SLC with a UT (U of TX @ Austin) OG (with one from the 303, whose brah was OC now living in big D), and White Rim.

The views here at the White Rim Trail are amazing!

Made it to SLC, UT with my OG from UT (University of Texas). This was after Kevin and I rode Moab's White Rim Trail in a day.

If you've never done (supported, self-supported, single, multiple day...etc.) White Rim Trail; may I suggest you do it? It's 100% double track (it is designed for high clearance vehicles); but from that hundy percent, there's about 7% sketch.  Sketchy because of the pitches of the double track. Downs were more doable than the ups going counter clockwise (starting at Mineral Bottom and finishing at Island in the Sky (aka Shafer Trail). Here's my Garmin fo-one-one on our one-day glorious endeavor of a wee bit of pain but mostly fun adventure. Was it epic? Prolly. It was mos def on my bucket list o' monumental stuff to do. If you only have a hardtail, i found it deluxe riding the White Rim on my dual squish. Consider buying (or renting) a DS for this one.

My UT roomie and teammie, Grant

After some route finding and buying entry level SPD pedals because I forgot mine (we switched cars in the last minute), we finally arrived--by bike mind you--at our intended trailhead. It was a bunch of trails created by the city of Draper for the local neighborhoods. Rim was Saturday, now it's Wednesday and Grant and I (another teammate) head off to Corner Canyon in Draper. Let me give you a primer right quick on Grant. He was a cyclist I met on some random day out road cycling in Plano, TX (service road on 75) in the early nineties where we exchanged contact info. From there we raced on the same team, became roommates in college (U of TX @ Austin), got married (not to each other), went our separate ways (with each other), moved to Colorado (at different times), and we reconnected in the most fortuitous way (yet it seemed intentional)-phew!

Top of the climb, well, one of them.

Before the downhill towards town.

We climbed Canyon Hollow like three times because we did a super flowy, g'd out downhill called Rush and The Trees, twice (feeling the Rush theme here?). On our last climb up we ascended Jacob's Ladder to the nearest summit. Once up we adjusted ourselves, put some more clothes on and proceeded to blast down (a trail called) Ghost Falls.

It too was kinda tight, had some unexpected outcroppings of jagged, bumper style limestone protuberances that kept you honest and constantly scanning yet (like a lifeguard on the weekend surveying his pool) super flowy DH with the ground just a smidge tacky (kinda like your crazy uncle over for dinner) from previous rains which let us do our hellified gangsta lean (sorry Snoop Dogg) in the  semi-banked curves thereby keeping our velocity constant-or accelerating-as we entered and exited said semi-banked curves. As usual, we were not aware of the arc of the sun exiting early on her fall path because we were distracted by the novelty of these trails as if we were riding in the Summertime. Alas we head back to Grant's mama haus. What a fun time riding the local trails! Utah never seems to amaze me with her spectrum of riding terrain that's readily available, waiting for you sample. Needless to say, I'm still in a post-honeymoon phase from my White Rim soirée. Anyhoos, here's my Garmin data from Corner Canyon:

It was a cold start and (it) never really warmed up; furthermore, once the sun says, "later" the mercury plummets fairly fast here in the glorious Rocky Mountains-Wasatch version 1.0. Glad I brought my cold weather stuff (vest, base layer, leg and arm warmers and my Texas balaclava-not the dessert). I never took off my knee warmers for the duration of the ride.

On our ride, Grant's chamois was bunching up (he rode baggies), and it gave him a pesky saddle sore. The pain and the discomfort might be intense enough to not ride tomorrow. That's cool if that's the case, I can do some work related stuff (ahh work!). Hopefully my chamois butter can accelerate the healing but because the sore's on a pressure point...we'll see.

Thursday afternoon (because we're rather sloth-like moving in the morning) I call Jans on Park Avenue (a bike/sports shop) in Park City because of their helpfulness and professionalism to the bike industry and trail updates (but mostly of their service the last time Karen and I mtb Park City) about the status of their iconic Mid-Mountain Trail. Karen and I did portions of this last time and now, Grant and I wanted to ride the whole thing. Seeing the Wasatch Range as we drove from Moab, there's precipitation on dem dere hills so we didn't want to trash the trails because we're uniformed noobs. Sadly the mechanic on the other end of the phone replies, "I wouldn't ride it." Instead he recommends the Coyote Loop Trail in Heber City and the Dutch Hollow Trails in Midway.  After checking out the topos and reviews of each trail, it's off to Coyote Loop.

The drive to Heber City-as with any drive with the Wasatch Range staring down at you-was visually impressive. Again, after decoding the GPS we park right off the side of the highway on a tiny gravelly driveway where another car with bike racks was parked. A good sign because this has to be one of the trailheads. As we get ready, we see riders-owners of the car-return and it looks like a mud pumper was blasting them face-forward hitting their downtubes point blank while their kits' backsides looked full-sized (dark-brown) rejects from a rorschach inkblot test (my personal interpretion? they were ass hats for fucking the trail up). We call a(mud)n audible about our path of the trail. The trail's a crescent with the Riverview connector that makes it a loop, so our plan: we go as far as we safely can-free of mud-then pull an out-and-back when the ground's ready made concrete. Twenty miles mtbing is a quality, quantifiable number of fun so when my Garmin reads 10 miles we keep going, sussing trail rideability. The ground's wet and tacky now and as we keep proceeding counter clockwise it's turning into gravy. U-turn! Up to that point we were steadily climbing. 2000' worth of climbing. Part of the trail we shared with a sheep farmer so we had a livestock-belled, captive audience watching a pair of novices climb...and climb. Beautiful climb, switchbacks to keep us honest. Our arrival and the preceding rains made for high friction, tacky goodness for a shredding downhill. We're talking a mostly net downhill of ten miles. I lead on the climbs (mostly because I have an XC specific dual boinger-Scott RC Spark); and Grant leads on the downs (mostly, because he has a Scott Ransom 900 Tuned). So ten miles of down, here we go! Grant takes off and after a minute or so of not pedaling and hauling ass, you notice idiosyncrasies about the rider in front of you (like body englishing, turning habits, brand of shorts...etc.).

Here's what I notice: over randomly placed baby heads he skis through them like moguls. It's kinda funny. Ever seen a video of a camera person following a large lizard swimming (you prolly haven't but I have)? His butt does the same thing and that's what it reminded me of. Quiet upper body but hips moving as if doing some circa 70s disco gyration. I'm pretty sure I don't do that but I just now noticed that. Must be from his moto days. We both rail the berms. Inside knee counterbalancing all the weight (we're pushing) on the downhill leg. Inside knee pointing to the direction we want to go while twisting our upperbodies in order for our bellow button to follow the highlighted line our brain's projecting on the singletrack.

We pass a guy resting from a climb as it junctions with us and as we go past him and he decides to join the Thing1 and Thing2 chase. Grant noticing our trail remora lays down some extra watts on the pedals and amp up our juking and jiving in this flowy downhill (testosterone poisoning to the nth degree-guilty). Okay now we're going race pace. On a short climb it switchbacks and I'm able to look back to see if our remora's ovalized sucking disc is still operative. It ain't. He dun popped; but we're still flying like a bunch of lunatics. There's a sharp hill around the corner and Grant gets bogged on a large-ish gear, I pass and continue our near reckless descent (there's nobody out here, 'cept a bunch of sheep). It's not really reckless: we are aware of our stopping distances should an obstacle in the form of a human or rock appear. We know trail etiquette about hikers and uphill riders having the ROW. Regardless we're (safely?) bombing this run and voilà (pronounced voh-EEL-a), we're back at our car.