Mid Mountain South

Well we finally got the weather that we were expecting today, nice and sunny although a bit more humid than normal. We were not sure how fast the trails dry out so we gave a quick call to the bike shop and they said Mid Mountain would be good to go. So finally some high alpine single track with a good initial climb!! The first struggle was finding a parking place. Theres an arts fest thing going on downtown, similar to the one in State College so traffic and parking were all screwed up. It actually wasnt too bad parking but by the time we got back it took a little maneuvering to get the beast out after all the cars parked in around us. A helpful local pointed us in the right direction to find the Spiro trail head as we parked in one of the ski resort's parking lots. The climb started right away with a series of switchbacks through the wooded area between ski runs. We ran into a few hikers and a trailer runner or two on the 3 mile 1500 vertical feet climb that put us up at about 8200 feet. The trail started to level out near the end and I was able to get in the middle chain ring. We hit the Mid Mountain trail and started out across that. Being Saturday and a popular trail, we ran into a lot more bikers than we usually do on our rides but it was not an issue. The Mid Mountain was a gradual rolling down hill through Aspen groves, open sections, and across a few ski slopes. It dropped about 4oo feet over the next 5 miles or so, really fun smooth trail. We had a bit of a gradual climb over the next couple miles as we passed through some ski resort construction then came upon the top of a gondola that was ferrying passengers up. Another 1/2 mile or so and it was time to start heading down. It was great single track with a few switch backs that cut across the ski slopes and forested areas between them. About 3 miles of that and we where at the bottom of Canyons resort. They had a Jeep Mountain Bike competition going on, sort of a downhill BMX sort of course set up just below where we came out. At that point we had about 17 miles under our belts and were looking at about a 4 mile road/paved rail trail ride back to The Beast. Howie had bought this Cytomax Recovery protein mix and we had made up a couple of bottles of that and had them waiting in a cooler in the truck for us. We were both pretty hungry after the ride and thought about going to quizno's but after doing the recovery drinks, our hunger was satiated for the time being so we just hit up the grocery store as we were outta dinner type food. So dinner tonight is gonna be brats, more of howie's now world famous potato wedges, and a nice salad.