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.
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.
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