Michelle & I went for our first super long mountain bike ride - 21.5 miles! We started at the Summit parking lot at 6:30 am and finished at about 2 pm - 7.5 hours. We did this ride the day before we decided to start the blog so we don't have pictures.
The first part from Summit was downhill and cold. Once we started going uphill, we warmed up fast but had to walk our bikes up the loose,rocky trail most of the way until Julie Andrew's meadow. Then we got to bike a while, but ended up having to lift our bikes of 6 fallen trees - some were easy to get over and some were hard.
After the first 2 sections of single track were so difficult, we decided to ride on Timpanookee Road for a while, which was really fun. Once Timpanookee Road ended we rode the trail towards Baldy. This was really cool trail. For a lot of this trail we were in grasses that were anywhere from about 2 feet to 4 feet tall. A lot of time you could see where the trail was because of grass pushed aside, but you couldn't actually see the ground - I called this "faith" trail, because you couldn't actually see the ground you were riding on and just had to hope you didn't run into anything too crazy.
Finally we were working our way up the switchbacks to the pass behind Baldy. This part was brutal. Eventually we got near the end where the trail gives up on switchbacks and just goes straight up toward the pass. This part is about a quarter mile long and varies from about 30 degress to 50 degress up - it was a tough bike hike.
Once we made it to the top of the Baldy pass - yeah! it was time to head back downhill. The first part was so steep that we walked most of it. Then after a little ride, we were on a a trail about 5 inches wide with a nasty drop-off on the right so we walked for another mile or so until we got to Little Baldy. From that point we got to ride down on the Provo Canyon side until we got to the water tower. The 5 miles or so of downhill here was a blast!
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