Journeys: Park City, Utah - Mountain Biking

Sunday, August 4, 2013

Park City, Utah - Mountain Biking

Roger and I spent the weekend at the Chateaux Deer Valley treating ourselves to some relaxation and mountain biking on the numerous trails around Park City and Deer Valley ski resorts. Our original plan was to bike up Spiro Trail and connect to the Wasatch Crest trail, but a running race on Spiro forced us to change plans and we ended up using Armstrong for our initial ascent. Armstrong was fantastic, and later we connected to Pinecone and then on to the Wasatch Crest.

Roger on Armstrong

Roger on Pinecone

Pinecone connecting to the Wasatch Crest

This was my first time on the Wasatch Crest Trail and the views into Big Cottonwood Canyon were spectacular! There were a lot more people on this section of the trail and it seemed like most people started their ride from Guardsman Pass instead the Park City side. The trail headed north and provided us with views of the surrounding canyons and a nice overlook above Desolation Lake, a frequent snowshoeing destination for me in the winter.

Wasatch Crest Trail

Roger on the Wasatch Crest Trail

Wasatch Crest Trail

Desolation Lake

With Roger above Desolation Lake

After riding the Wasatch Crest past Desolation Lake, we descended down to The Canyons ski resort and connected back to Park Cityon the the Mid-Mountain Trail. This was another great trail with nice views and nothing technical. By the time we connected back to Spiro Trail for the descent to Park City Mountain Resort, Roger and I were both exhausted. It was late afternoon we had been riding for several hours.

Along the Mid-Mountain Trail

Bikes taking a break

I wish I had worn my GPS watch, but it looks like the loop was over 30 miles long with over 4,000 feet of climbing. The rest of the day and night was spent relaxing in the pools and hot tubs. On Sunday morning, we did a quick ride on Mid Mountain from Deer Valley Resort before returning to Salt Lake.

Aspen Trees on Mid-Mountain

Enjoying a break with Roger

"One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am – a reluctant enthusiast….a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this; You will outlive the bastards"

-- Edward Abbey

"The grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never dried all at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls. "

-- John Muir

"To be whole. To be complete. Wildness reminds us what it means to be human, what we are connected to rather than what we are separate from."

-- Terry Tempest Williams

"There may be people who feel no need for nature. They are fortunate, perhaps. But for those of us who feel otherwise, who feel something is missing unless we can hike across land disturbed only by our footsteps or see creatures roaming freely as they have always done, we are sure there should be wilderness. Species other than man have rights, too. Having finished all the requisites of our proud, materialistic civilization, our neon-lit society, does nature, which is the basis for our existence, have the right to live on? Do we have enough reverence for life to concede to wilderness this right?"

-- Margaret E. Murie

"I have always been unsatisfied with life as most people live it. Always I want to live more intensely and richly. Why muck and conceal one's true longings and loves, when by speaking of them one might find someone to understand them, and by acting on them one might discover oneself?"

-- Everett Ruess