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.