In Case You Missed It

Somebody told me that I should make a post about moving the blog. Here is a post about moving the blog.
www.bikepeddlerutah.com/blog/

Utah Cyclocross 2009 Race #3

About a year ago, I did my first Cyclocross race at Heber's Wasatch County Fairgrounds. And now, I've got like six races under my belt, so I'm pretty much an expert. Okay, at least I own my own bike now. That's 95% of it right? Anyway, it was good to be home.
Early this morning, we picked up Riley,(and his girlfriend Camilla. Yeah, I know.) piled into the family wagon and headed to Heber. This is probably the first time I've made it to a race with plenty of time to get ready. And I had my smokin hot wife and three adorable children with me. So I had a built in cheering section.
The race organizers kept warning people about the goathead thorns all over the course. I run airlock/slime tubes, and have never had a problem with thorns. This leads to a cockiness about flat's. I just don't get them. And when they warn people about thorns in certain sections, I take it as a cue to go faster on those sections because, as I said. I don't get flats.
With that in mind, they shouted out one of the famously random start times and we were off. I got a good start and was hanging on to the lead pack. I was dieing, but I was with the lead pack. We had gapped the rest of the group and I made it to the end of the second lap still in sight of them. In fact, I managed to pass my second favorite Texan(Cobes) while I followed them. I didn't know where my Team Clammy Chamois Teammates were, but Kellie was keeping track of them.
Wes and Riley at the top of "Mt. Heber"
That coupled with the fact that the Slyfox Cash Zone was in play. Dollah, Dollah Bill Y'all. Here's me stashing one of the four singles I picked up in the race. The good news was, I always suffer on the first two laps, then level out and feel better from the third lap on. So, since I was still with the front pack at this point I was starting to think I might actually finish respectably. Then I took a hard right turn on the grass and heard my tire make a buzz that at once told me I was both low on air in that tire, and probably not going to finish well.
As I ran up "Mt. Heber" to my cheering family I mentioned my slowly deflating tire, and my wife(Kellie) screamed,"Just Ride It!!" I took this as permission to buy a new wheelset if I destroyed the wheel. By the beginning of the fifth lap I was completely flat. But I found I could still go pretty fast I just couldn't turn for beans. I figured, I'd just go into survival mode. I still had a pretty good gap on better than half of the field.
If I could hang onto that, I'd still finish respectably. Here's me losing ground on the leaders.
Survival mode was working. Coming into the final lap, I was still in between packs, and had only lost three or four places. I headed through the straightaway into the 180 degree turn before the triple barricades, right in the apex of the turn, my tire came off sending me violently over the bars. The guy right behind me faked left, went right and rode right over the top of my bike and I(not his fault). My front wheel was bent, with a wad of tire and tube jammed into the brakes, and my rear wheel was so bent it wouldn't turn through the frame.
I was going to give up........
A lesser man would have..........
But I........decided.........to run. Okay,.......walk....... mostly.
I am on a team after all. And I owed it to them to finish.

I pushed onward as the rest of the field blew by me. Even the guys we had lapped passed me. Luckily, the shame of last place was saved because the lapped riders have to stop after the lead riders final lap, and I placed in front of them, because I got in one more lap. They were pretty much done when I came in. I actually heard the interview with the winner of the heat, over the loudspeaker while walking in.

But then,.... in the distance........

I want to thank all the "Team Clammy Chamois" members for sticking with me. To the cheerleaders, both my family, and friends from other teams(Thanks for lending me the little french girl Cobes) It was truly, a monumental 31st place. Or likely a 33rd place finish once they post it on UtahCyclocross.

We stuck around for a few more of the races. SlyFox busted out the ghilly suit and handed out the sniper cash to the ladies. He is a special kind of crazy

24 Hours Of Moab

After two last minute personnel changes, and a last minute impulse purchase of a new light, I packed up and headed for Moab with our newest team member Wes Friday morning.

Ryan had driven down Thursday night with his wife to secure a good campsite. Ryan did this race last year so he knew everything you needed to do for a good race. Glad he drove down a day early. We were closer to the start/finish line then almost 5 of the 400 or so teams there. But at least we were in tents, between two RV's with generators running 24/7. And without any tape or rope indicating our campsite, one of the RV's stole our campfire ring. Let's hear it for race experience.

After Wes and I pulled in, we unloaded and hustled to get a pre-ride in before it got dark. I had never ridden this "trail" before so it was a good thing we did. The course was pretty crowded with people doing the same thing. First impressions included, "This is going to suck." And "Wow, there's a LOT of sand." In between the sand, there were techy sections of slick rock. Not the smooth grippy slickrock you find on the other side of Moab that's fun to climb because it grabs your tires and lets you climb impossibly steep pitches. This slickrock is of the rough, broken loose variety that gives you a choice of the hard, rough line, or the "I guess I'll get off and walk line." Later in the race, I would choose the latter quite often. The first two miles were like that, and then it got a little better. But you still had these tricky, ledgy descents that a lot of racers walked, followed by sand pits, followed by steep ledgy climbs that a lot of racers walked. I did fine on the descents, and had planned to pass skinny guys carrying there bikes and make up some time. I'm no downhiller, but I can go down the rough stuff better than some of the cardio crowd. Once you hit about the 5 mile mark, the course turns into more of a road. There is an awesome, steep descent with berms you can get completely horizontal on. All the sand sluffs into the bottom, so it behooves you to carry speed into the corners and get as high on the berm as you can. This is followed by a brutal climb up a sandy hill. I would go on to walk this climb every single time.

The second half of the course is where you have to be able to spin big gears. At mile 7 you cruise on mostly roads. This takes you out and around this big rock formation. One ledgy descent and then you start the final major climb. Not granny gear steep, but long enough to have you looking pretty anxiously for the top. Crest the top and start the last three miles of the course. These are 30+ mph hardpack roads. (If you've got 30+ mph in your legs.) But you have to be careful, because when your going that fast, a deep pile of sand can send you ass over teakettle in a hurry.

Also on this final descent you start to catch glimpses of the tent city at the start/finish line. It's a pretty welcome sight day or night.

We finished the lap at dusk, and headed into town for dinner. Not sure if it was the lobster enchilada at La Hacienda, pre-race jitters, or the cacophony of generators,bagpipes, and keggers, but I wasn't able to log much sleep friday night. This would later come back to haunt me.

Parrish who had joined the team after Rone dropped out, was going to head down Friday as soon as he and Riley could get away from the shop. Surprisingly, when there is a Wednesday night group ride that no one in the shop goes to, they are able to completely vacate the shop at 4pm. But for an internationally known event three hours away that they have known about since April, they couldn't get away from the shop until after 9pm, and so, decided to leave early Saturday morning and get there before the race started. They decided to leave early, and then left at about 9:30 am. So, interestingly, when the start cannon sounded at noon Saturday, our five man team only had three members.

So here's where we talk about the start. A "Le Mans" style start. I don't know who Le Mans is, but I'd like to kick him in the "Le Balls" because I got conned into doing the first lap. Riders line up, in a crowd of 400+, by rows of bike racks where you've strategically staged your bike before the start. There were a lot of strange costumes, and pre-race rituals going on. I had my phone with me and snapped this picture of the guy in front of me. I don't know if he got carried away with the Chamois Butter, or what, but everbody behind him was quietly elbowing everybody else as white foam slowly oozed out of the back of his shorts and eventually began dripping on the ground. Who am I to judge? Turns out he is Ben Koenig. He took third in the Men's Solo Championship. Yeah, he rode 15 laps by himself with a total ride time of 12:45 minutes. I'll have to get me some of whatever that stuff is.

Cannon sounds, and everybody runs, 300 yards across the desert, around the designated tree, then back to the bikes. Grab your bike, jump on and go. Wes snapped this picture of the start. I'm in there somewhere choking on dust and trying not to get knocked down and trampled. Luckily, I've been in enough mosh pits to be able to stay standing in a violent, hostile crowd.

After the run, you ride a slightly modified first section of the course. Staying on the road and bypassing and single track from the start line to the jeep trail. The idea is to let the crowd funnel into a line. It almost works, but that nasty first two miles I told you about was like the return line at Wal-Mart on Dec 26. The tricky parts become hike-a-bikes because, if one person puts a foot down, everybody has to put a foot down. I managed to stay pretty mid-pack in the first few miles. Sure enough, I passed a lot of people on the rocky downhills. Unfortunately, most of them caught me again on the climbs and giggled as they rode past. I made the first lap in
1:32. Better than I expected, but not incredible.
Here is an impressive shot of my gut as I came into the start/finish.
Handoff the baton to Ryan and head back to camp. This is where I should have taken a nap, but didn't.
He turned in a slightly faster time, followed by Wes with a similar time, and when Riley was out, Wes pulled up the results on his blackberry. We were in 10th place.

I hadn't really hoped to do anything but keep from embarassing myself and my teammates, but it was looking like we were going to have a top ten finish in a field of 26.(5 person mens category).

So now it was serious. Riley and Parrish turned in good times and we moved as high as seventh place at one point. Parrish being the bottom of the batting order, finished his first lap in the dark and it was my turn for the first full night lap. Staying true to club tradition, I had laced glowsticks into my spokes which create a wheel of light when they spin. I actually was asked where I had bought my wheels. I think they were confused when I said, Macy's Sack and Save. There two for seven bucks.

And so began my toughest lap. With delusions of a high ranking finish in my head. I rode sloppy and aggressive. Bobbling on the climbs a lot, and having to put a foot down on stuff that I should have been able to ride. One crash caught me hard in the bad place, and I ended up with a constant urge to urinate for the rest of the lap(and most of the rest of the race). I actually stopped four times to take care of it with a disappointing result. In the dark though, you caught these surreal images of lights in the distance. The most incredible was from the top of that bermy downhill. A line of bobbing lights weaving it's way down one side and up the other. With others in the distance showing you both where you had been, and where you were going. For the first time you actually felt like part of a huge population of similarly minded individuals instead of one maggot squirming past another alone on a hillside. Sprititual enlightenment notwithstanding, I was still hurting.

The lights on my handlebars created some kind of interference with my wireless cyclocomputer causing the display to scramble so I had no idea what kind of time I was making. When I finally made it to the last technical downhill, I was trying to make up some time, and when I took the line I had chosen the day before, the rock I had been using to roll off the ledge and into the sand had moved out a couple feet. Creating a hole, followed by a rock. I manage a decent nose wheelie for about two milliseconds, and then piled over the bars and into the rocks and sand. adrenaline and gymnastic ability rolled me back up to my feet, and when the guy behind me asked if I was allright, I barked back "YES!" and jumped back on my bike. Actually I was crying on the inside. My whole left side was in agony. He wasn't so sure I was fine, and stayed with me until the road smoothed out and then blew past me and disappeared into the night. Shouting back "Nice Wheels!". I finally rolled back in to a 1:48 time.

I had decided that instead of sleeping between Riley and Parrish's cots in the tent, I would stretch out in my recliner style camp chair. I grabbed my sleeping bag and cinched the mummy hood down over my eyes. Tuned into a little Don Williams on the headphones and managed about two hours of sleep. Our night strategy was to have the incoming rider wake-up the on deck rider when he got back to camp. This worked out pretty good and we didn't miss any hand-offs in the night.

My next lap would begin around 4:30 am. Parrish had turned in a killer lap and he rolled in much earlier than I was expecting. To answer your question, yes, it does piss me off that a guy who rides a bike like three times a year, and shows up to the race late, not only turns in the fastest time of anyone else on the team overall, but only lost twelve minutes on his night lap.

At this point, I was feeling feeble. I resolved to just go as hard as I thought I could maintain for the whole lap. That wasn't very fast. I tumbled into the sand about a half mile in and when I picked up my bike, I realized I had forgotten to grab a water bottle. I had a semi-liquid food packet(Enervitene) in my pocket, and planned to drink it at the halfway point. With the cold temps water wasn't too huge of a priority so maybe I would be fine. By the four mile mark I was parched. Probably due to the fact that I knew I couldn't drink but still. I was diing. On the next rocky section I picked up one of the dozens of bottles that had been bounced out of other riders bottle cages and drank long and deep. Jammed the rest into my cage and moved on. I rode conservatively and relaxed. I thought for sure I was going to be turning in a two and a half hour lap, but actually managed a 1:54. I rolled in just as the horizon was turning purple. When I caught my breath I did the math and realized I was done. Unless Ryan, Wes, Riley, and Parrish all turned in times just over an hour(which was not possible, even for Parrish) I would be done. I have never been so relieved in my life. I bought a huge breakfast burrito and piled on the jalapenos and hot sauce. I took a shower, and got dressed. And waited for noon.

In the end, we came in a respectable 9th of 26 teams in our category. And 142 out of 400-some-odd teams overall.
The sick thing is, since I woke up this morning,I've been thinking, "I think next year I'll......"

Cross, Then A Day With The Kids

Woke up at 6:30 and plopped down in front of the computer. I had pretty much talked myself out of the hour drive to Ogden to get my ass handed to me at Race #1 in the Utah Cyclocross Series. Just then I saw Ryan Cobourn, a.k.a. Cobes, a.k.a. Slow Burn, a.k.a. Don't Mess With Texas, had posted his Facebook status as "Cyclocross!". This shout out from a fellow fat Irishman was all I needed to inspire me to go embarass myself.

I rummaged through my bike stuff, shuffled pedals around, did a minimalist operational check of my "new to me" cross bike, slapped the old Ford on the hind-quarter and headed for Ogden. On a normal race-day I would have been way too late to get in a pre-ride, but since Ohran had apparently spent the night binge drinking the course was still being laid out at 9:15 for the 9:30 start. And it wasn't finished when Ryan and I rode it. Upon returning to the start, Ryan's tires both blew. 12 goathead thorns and no spare tires. In my haste, I hadn't grabbed any extra tubes and even though he had friends offer to loan him some "B" wheels, incompatible drivetrains gave him a DNS. So, I beat him.

Weber Fairgrounds is a fun, if simple course. No run-ups, and only one log barrier that couldn't be ridden over. A fairly long paved section that was my only saving grace. I passed a couple people on it and gapped a guy on a mountain bike that was nipping at my heels the whole race. Still finished far back in the pack, but I'm glad I went.

"I.......need........a........doughnut!"

My Dad frequently asks why I do races that I can't win. I don't really have an answer for that. If you can't see the joy in pushing yourself either too the brink of puking, or occasionally to the actual point of puking, on a crisp autumn morning with 40+ other guys in the mud, and the blood, and the muck. With hundreds of people you don't know, cheering from the sidelines while ringing cowbells, and sipping coffee and hot chocolate. There is no way I can explain it to you in terms that you'll understand.

I rushed home and started gathering things together for IMBA's "Take A Kid Mountain Biking Day" The idea was to get a bunch of kids up to Lambert Park on their bikes with their parents and other people who enjoy mountain biking and try to pass that along to the next generation. The cooler weather had some effect on turnout, at least that's what I figure since I had a lot of emails from people who said they were coming and then didn't. But thanks to IMBA we had some stickers, number plates for kids bikes, and kids Clif Bars. The Kids Clif Bars, for the record, are better than the adult Clif Bars.

The shop had cleared off the Kids cycling apparel rack and pitched in some water bottles, and a gift certificate for the raffle. By my count there were about a dozen kids(counting kids in diapers who didn't do much riding). The Goathead thorn rose it's ugly head again at Lambert park and anybody without slime in their tires didn't get very far.It was a fun day. My son Gavin had his first exposure to singletrack. Which was pretty daunting for him at first. There were some tears shed, and a lot of walking. But by the bottom of Rodeo he seemed to be getting the hang of it.

The Weber family had the strongest showing of riding kids. Jake's nine year old, who is a veteran of the BPW Race Series, spanked my nine-year old son and ten year old nephew. And all the way down to his 20 month old J.D. who pushed his strider along in the dirt for awhile.

Justin Nelson brought his boys for their first ride on dirt, and they both walked away with some new bike shorts. Perfect for a 50 degree day.

Paul Zimm-the-Man and Eric Somer both showed up a little late with their teenage daughters which was cool. Paul's daughter made her first successful descent of Rodeo and I believe she did so without any tears. Unfortunately Eric's daughter left a little bit of herself on the trail with a good digger at the top of Middle trail.

For the most part, nobody was any worse for wear, and pizza helped to calm the nerves of all involved , thanks to everyone who came and the shop for pitching in with some schwag.

Countdown To Mo-Town

Next saturday, I will be riding with four others in the 24 hours of Moab. It seemed like such a good idea back April or so when we signed up to get the discounted entry fee.
That early in the season, I figured I would certainly be in shape for several laps of the 15 mile course by October. Piece of cake. Take a lap, rest for a few hours while the skinny kids from the shop bring up the average. Maybe eat a little barbecue. Keep warm on the trainer while waiting for my next lap.
Back then I figured I'd be like 15 pounds lighter, have a resting heart rate of 35 or so, legs that looked like some kind of action figure. You know, I figured I'd probably catch the eye of some pro-team or sponsor and have to tell them no, I can't race professionally, I could never give up the exciting world of commercial building maintenance/heating and air conditioning repair.
Wellllllllll, that was back in April.
I actually spent the summer riding pretty much only with the club, only twice a week, and rarely for any extended distance or time. As you may or may not have noticed, I tend to shoot the breeze a lot while riding with the club, and I don't exactly maintain my target heart rate for any period of time. Also, I tend to prep for a big ride with McDonald's or equivalent and wash it down with a Full Throttle, or Rockstar if I'm really feeling it.
In short, as with life in general, I didn't really end up where I thought I'd be.
To make it worse, Rone dropped out and now Parrish is on my team. So now I get to be shown up by somebody who only rides twice a year, but still manages to maintain his girlish figure and be able to throw down without really trying. Also on the team is Mark. Pretty sure he's been secretly training all summer, luckily for me, he fell into a hole or something and is doing the race A.M.A. Riley has decided to stop chasing his "not girlfriend" for one weekend and buckle down for the race. Riley is always faster than me and I'm sure it will be no different next weekend. Which leaves Ryan. Who says he's in bad shape, but I'm not so sure. He didn't seem tired at all after a day of wandering around Interbike which is more than I can say for me. At least his expectations are realistic. Earlier this week he suggested that I take the first leg. He later admitted that it was just because he thought it would be funny to see my moobs jiggle on the Le Mans style start.
I guess the best I can hope for at this point is the "Miss Congeniality" award. I intend to be grilling deer steaks in between laps, and I'm stocking up on glow sticks for the night laps. It's going to be the return of the techno rave night ride for this dancing queen.
It should still be cool though. I plan to greet Tinker Juarez like an old friend after last weeks introduction. Maybe he's got some tips for me. Maybe next year I'll be so inspired and in shape I'll enter the Solo category.
Maybe not.

Interbike '09

There is a huge difference between the people who are supposed to go to Interbike and the ones who sneak in under the fence. The one's who are supposed to go, have to spend the day in meetings, and seminars. The one's who sneak in under the fence, wander around like a tweeker locked in pharmacy. If you haven't figured it out by now, I snuck under the fence.

Nick and I drove down Monday morning and got into town just in time to catch the tail end of the first day of the Dirt Demo. We drove out to Boulder City and started wandering. The original plan was to ride road bikes monday, and then ride mountain bikes tuesday. We lost a little time not knowing where or what we should be doing. We got checked in and hit the tents. For some reason we headed straight over to Specialized and tried to get on the new Enduro's. I struckout and ended up riding an S-works TriCross. Which was sweet. Not quite what I was looking to ride but sweet anyway. Then I realized that I should ride stuff that the Bike Peddler doesn't carry since this may be my only opportunity. I strolled over to the Rocky Mountain tent and jumped on a 29" Altitude. I won't bother with reviews here. I was mostly just trying to see cool stuff. In fact, as day one was ramping down, we just wandered around. Which is how I ran into this machinist. The next day we hooked up with Ryan and Parrish. Day two at the dirt demo was a little chaotic. This is the big day when everyone shows up. The result, is that it is tough as hell to get onto the bike you want. We actually got so caught up in the Cannondale giveaway(Ride a bike from C-dale,Mongoose,GT, and Schwinn, and get a free pair of Oakley's) that we didn't get much actual ride time in. But I got a free pair of Oakley's. By lunch there were so many people it was hard to walk let alone get in on a bike you wanted. I rode a Spot touring bike with a belt drive and a Rohloff internal hub that was the epitome of bike geekdom. That was probably the coolest thing I rode. Then it was just watching people and checking out booths. Good thing I had on the bib tights. That's okay, they gave me a little street cred when I wanted a photo with this guy. Tinker looks like a Brooks Saddle up close. All brown and leathery. He is the first racing star I remember knowing about when I started reading the magazines back in the nineties. It was cool to see him even though Oilcan Larry thinks he's washed up.

Once it got hot, and we got hungry, we bailed on the dirt demo. The only other really noteworthy thing that we did at the Dirt Demo was plow through the pizza that filled this box. It was huge, and we killed it.The next day was the actual beginning of Interbike. We made our way to the convention center and soon discovered that due to a mixup and our badges reading exhibitors from Lizard Skins instead of highly important decision makers for the Bike Peddler. We were shunned like lepors by the exhibitors. No schwag, no respect. We remedied the problem by ganking some "attendee badges" from Timp Cyclery and were soon getting shoulder rubs from beautiful models. Not really, but we were loading up on schwag and were actually allowed into the Specialized booth. We only got a few weird looks because our badges said we were Brett and Ashley Edwards. Nick took one for the team and claimed to have the girls name.

After a few laps, we were wrecked. That's when you start noticing all the cool people just milling around at Interbike.

I sat on a bench by the Sram booth and noticed Tara Llanes was like two feet away from me.And she was incredibly cool in the couple of seconds I got to talk to her. Two years ago, she broke her back in the Dual Slalom semifinals in Colorado. I was actually watching it on TV when it happened. And I have paid attention to her recovery and story since. When I asked her how things were going, she said "Awesome, I'm training for Ironman next year." That's pretty impressive. I bruised my hip once and still haven't quit whining about it.

Later I walked past a booth with some couches and what looked like a bunch of Metallica Roadies just hanging out. On second glance it was Cam McCaul. Of big-hucking, wise-cracking, gnar-core freeride fame. He kindly obliged a phot as well

All in all it was an awesome trip. It was a bike geek's fantasy camp. Rubbing elbows with people you read about on the toilet everyday is something everyone should try. I also saw but didn't actually meet, Ned Overend and Steve Peat. I did meet Fuzzy the Bike Guy, a host of scantily clad booth babes, and a really aggressive chain lube salesman.

Maybe next year, I'll get to ride some more bikes.

Dig It

I have an image of Forest Service workers. College kids with beards, sure. Lanky old skinny guys with leathery skin and thick glasses, check. Matronly middle aged women with loud voices and ill fitting khaki's cinched so tight at the waist that you would expect Grover to step out of the trees and say "This is the letter "B"boys and girls." And, minus the last one in the list, all the stereotypical versions of USFS employees were represented at today's trail work day up on the Mill Canyon Trail.
But as we were milling around the trucks this morning getting ready to go dig, Steve Winters introduced me to Sheryl the volunteer coordinator for the USFS. I had heard Steve talk about Sheryl before, he never described her, but I had an idea of what I thought she would look like. It was the Helga version that I had in mind. So when this petite little twentysomething turned around I was very surprised. She was friendly, and funny, and well......young. Then the rest of the trailwork crew started to put things together. Not a single menopausal woman in the bunch.
I am of the opinion, that the Forest Service would have no problem getting volunteers if they would make a poster with all these ladies that said " I Want You!....To Volunteer For Trailwork." They'd quadruple their teenage boys and middle aged men volunteers. One middle aged volunteer who will remain anonymous walked up and elbowed me at one point, and said, "I'll bet you never knew there were so many attractive young ladies in the forest service, did you Josh?" No I did not. It's like when your watching a horror movie and all the camp counselors, or ski patrollers, or whatever, look like they just stepped out of an Abercrombie and Fitch catalogue.
Anyway, we did actually do some trailwork. A lot of trailwork actually. While I was the sole representative from the Bike Peddler Weekly group(slackers) the URMB contingent was well represented. Along with a ton of motorcycle guys. Next time you mutter under your breath as a motorcycle passes you on a climb up there, don't. They outnumbered mountain bikers by about 2 to 1. You can still grumble about horsemen though, there was only one of them. But he was a very cool guy so they get extra credit. And while your at it don't complain about at-risk teenage girls either because there were like a dozen of them up there digging under the direction of their counselor while you were scratching your butt on the couch this morning.The Mill Canyon reroute, is an ambitious project. The route has already been flagged, cleared, and scraped by a mini-dozer. We were working on grading out the 4-5 foot swath and pulling the uphill side in to narrow the usable trail, and clearing the berm on the downhill side to allow drainage.
They are taking the very steep, and direct route of the Mill Canyon Trail and adding several miles to the existing three. For now it only redirects the upper section before the intersection connecting to Tibble.
Honestly, I was a little sad to see the changes happening. Upper Mill Canyon has always been a blast to ride. It is a steep, rocky, rooty, chainsaw of a trail. And to get to it you have to climb a really steep grunt from the four-way intersection on Ridge Trail. The new trail will be similar to South Fork Lower Deer Creek. Smooth fast goodness. Plus it will be a couple miles longer. It will still be a great trail, but the character is going to change dramatically. In this poorly lit photograph you can see what I'm talking about.
On the left is the new trail being cut in. Smooth, and fast. On the right is the existing trail. rocky and treachorous, but in a good way.
The best part though, is that it will be climbable. Not in a, make sure your toe spikes are in tight and your bike is shoulderable kind of way, but in a gradual, doable grade kind of way. I am imagining a loop that starts and finishes at the summit trailhead. Ridge Trail down from the top of Mill could become a favorite new downhill. Or you could climb from the Mud/Tibble intersection and then turn around and bomb all the way back down to the reservoir. It's gonna be cool.
Oh, and here is a photo of the biggest damn wasps nest I've ever seen.
If you love the trail the way it is, relax. You've got some time to say goodbye. The Forest Service crew mentioned that proper protocol says a new trail has to settle for a year before it can be officially opened. So it will likely be awhile. I plan to ride it before the snow flies, and as much as I can next year before it is officially closed. You can come with me if you can pry your butt up off the couch.