Someday I Will Realize...

that riding through a foot of snow to get to work isn't as fun or romantic as it seems.  Seriously, it took me 45 minutes to ride the 7 miles to get to the trails.  Once I got there I found between 4-12" of soft snow on them.  The rest of the trip was 4 miles of hard peddling to average 3.4MPH.  Yup, that is about an hour and 20 minutes to ride 4 miles with a total commute time of over 2 hours.

Well That Was Ridiculous

Winter "wonder" land.  I wonder if this is fun.

I spend the whole ride wondering if I am crazy.  Who would do this on purpose anyway?

These trees make for slow going,

The front tire washes out for the 100th time and I'm walking up another hill.   By the time I get to work my bike weighs an extra 10 lbs and so do my clothes.

Abominable Snow Bike

Then I realize that I'm in the middle of nature.  I've seen some deer and eagles on my ride.  The only thing I am worrying about is how I'm going to maneuver the next rut or hill.  By 8:00 I've got more exercise than most people get in a week or possibly a month.   Maybe I'll never learn.  But I do think I will be looking for a ride home tonight.  I think I've had my fill for today.

Bike Zion

Well, not exactly.  There isn't any mountain biking allowed in Zion National Park but that's OK because there is some fine mountain biking just down the road in Virgin and Hurricane.  You might have heard of a little event held in Virgin Utah called Red Bull Rampage.  More on that later. But not much more.

Bikes and Canyons

We rented our bikes at Bike Zion.  I don't want to go to negative here but I have to be at least a little honest.  They claim to be "A Full Service Bike Shop" and we were just trying to get 2 functional bikes

• The first bike had a flat.
• The second bike had a shock pumped up so hard it was a hard tail.
• The third bike had a shock that took 3 seconds to rebound
• They couldn't find a spare tube right away
• They couldn't find a patch kit, I went behind the counter and found it for them.
• Nobody was available to adjust the bikes.
• I ended up with a bike with a pretty wobbly front wheel.

They let me use the one shock pump that they finally found and I got 2 bikes working for our trip.  The odd part was that nobody seemed concerned that half the bikes in the fleet were non-operational and they would just stay that way forever.  Anyway, not going too negative...The guys at the shop were all nice and helped work through the issues.  They let us pay for a 1/2 day rental and if we went over we would just pay the difference. They also turned my on to MTB Project which was a great way to find the trailhead and know if we were on the right trails all day.  I'd recommend the app for any mountain bikers.

And we're off

We found the trail head with no problems.  I had planned a route called Hurricane Rim Loop which was about 24 miles of riding and seemed good for the day.  I didn't realize that the rim trail was mostly technical rocky riding and 24 miles would be a LOT.  Add to that the rim nature of the trail.  My wife is not a fan of precipices and needed to walk by a lot of spots.  Actually, I'm not a fan of riding trails where a small bobble that would normally be nothing could easily send you to your death either...so we re-routed. 

Not the furthest drop if you make a mistake but still not good. The rim trails was a lot like this.

We found a trail map of the area that doesn't seem to exist anywhere but on the trail head so I'll post it here.

Plenty of Options

The riding away from the canyon was better.  We picked intermediate trails which were mostly easy with some technical spots.  The toughest sections had re-routes around the tricky spots for those who were not inclined  For the most part it was just a lot of good flowing riding.

Fast Fun Flowy Desert Trails

The one thing that you always get in Utah is a decent view.  Just 10 miles from Zion National park the scenery is totally different but still "Spectacular"

The View

We made our way to the opposite side of the plain and got back into the hills.  There was a little more rim riding over there but not quite as deadly.

This is as close to the edge as she got.

One of our favorite trails was Dead Ringer.  The name sounds more ominous that it is.  It was named after a dead cow that was found while building the trail with an old cowbell still around its neck.

More Cowbell

This whole trail system was great.  The trails were nicely built and well marked.  It may not be as epic as Moab but we had a good taste of riding in Utah.  We returned the bikes a few hours after our half day rental was over.  In this case the laid back attitude at the shop was on our side because they didn't charge any extra.  I don't think pot is legal in Utah but I think some residents may use it.

We ended up riding 20 miles around this trails system which was plenty to satisfy my mountain biking itch.  Did I mention I was sick.  That probably kept me from needing to do more.

Click It

That is a NO-GO on exploring the Rampage site.

We just happened to be in the exact spot for Red Bull Rampage on the exact day they were riding it but it was sold out well before we knew we would be there.  We were hoping the area would be open before the event so we could see practice runs and the like. Nope.