Catching the corn before Winter returns.

My brother recently visited from our old home of Steamboat Springs Colorado with a couple of over-sized grown up toys to play with in the spring  like conditions of the Wasatch! Thanks to his wife for loaning her Specialized Fatboy to my wife, I then secured a Salsa Mukluk from the cool folks at Go-Ride sports. Conditions were mere guess work as this is a fairly new sport here and finding "daily ride" conditions is really hard. It only took about a mile of dry road before we got onto snow and even though we had a late start conditions were now great for the 4.7 inch tires with 6 psi.

The views are very impressive from the road, but we were hoping to find some firm corn which would allow for an almost endless choice of routes. Due to our late start, the higher we went the warmer the snow was feeling and the less our options became.

We stuck to the snowmobile tracks as these had the most stable base to keep us floating, but once we hit the highway summit we realized our tour was hitting it's return mode. The next day would change dramatically with lower temperatures and a lake effect[ storm.

Wow, what a day can do in the mountains! We actually made it to the summit of Guardsmen pass in the blizzard and decided the visibility was only getting worse, plus we were both ready to dry out,warm up and find some breakfast.

Meanwhile, back in the valley we had to get Blue out on at least one trail as the Wasatch canyons are all watersheds and do not allow dogs up any of them. The reliable Bonneville shoreline trail is always fun and even funnerer on a Fatty!

The air out there!

This is going to be a short post, because I had to test out some new product (good plug) www.buyc2.com before the air gets any worse in our beloved city of Salt Lake. As an outdoor adventure sports paradise you might find it odd that there is such a battle with something as simple as breathing while enjoying life outdoors. There are often many smaller contributors to poor air quality but sometimes there are large contributors too. I won't go into detail but (bad plug) www.stericycle.com has been independently tested to be a MAJOR player in the degradation of Salt Lake city's AQI (air quality index). It doesn't stop some of us, but it does slow many people down from enjoying the city they pay taxes in. Today is an orange day or USG (Unsafe for Sensitive Groups). If you are ever curious about your air just visit www.airnow.gov .

Perhaps I should follow the girl with the dog and run away from the brown cloud?

Yes, that is the downtown of SLC.

Night riding Salt Lake City Utah

We recently came into a little warming trend after some cooler Fall weather so I brought out the night light (helmet mount) and discovered a scenic little section of the BST above Salt Lake. These were my finds.

There are numerous spots like this to view the valley, but this one had all the elements I was looking for this evening, single track, sexy curves, mountainess views and city lights! I was hoping to get a little further across the trail but that was it for a 30 second exposure.

Without another rider I was hoping to create a shadow of myself with the glow of my head lamp somewhere in front of me. The sexy curve was real nice too. Funny thing happened while I was making these, the editor of CyclingUtah magazine was up there on a night ride himself and asked what I was doing? He asked if I could send him over a sample or two and perhaps he would run it in their POD (photo of the day). Never know who you'll meet on the trail.