Steep Salt Lake

I always get a kick out of how comically steep the riding in Salt Lake City is. Well, at least the riding I spent my ‘formative’ years on.

After driving across Wyoming, hitting Rawlins to check for GDR racers (Matt Lee rolled in 2 hours after we left), we left the house I grew up in to head for the mountains. The basic trail (Bonneville shoreline) is tame enough, but the options for climb challenges are many. With my knee questionable, I didn’t have any plans to hit the most classic of them all — hero hill. But somehow we ended up there anyway.

I kept it as easy as I could on the lower ‘canyon of death’ section, but when the grade steepens it always becomes a “do everything you can to keep moving” situation. And that situation is a good one to be in. Legs, good. Knee, good. Lungs, on fire!

Gasping for air, struggling just to keep your balance. Beautiful. Glorious. I managed to resist the temptation to “stall” in the one and only place you can (the gas line). It hurt; it hurt good. But I crested the hill without a dab. Another year, another clean ascent of the ‘hill.

My brother rides the final pitch on hero hill

More steepness the next day:

That’s “gut buster”, which has a cheat-bypass constructed around it. Before the bypass we always went this way, so we did just that today. It’s not too long, and not too hard, but enough for deep breaths of life.

We took the full tour of the shoreline trail (red butte to city creek), which is something I haven’t done for a while. My brother reminded me of another challenge, “The Intimidator.” I couldn’t stop laughing at the name, and how obsessed I was with cleaning it back in, what, 1998? We rolled up to it, and it lived up to its name — none of us gave it a try. May have been that it was grassed over and pretty much forgotten. It’s so steep at the top I really don’t know how I ever kept the traction and oxygen flowing long enough to clean it.

Next it was time to head into the Alpine. Mill-D -> Dog Lake -> Divide -> Desolation Loop. A classic Wasatch ride.

Bro and Dad push up the white spine

Managed to squeak out a clean ascent of the ‘white spine’, spare set of lungs on standby. Kinda reminds me of the widowmaker at the Lunch Loops. Not quite as steep, but at 9600′.

Desolation Lake

Mucho fun descending from the red spine back to Big Cottonwood. All pretty darn steep.

The ski lift means we’re at Park City for another Wasatch favorite. Spiro up to Jupiter, Shadow Lake Loop, Keystone, Steps, John’s, Sweeney’s.

Shadow Lake Loop

So many memories…. both winter and summer. We used to climb up to Jupiter during the summer, before there was any singletrack at the resort. Only sweeny’s down by town was there. But we spent so much time skiing Jupiter that it was always so cool to be there without snow. So it was today, another beautiful ride in the Wasatch.

Keystone Trail

Approaching John’s

Brian exit’s John’s trail

John’s is another classic. ~10 minutes of nonstop aspen dodging fun. You cover about 0.2 miles as the crow flies, but trail distance is much longer. We always took it as a time trial challenge. Kind of a downhill race, but there’s quite a bit of uphill and absolutely no chance for speed. It’s great. The kind of downhill race I could really get behind. I came out right under 10 minutes today, but I don’t seem to have any record of what my best time was.

Finally, Paula and I stayed in Steamboat Springs for the USATF National Trail Championships. The course was 3.25 miles of brutal climbing and descending. Straight up, straight down, in traditional ski resort XC race style. It was the best running race I’ve watched in some time. Everyone was dying, and even walking in spots. You could really tell the strong from the weak, unlike your standard fare, flat 5k road race.

Paula took 8th, just out of the money, but, hey, it’s the national championships and she is not a trail runner. I think this is the second actual trail race she’s ever participated. More to come, hopefully.

Unfortunately, the trip back to Colorado was a bit of a fiasco of leaking radiators, bogus hotel reservations, raging headaches and further injury to my soon-to-be-recovered knee (!!!). It was an awesome trip, but it’s good to be back. Here’s hoping the knee is still OK, ’cause I’ve got some serious riding to do this July.