Lost the Edge

It seems like it has been a long time since I have been mountain biking. This week I have been back on the trail, but it is full of goathead weeds. When I was a kid we called these puncture weeds. Juan hid a shovel by the trail so we could use it for trail maintenance. So I have been using it to get rid of the goatheads. The trail also has gotten some real deep gavel spots. So today I picked up the shovel and carried up the trail to the gravel spots.

I guess I carried the shovel across the Edge and broke the screen. Next time I am leaving the gravel where it is.

The other strange thing is that the shovel made the Edge think every bump was a big up and down. This made it think I climbed nearly 6,000 feet in 3.29 miles.

Trail Closed

I guess our trips up Slate Canyon have come to an end, at least for some time. They are replacing the water pipe that goes down the canyon, and until they finish the trail is closed.

As I was enjoying the trip down the tree shaded trail I was thinking how much I missed this trail even though it had only been a week since I last rode it. Hopefully it doesn't take too many months to complete the work and re-open the trail. I sure will miss it. Here is the GPS log of the last ride up the canyon.

Large Rattle Snake

They haven't started the construction in Slate Canyon yet so we have gone up it the last three days. At the top of the trail today I found a large Rattle Snake. It was hard to count the rattles on his tail seeing as I didn't want to get too close but it was somewhere between 8 and 12. I guess he never felt to intimidated because even though he coiled up he never shook his rattles at us.

I was thinking I need to start taking my camera with me again so I would have new images for the blog, but then I forgot to get it in the rush to get out the door this morning. So today's image is from a ride back in April. We are going to go back to this spot tomorrow. There won't be near as much snow on the mountain but a lot more green on the trees.

The neglected blog

Maybe I should rename this the neglected blog. However I have been riding a lot and keeping track of my rides using Motion Based and ActiveBody.

I am seriously considering doing the Brian Head Epic 100 again this year. I want to be able to beat the 11 hour mark. Beating the 9 hour mark would be great too but I have to be reasonable.

Last week my rebound cartridge on my Platinum Black fork was broken so I ended up riding my road bike most of the week. I was surprised at how my sore my legs felt after doing a 24 mile ride at about 20 mph. So I rode hard last week to try build more constant spinning endurance. I am thinking mixing in more of these road rides with the mountain bike rides will help me get a faster time at Brian Head.

Tubeless Burp

Max 37.8 Avs 7.9 Dst 9.37 Tm 1:10:49 Alt^ 2369

My tire pressure was getting low in both the front and rear. Given that I am running tubeless now I thought I would just go with it and see if it helped during the climbing. I didn't seem to, however I think the low tire pressure contributed to the burp I got part way up the canyon. Fortunately I only lost most of my air but the bead resealed. It was a lot easier to just add more air to the tire than a pinch flat would have been.

I was going to get a nice picture of my bike under a tree with the blossoms falling all around like snow, but I didn't have a memory card in the camera so you get this picture from my office instead. You can see Slate Canyon on the right, then Slide Canyon and Left of center is Timp.