garnered the term "belly shirt." We also caught him on film licking the last smackerals of "fluff" out of the marshmellow fluff jar after making fluffer nutter sandwiches which reminded us of Pooh bear and the honey jar. Well Dave gave his "belly shirts" away but graced us with a view of his midriff today.
We headed up the ridge connector trail that goes from the mid mountain trail to the Wasatch Crest trail which we plan to use to for a long ride once the guys from Harrisburg make it in next weekend. All in all we did close to 20 miles an about 3000 feet of climbing.

We got back to camp, howie had grilled up the chicken last night that we never quite got around to cooking and eating, and had that on salads along with more of his world famous potatoes. tonights entertainment is the DVD "This is Spinal Tap" a classic that pooh bear had not seen.
I did the final cleaning of the bikes the boys and Paul were riding and "hung" them back up on the back wall of the garage for transport for the rest of the trip.
It also rained here at the campsite for the second day in a row, not nearly as hard as the day before, but enough to wet the towel I had left out to dry. And I found the bug spray this morning!! Pooh bear convinced me I should really change out my rear tire as it was not only worn big time but the bulge in the side wall was looking really ugly, so I put on the Nevegal that I had brought out for it. When I was looking around for the sealant, I managed to find the bug spray hiding right around the door from one of the under room storage areas. The Nevegal seemed to work just fine including a brief out of the saddle climb on some relatively loose tread, so I have my fingers crossed it continues to work well and holds up OK.

Day Off

Well no ride today since we have to take Paul and the boys to the airport and pick up Pooh Bear.
So I thought Id post a few pictures from the RV and truck showing some of Howie's cool ideas that have made traveling with all these bikes work really well.
But first, a couple of video clips of David and Alex wrecking, both were OK afterwards.
I havent figured out how to post the videos the proper way so you'll have to follow the link to Youtube

Davids mud puddle

Alex goes down




This is the back of the 5th wheel, this is actually a giant door that lowers to become a ramp into the garage area. Howie's idea was to hang the bike frames on this wall for traveling, as keeping them on the floor would take up a lot of real estate. I screwed three "D rings" into the ramp for each frame then secured them with wire ties, protecting the frame with rags. 4 frames fit quite nicely.


This is a picture looking at the side of the garage area from the side door. We used one of the boards with bike fork holders from the pick up truck bed system (next pictures) to hold the remaining two bikes and stored the tires on top of and behind the bunk bed cots which also store the large tent for "overflow visitors."





Here's a look at the back of The Beast when loaded with five bikes, gear for 5 guys, and a cooler for the post ride recovery drinks. Again, quite the idea from Howie, 3 of the fork holders were bolted to a board that runs along the tailgate and 2 on a board just on the cab side of the wheelwells. The next picture shows it better, but between the bikes and the cab, underneath the folded back cover, are three bins to transport shoes, helmets, and packs. Using a couple cable locks we are able to secure everything in the bed, bikes, wheels, and bins while we are in eating mexican on the way back from rides.





Here's a side view of the loaded Beast. We also have 4 trays that we can put on top of the cab if the need arises for carrying upto 4 more bikes in a shuttle situation. Other than finding suitable parking spots, the turning radius, and need to be extra careful on narrow roads, The Beast makes for one sweet mountain bike transport machine.

Blackhawk Revisited

Well last night was a late one, the boys were up on top of the RV watching a meteor shower so nobody got to bed till about 12:30 which made for a bit of a late start in the morning. That meant just oatmeal before we got things packed up and hit the road. The forcast was for slightly more unsettled weather with some moisture moving in, increasing the potential for afternoon thundershowers. The trailhead was about an hour and a half away so we ended up hitting the trail about 1:30.
By the time we got around to the eastern exposure, we could see storms building on the next ridge over but they did not seem to really be moving our way. The first five miles or so was a nice rolling trail, a little beat up by the cows but all in all a nice ride, 100% better than when Howie and I did it last week. We got to the campground where we bailed last time, took about 45 minutes vs about 2 hours before. We continued on until we hit the next exposed view. The storms looked worse and we could see quite a bit of lightning but by the difference in time hearing the thunder, we could tell it was a good ways off.
We continued on a nice exposed bench cut for a few miles, climbing a reasonable 500 feet or so as we kept an eye on the storm, but the trail was heading away from it. We got to a bailout point but since the weather really didnt seem to be moving our way we continued on the route as written.


At this point there was about a 1.5 mile climb on paved road with a nice overlook of Utah Lake then about a mile slightly downhill on a gravel road before we picked up a single track again. We had about 5 miles or so left and my mistaken assumption was that it was just a nice gradual downhill back towards The Beast. The first section was perfect except for a bit of dust, nice grade down, mostly buff single track running between aspens with a few rocks here and there to keep you on your toes. We came to a split in the trail which wasn't really matching up with the odometer readings in our ride description so we initially chose to go downhill. Luckily I downloaded the GPS track for the ride from a really sweet website and that told us pretty quickly we were not headed in the right direction. So back up we went, maybe 100 yards or so and back on the right trail. We hit the first of a few relatively short but steep uphills on our way back. I had made the mistake of not eating early enough in the ride, when I first started to feel hungry, then ate my whole fluffer nutter sandwich at once. This left me in a less than ideal "power situation" at least thats what Im blaming my less than stellar performance later in the ride on. The trail in between the ups including the last couple mile stretch back to the final short paved road climb were sweet, more nice twisty singletrack with just enough rocks to keep it interesting. There were a few cows along the way but no major issues. All in all about 17.5 mile and somewhere in the neighborhood of 2500 feet of climbing and we stayed dry. It was gonna be late by the time we got back so we stopped at the mexican place we ate at a few days ago, got the same table and same waitress, she even remembered us. We made the obligatory stop at Dairy Keen in Heber City on our way back to camp, I just got a small vanilla/orange swirl cone.
More than likely no blog update tomorrow, no ride as we have to take Paul and the boys to the airport about 2 and then pick up Pooh Bear around 6. But that does leave us plenty of time to go visit Camper World between visits to the airport.

The Best Ride Yet

We knew we had to get on the Wasatch Crest trail, part or the Great Western trail. It runs on top of the ridge between Park City and Salt Lake City, above where we had ridden the mid mountain trail previously. Theres a few different ways of doing it, most involve shuttles using two vehicles, so we needed to find a way to do it without. We took a drive down I-80 towards Salt Lake, a quick left on I-215 then up Mill reek Canyon to the Upper Headwater trail head. Our plan was to climb up to the trail then do an out and back to the far point, about 10 miles from where we started. The first mile was a ridiculous climb of about 700 feet that we had to walk a couple spots in. From there we met up with the Great Western trail which still climbed but at a much more reasonable pace. Another couple miles and we hit the intersection with the ridge connector trail that would take you down to the mid mountain trail. At this point we were basically on the ridge top with fantastic alternating views of Park City and the Salt Lake basin. The ribbon of single track went from meadow to wooded section and back, more up than down going out but still granting us a few fun downhill sections. The saddle points, the low sections in the ridge line could be quite windy as we passed through them. We reached the turn around point, Howie ate his fluffer nutter sandwich and back we went. What took about 3 hours or so to ride up took about an hour to get back. David and I rode down one of the "crazy hike a bike" sections we ran into going up, well we walked a few yards of it when I lead us on a bad line, it really wasnt as bad as we thought it was gonna be as we were going up it. David fell in love as we passed a really cute blond that seemed really nice after we thanked her for letting us pass, as she really had the right of way but she had already stopped. Another little sketchy downhill section and it was more or less excellent buff single track back to the trailhead. We took a slightly different route back down for the last mile or so, great trail, but being so close to the trailhead it was pretty much littered with people. I did get two comments on my Ohio State jersey, one from some chick that graduated from Michigan, she was less than complementary, but her hubby, and Ohio State grad (yea, he knows its wrong, but so far so good he says), was happy to see it. Near the end two really nice looking ladies were walking their dogs and one said she was from Ohio, went to Kent State and Ohio State on the weekends, similar to me.
Back at camp it was Howie's special spaghetti, I could put his secret ingredient here, but then he would kill me. The evening entertainment was watching the video from todays ride and we are now currently debating what to ride tomorrow.

8 wrecks, two sheep dogs, and a mud pit

Well we were out of eggs this morning so we suffered through with just oatmeal and fresh fruit for it. I got the bikes cleaned up and lubed, the truck loaded and off we went to the Little South Fork, the same ride Howie and I did as a “recovery ride” on Monday. The boys and I pacelined up the first 5 miles on the pavement, we probably weren’t going fast enough for it to make a big difference but every little bit helps. The boys even each took a turn pulling. Speaking of pace lines, David was drafting off me back to the truck yesterday and like a Tour sprinter took off past me with about 50 yards left and beat me to the truck, the little punk, lol. Anyways, the three of us waited in the shade for the old guys, perfect weather, high 70’s, low humidity, and just a few white clouds in the sky to keep things interesting. A couple more miles up the next gravel road and we regrouped for the final assault on the summit. Another hour later and we were at the top. Where there were just a few horses on Monday, the place was littered with sheep. And a couple of guard sheep dogs. It kind of made sense now, we saw a cowboy heading down the road with a horse and three boarder collies, he must have brought them up earlier. Unfortunately I think the dogs only understood Spanish and somehow asking them where the bathroom was or asking them nicely for a beer was not gonna help, as those are about the only two phrases I know in Spanish. These dogs seemed satisfied that we were not gonna hurt their sheep so we were able to get by without issue. Across the top of the mountain and to the downhill trailhead. David headed down first with me trying to keep up with him, videoing. We saw some kind of deer or antelope bounding across the meadow in front of us at about the same place howie and I saw the elk on Monday. Thankfully all the cattle that were there on Monday were gone so we were able to really fly through the meadows. We started heading down along the river, again I was having a heck of a time keeping up with David. I barely had him in sight as we where going through the section where a fire had gone through a number of years ago. I finally gave up and waited for then next guy to come through to film which happened to be Paul. He was riding like a champ right up until he didn’t quite make a corner and I caught him on film going down, no major damage luckily.
The next classic moment witnessed on camera was David going through a mud puddle that didn’t look too deep, right up until his front hub was about buried in it and he was going over the front of the bike. It was a nice soft slow speed landing, so again no damage done but man did I laugh. I agreed to split any money from funniest home video with him, it was that good. The next issue was more sheep, or should I say more sheep dogs guarding their flock. These dogs were much less happy to see us than the ones at the top of the mountain, one actually took a nip at the back of Alex’s seat. We got through that gauntlet and on to the last section of trail including that killer couple hundred feet climb at the end. A couple more minor spills not caught on tape and we were back at the Beast and headed back to camp.
Howie was having some minor issues with his outdoor modular cooking unit, we were not able to get much of a flame when all three burners were on but eventually the chicken got cooked and it was quite tasty along with more of his famous potatoes. Alex continues to amaze me with how much he can eat, he started with one of two left over burgers from a couple nights ago, then a breast and half of chicken, then a third one, incredible

The Naked Guy and the Ride

Today was a very strange day. It started normally enough, the boys slept in and Howie got breakfast started. We decided to head to the hot springs ride, up along diamond fork. It was a bit over an hour ride, down through Provo Canyon, through Provo then back up into the mountains, but rather low starting around 5600 feet. First issue, the bridge to the parking area that we were supposed to park in was being repaired. One of the workers said we could either go back a half mile and park but that was full or there was a pull off about a mile about. So we headed up the road. The road got rather narrow with a bunch of blind curves. Around one of the these came a HUGE truck. Im still not sure how we were able to pass, at least one of the dual rear tires on the outside had to of been hanging off the edge of the road and Im not sure how the front tire stayed on, it was definitely the scariest moment of the trip so far. We found the pull off and headed back down to the trailhead, about a mile down the road. We headed up Cottenwood creek toward the second water creek. It was definitely a different feel as we were riding at the bottom of a small canyon instead of on a mountain side or ridge line. It was more technical with a fair amount of rocks and few roots to negotiate. The first couple miles were pretty much right along the creek with a number of short steep ups. David managed to take the lead position about a mile in as I was in too easy a gear for one and spun out and David maneuvered by. It took another mile or so but he did the same thing, spinning out and this time I kept traction. It opened up into more of a valley meadow after few miles and smoothed out, a definite welcome respite for most of the crew. After about five miles of climbing and a couple cows we made it to the paved road that would take us over to the 5^th water creek and down to the hot springs. The boys chased a couple cows on the trail, well it was really more of a jeep road at that point. Things started to get technical with some interesting rock challenges and some rather exposed bench cuts along the creek. At one point we came around a bend and a HUGE bull was camped out perpendicular across the trail. And he really did not seem to want to move and was not spooked by us in the least. After a few minutes of yelling at him he finally sauntered off down to the creek. We continued the fun decent down to the hot springs, a few pools off to the side of the creek that were quite warm and smelled of sulfur. There was one guy there when we pulled up, he kinda hung out but didn’t get in for a few minutes then headed up the trail to a waterfall, leaving the pools all to us. It was quite nice and soothing to soak in them for a bit. We continued down the trail and that’s where things got weird. The guide book mentioned that the hot springs were clothing optional but that did not prepare us for the naked guy, yes I typed naked, walking up the trail, no clothes, no towel. I know plenty of mountain bikers have come across naked people in the woods, but all the stories that Ive heard, they have generally been in some sort of compromising position and were not planning on being discovered. This guy had at least about a mile walk to the hot springs and must have already walked up the trail about a mile. And we figure he had to have walked up the road from that other parking area as well. I actually had a minor wreck just after that as I was still a little stunned by what I saw. We finished up by following the sixth water creek back to the trailhead, about 16 miles over all, then up the mile of paved road to where we parked. The boys entertained us with more quotes from their comedy routines they have on their ipods, seemingly something for every situation. We stopped at a Mexican restaurant on the way home as it was gonna be too late to make dinner by the time we got home. Great food, plenty of it, and pretty darn cheep. We then made the obligatory stop for ice cream at Dairy Keen again in Heber city on the way through. The intersection that the ice cream place is on does not have stop light and is directly across from a large park that had some kind of festival going on. The strange part of this intersection is they have orange flags, kind of like the ones the cross guards used during elementary school, in holders on either side of the street. Apparently pedestrians are to use these to make sure the cars and trucks see them before they run them over. Well the boys found this amusing so they proceed to grab a couple each and skip across this major road. Maybe it was just that it had been such a strange day and this was such a strange view, but Howie, Paul, and I found it quite hilarious. The girls on the other side of the street however just looked at them like they were from outer space.

The Boys first ride

Well the morning started out with Howie finally getting to try out the griddle for is modular outdoor cooking center, he was pretty excited. He did eggs, we both had ours sort of scrambled with peppers, onions, and pepper relish, then on a bagel with cheese, most excellent. We decided to take them on a repeat of our first mid mountain trail ride above Park City. The boys did quite well on the first climb but I could tell when things were getting steep for them as their chatter dwindled to nothing. Paul also did quite well for his first real ride at altitude, although he was a bit happier once we reached the Mid Mountain trail and things flattened out a bit. Everyone was impressed with the views from up there. Alex had a minor crash when he lost his rear brakes at one point but was behind me so I didn't catch that on film. Paul had a minor falling over as I was taping them coming around a corner. Alex didn't want to disappoint me so he had quite the spectacular wreck just in front of me on the last downhill, Holly's down, with tape rolling. Even after a few views of it back here at the trailer, we're still not sure what happened but he was OK and it looked pretty cool on the tape.
Back at camp, Howie started dinner and Paul was pretty sure he had never eaten a burger bigger than these. And what dinner would be complete without Howie's potato wedges. After everybody got cleaned up we headed into Heber City for ice cream at Dairy Keen, no thats not a typo.

The crew arrives

Well first, sorry no pictures today. Howie's boy, David, his nephew Alex, and brother in law Paul arrived today for a weeks stay here at mobile central. I stayed back and got some work done and put the other's bikes together for a ride this afternoon while howie went to the airport to get them. Well the boys ended up taking a nap since they didnt actually go to bed last night and Howie and I took Paul out for a shorter "welcome to altitude" ride. Well this one actually was rather easy, about 9.5 miles and 1000 feet or so of climbing. It was on some trail just on the outside of Park City, as we had to navigate through one rather upscale neighborhood to connect up the trails. It was Paul's first time with real outwest switchbacks and he only went down once, no major carnage. We took a quick trip into Heber City to grab dinner, really good sandwiches at a local place, then over to the grocery store. We seemed to have been able to get everyone's stuff stowed away without issue.
A quick update on the bikes. Knock on wood, everything has been working pretty well. We had that one flat that was sealed up with Stan's pretty easily. I also found a splayed chain plate on his chain while lubing it one morning, but a quick link later and everything was OK. I knew that my brake pads were about finished even before we left state college, but I wanted to get a few rides out here on them. Well on Sunday they were really starting to make some strange noises so I pulled them monday morning. One of the fronts was just about on metal and the rear weren't much better so I changed them both out. Amazingly, changing out the front set actually fixed my rubbing issue, so now the only noise is from the rear suspension pivots. We'll have to see how long these organic pads last.
And I have manged to misplace the first item, my bug spray. I know I put it in a most logical place, but cant figure it out for the life of me.
Entertainment for tonight is listening to comedy central recordings the boys have on their ipods.

Recovery Ride

Well Howie decided that we should take it easy today, seeing as how we had ridden the previous five days and the last two rides were quite strenuous. After considering a few 9 or 10 mile routes, he settled on a 22 miler with an initial climb of 2500 feet, but "it is an easy grade." I was feeling good so I wasn't gonna argue, i was pretty sure I could handle it without too much of an issue. So we headed east in The Beast to the Little south fork of the provo river. The first five miles were on paved road, and if you have to ride pavement, this is the road to ride. It had a nice grade, hardly even noticed we gained 700 feet over the five miles, had a nice wide berm without alot of garbage on it, and the scenery up the canyon was great. Note to self, when you see gates that can close the road in the winter, you can assume that you are going to go UP. Anyways, we turned off on Mill Canyon road and took that another two miles, gravel this time but still not a bad grade, and beautiful scenery again. So the first 7 miles and 1200 feet took about an hour. Not exactly the start to a recovery ride, but what the heck. We turned onto another forest service "road" which was more of a beat double track that would take every inch of clearance the Big Tire Jeep has to get up it. But the bikes obviously had no problem and the grade wasnt too bad. Another 5 miles and 1300 feet later, we got to the single track heading down. The last bit across the top of the mountain had some spectacular views and it felt like we were on top of the world. It was the first time this trip we got over 9000 feet, actually topped out about 9700. After some pictures and bite to eat, we started down the 10 miles of downhill (with a slight up hill interruption close to the end) less than a mile into it we came out into a meadow and surprised a couple of elk that quickly took off. We then ran into about 100 head of cattle free range grazing, more than few less than happy to see us. There was a short steep section down towards the river tributary and we basically followed that the rest of the way down. It was definitely a great downhill, really nice track, although we did encounter our first bit of dusty trail. There were a number of meadows as well as stream crossings on the way down. After about 4.5 hours and 22 miles, including picture taking time, we were back at the Beast and decided this was definitely more than just a recovery ride.
It was only about 20 minutes back to the camper so that wasnt too bad. We got everything out of the Beast and quickly started dinner as we were both starved. We also started getting things moved out of the garage area into other parts of the trailer as Howie's son, nephew and brother in law are arriving for a week's stay tomorrow. Dinner was excellent as usual, bbq chicken, salad and more of howie's potato wedges.