Thank You Park City For Saving Us From The Absolute Worst Flat Tires EVER!

The Rail Trail Runs in Valley Behind The Famous "PC"

Joe, Jill and their son Ely reside in the Salt Lake City metro area.  They drive a surprisingly clean (for having a young son) Toyota Sienna with a hitch mount bike rack.  I know, because my wife and I rode in the backseat with our two bikes with four flat tires bouncing in the rear view mirror.  They saved us from would have been in the worst case, a 15 mile walk in spandex and bike shoes on a gravel path in a cold remote valley, half of it in the dark.

It was our first full day on our 4^th or 5^th trip to Park City.  I’ve lost track of how many times we’ve taken a mountain bike vacation to PC, but it was Sunday, September 2nd, 2012.  Traditionally on our first ride, we like to take an easy ride so the altitude doesn’t kick us in the lungs.  The past two years we’ve taken the Rail Trail out past Round Valley and along I-80 toward Echo Reservoir.  Round trip it’s a 50 mile ride at a 2% grade, 25 downhill and 25 uphill.  The past two years we’ve always turned around early, worried about lack of daylight on the return.  This time we got out early in the afternoon, plenty of time to enjoy the day.

Full Moon Over Mountainside

We’re experience mountain bikers.  I’ve been riding, racing and vacationing with bikes for close to 18 years now.  Still, we’ve had our shares of cuts and bruises and mechanicals on vacation, stitches in Breckenridge, a couple more in Whistler.  I always pack a first aid kit, tubes, tools, pump, patches, sunscreen, a map, phone, cash, credit card, insurance card, extra clothes depending on the day, more than enough water, more than enough snacks.  With the Hydrapak and seat bag full, we rolled down through the valley. 

Side by side with our tires making a bobsled-esque noise on the downhill gravel, we took in the sights: some long legged Heron looking birds in the tall grass, sheep, llamas or alpaca, the rock formations and the most unique cows we’ve ever seen.  We called them Oreo cows.  The front and back ends were black, with a delicious looking white middle.  “Hey pretty cow!”  My wife shouted.  It was beautiful late Sunday afternoon.

We zipped around the gate at the entrance to Echo Reservoir.  There were no boats, no jet skis, no picnickers, weird for a Sunday.  There was no water.  It had dried up, save a 40 yard stretch being circled by some guys in 4 Wheel Drive trucks.  A lone jogger passed by and we exchanged hellos.  Then silence again.  Bummed, we sat on our top tubes and chatted about the drought.  I leaned over and picked a rock out of my front tire treads.

Pssssst.  The rock was a thorn!  I quickly spun my tire with the hole toward the ground so the sealant would seal up the leak.  Later we would learn it was a Goat Head thorn.  My tire was covered in them.  Both of my tires were covered in them.  All of our tires were covered in them.  “Leave them in.  We’ve got sealant, but we better head back!” 

How Many Can You Count?  Each Tiny Dot Is A Thorn Too

We were 25 miles from “home” at 5:30pm with literally hundreds of thorns in our tubeless tires.  Never in our 4 or 5 trips to Park City have we ever encountered thorns.  We’ve ridden nearly every trail from Mid Mountain to Flying Dog, ‘cept for the new Armstrong trail and last five miles of the rail trail to at Echo Reservoir.  It would be officially dark at 8pm.  The shadow in this deep valley would cross sooner.  Out loud, we did the math.  At 14mph, we could be back by 7ish.  That left us about an hour to deal with the flats if we had to, but the sealant was working at the moment.

Amazingly, we rolled 8 miles before both my tires became uncontrollable on the gravel.  I pulled out a CO2 and aired them both up.  2 miles later, her front went flat.  I pulled out another CO2.  Ssshhhhuuuuup!  It was full.  As I removed the chuck from the valve stem, the chuck stuck.  Sometimes that happens with the cold cartridges.  I pulled again.  My heart sank.  With the chuck, the valve stem had pulled through the metal hole in the rim.

I pulled the whole tire off and tried to get the valve stem back through.  Being an old wheel, it was done.  The rim had corroded a bit (maybe the sealant got to it) and now the hole was too big for the stem to seal.  We had to use a tube with a tire that was covered in at least 200 thorns.

In the area of my wife’s thumb print, she counted six.  Extrapolate that to a whole mountain bike tire and multiply by four.  Goat Heads are evil buggers, as sharp and long as a thumbtack.  An elementary school’s worth was stuck in our tires.  Sitting on the trail on either side of the tire, we went to work.  Yep.  One by one, finger by pricked finger.  I used a knife, she her fingernails.  In twenty minutes, we probably made it a third of the way through the thorns on her front tire.  With a sigh, I looked up the valley, a group of cyclists approached.

“Are you guys okay?  Do you need help?”  They asked as they slowly coasted by.  We all ask the questions when we see a cyclist by the side of a trail.  Sometimes we don’t expect to actually…uh…help.  “Yeah.  Yeah.  I think we do” Rachel piped up.  The couple and their son stopped.  We explained.  “Oh.  Those are Goat Heads.  You’re not going to fix that.”

I don’t recall when we introduced one another.  I do remember their bikes.  Funny how that works.  They had early 90’s “vintage” mountain bikes, one Fisher and one Ritchey, still with rigid forks, platform pedals and those big fat cantilever brake shoes.  Those bikes were the shit back in the day.  Jill asked my wife Rachel if she could snap a photo of her phone number on her phone.  It was decided that they would return to their van seven miles up the trail, pack up, and drive to meet us at the nearest freeway exit two miles away.  Jill would call when they got back to the van.  We parted ways with complete trust in strangers.

After a 20 minute walk, we sat on some concrete in a construction site in front of a Sinclair convenience store at the bottom of the exit ramp and waited.  I played around with some rebar as we chatted.  “How long do you think it will take for them to get here,” Rachel asked.  “I’m thinking 45 minutes to ride the 7 miles up hill, a few minutes to pack up and maybe 15-20 to get here.  It’s gonna be an hour at least.”

Surprisingly, only 15 minutes later, Jill and Ely rolled up to the Sinclair as well.  “Heeey!”  They said it was a little too far and too uphill for young Ely.  Joe was on his way with the van.  Here we were, in the middle of nowhere (to us) outside of Coalville, Utah making the best of a bad situation with two complete strangers.

What sticks out in my mind is that it was never awkward.  They were very personable, interesting people.  It was more than small talk.  We got to know each other a bit.  I never felt a cold shoulder, not even from Ely, an unbelievably patient young man.  Soon enough Joe arrived.  I helped him load the bikes.  We shared the backseat with Ely.  “Where are you staying,” Joe asked.  “If you don’t mind driving us to the Marriot Mountainside in Park City, that’d be great.”  It was no problem at all.  We talked about our careers and backgrounds and travels and soon enough we pulled into the driveway in about 25 minutes.

Every Little White Dot You See Is A Thorn

Joe and I pulled the bikes down.  We shook hands.  My wife offered $25 dollars for the ride, the gas, their generosity, the nice clean van, Ely’s patience.  They declined.  Jill said something like, “Joe rides all the time.  I can only hope that if he’s in a sticky situation, someone will help him out.” 

The next day after buying four new mountain bike tires (thank goodness for the 40% off End of Season Sale at Cole Sport) we went out for another ride.  On the way back, we stopped in White Pine Outfitters, probably our favorite shop.  As we paid for some socks or something, we looked down to see a sign scotch taped to the counter. 

“Do not ride the Rail Trail past Coalville.  It’s covered in Goat Head thorns.  You WILL need to buy TWO new tires.”

Joe, Jill and Ely rest assured, if you ever get into a spot of bother on a ride and ask for help our answer will always be yes.  What goes around comes around.  So, thank you for coming around with your kindness, patience and generosity.

Best Regards,

Joe in Cincinnati

#DeathMarch Planning Questions

Last Year Was A Blast-Story Here

For those that think they have a good route planned out for the Sub 9 Death March and are seemingly prepared, here are a few questions you should absolutely have an answer to before you clip in.

At the holeshot, are you turning left or right?

What about your teammate?

Are you sure that road marked on your map is an actual physical honest to goodness road?

Is that bridge physically crossable or a relic of an aged NASA Satellite photo?

What’s the elevation change between Camp and Hanner Cemetary?

How many valleys will you cross on your way to Lutes?

Are toe spikes a good idea or too much weight?

How are you going to wear toe spikes and shoe covers at the same time silly?

Have you every tried to read a map while riding a gravel road at 25 mph?


Shirley, you can't be serious?


Are you comfortable riding your bike under water?


Is there a compartment for a snorkel in your Hydrapak?

True or False:  Some of the gravel roads would be more stable under your wheels if they were paved 6 inches deep with marbles set in butter.

And, which roads are those?

Are you going up or down them?

If last year’s winning team from DRT spent 4 ½ Hours on their bikes and this year the promoters added a cemetery which is pretty dang far to the east which will no doubt extend saddle time, where and when do you plan on refilling your water?

Should you drink water from a cemetery well?

What time does the sun set?

Is your cell phone’s camera memory close to being full?

Do you know what happens to a paper map in your jersey pocket 5 hours into a ride?

Do you know what happens to the same map after riding through countless creeks?

Are the Garmin and Google maps of Hoosier National Forest as up to date as their map of 

New York City, or are they as old as the farm roads that once criss-crossed the area?

Have you seen the Sprint cell phone coverage map of the area?

So, you're certain your phone's mapping app will be functional?


By the way, have you ever climbed a cell phone tower?

You may not be afraid of heights, but are you may afraid of climbing a Fire Tower which feels like it has the same pieces and stability of a 6 year old’s erector set project?

True or False: Trailheads in Hoosier National Forest are marked with a nice big well painted signs and arrows like the tourist trail to Mt. Rushmore?

If you let the weeds in your driveway grow for 60 years, could you still call it a driveway?

Have you planned your route to Callahan cemetery on the map?

So, when you looked at the Google map you saw Callahan’s tombstones and an adjacent trail together?

You really don’t know where Callahan is, do you?

Multiple Choice: In the pouring rain, what is faster in and out of Callahan?  A horse trail  B) A fresh gravel road  C) A Hard Packed Gravel Road  D) Pavement E) We should really have a Plan B.

The Redemption of Riding Solo

Top Flats of Shadow Run

I like to think they were Cicadas.  No dis against crickets, but the head-filling sound of Cicadas fit the zen feel of a solo ride better.  I had no wheel to chase, nor any spinning hubs behind me.  After the battery died on my Ipod an hour into my solo ride at Versailles State Park in Indiana, I was bummed at the loss of my mountain biking soundtrack.  Then I realized, the woods have a soundtrack all their own.  It was me, the wind, the kayaker down below on the creek that feeds the lake and the Cricket-adas.

Riding well below donkey wheezing pace, I had time to listen closer and tune-in the harmonies of the bugs.  I could afford to peer over the edge of the Cliffside trail and check out the dead fallen trees bridging the ravine.  I filled up my phone’s memory bank with photos.  I thought to stop and snap a photo of the trail in the “v” of two trees, but the flow was too good.  At the next intersection, I smiled wiping a cobweb from my face.  I was the first rider of the day on the Grandview loop.

Deadfall on Cliffside

I love riding with friends and teammates, but here comes the but.  I enjoy the solo ride too.  I like to ride my pace of the day, stop when I want to stop, hammer when I feel punchy.  If you need a natural break, you pull over at the next big tree and don’t have to dig deep to claw back on the train.  With a song in my head, “Save Me San Francisco” by Train, I whistled and rode the flow of the Shadow Run loop.

Interesting Tree at the Time

I planned on two hours, but got back to my car 20 minutes early.  I wasn't ready for civilization yet.  I laced up my running shoes, tucked the car key under the leg of my bike shorts and headed back out to round off the time with a trail run.  The ground felt soft and springy under my steps.  Now traveling even slower, with my breath being the only self generated noise, I could hear the kids playing in the pool, the occasional car on the road far below my ridgeline trail and still, the chorus of cicadas.  While the small climbs were tougher on foot, that “v” in between the trees was just as fun to run through.

Back at my truck, I ran into a friend headed out for a solo ride of his own.  As he made a last tweak on his bike, I raved about my ride and run to Bill.  It was Sunday.  I think we were both at church.  A solo ride is always refreshing and redeeming for the soul.  

Asheville: Where Trails are Named and Maps are Numbered

WIN THE PRIME!  Enter the Tour De Rants p/b Ryders Eyewear and win the sunglasses of your choice from RydersEyewear.com!  Simply, comment on today’s post between now and Sunday July 10^th.  Ba bam!

With the Tour De France occasionally locking up on the internet TV in the workshop, I handed the mechanic at Backcountry Outdoors $11.95 for my DuPont State Forest Map.  Guess the price has gone up since it was declared an official IMBA Epic mountain bike ride.  It’s been a long time, maybe 3 years, since I’ve been to Asheville and Brevard, long enough for Backcountry Outdoors to change their sign and beautifully organize their sales floor, but I don’t recall ever paying for a map of North Carolina’s DuPont State Forest.  I almost thought they were free, grabbed one and walked out.  Wait.  Is that a price tag?  It is.  Seriously, I probably have three sweat soaked blurred DuPont Maps in a folder at home marked “Asheville-DON’T FORGET TO TAKE THESE MAPS STUPID,” which of course I forgot.  It was a last minute decision.  It sort of went like this.  My wife asked, “Wanna go to Asheville over the 4^th sweetie pie?”  In my deep sexy Barry White voice I replied, “Fo shizzle my Nizzle!” 

Immediately I started planning.  Yeah right.  This is my wife and I we’re talking about.  Most of our ride times end in “ish.”  Like 8 in the morning-ish, or more likely 10:30-ish.  We like to wing it.  Still, knowing we’d get in Saturday Afternoon and leave Monday afternoon, we did make some loose plans to make the most of Asheville, the unicycle and dirty bearded guy capitol of the world.  We’d ride near the hotel somewhere on Saturday and go out for dinner somewhere afterward.  With fireworks somewhere in Asheville sometime Sunday night, we planned to ride mountain bikes at DuPont sometime during the day.  On Monday morning we’d do whatever ride we didn’t do on Saturday, either mountain bike at Bent Creek or do a road ride somewhere on the Blue Ridge Parkway.

At the hotel computer, I printed off a black and white copy of the color map of Bent Creek.  Whoever wrote the Bent Creek Map must have been the same survey engineer that created the DuPont State Forest Map.  While accurate and up to date with closed areas (the trail passing under Bridal Veil at DuPont is now closed to bikes), they are not very user friendly on the bike.  The trails on the map are marked with numbers.  The trails on the dirt are marked with names on wooden signposts, no numbers.  So, if you’re not a rocket scientist, and say a dufus with a Bachelors degree in Broadcasting, you’ll find yourself looking like a cave man in the space shuttle at every trail intersection if you don’t pre-plan your route and or ride with someone who works at the aerospace division at GE. 

I thought I was being a genius with the Bent Creek map.  I wrote out a crib sheet of trail numbers, put it in a sandwich baggie and stuffed it under my shorts leg.  It read: Hardtimes Trailhead, Lt 664, cross road, 666, Rt 660, Lt Road, Rt 150…etc.  Brilliant!  I could read the sheet through the white leg panels of my new shorts.  It didn’t help.  In real life, there are no numbers on the signposts at either Bent Creek or DuPont.  So, rather than having a flowing steady ride, I found myself getting the map out of my Hydrapak Morro at every other intersection or face the certain doom of taking my wife down something gnarly.  Eventually, I just stuck the map in my shorts leg.  That way I could read it, check the number/name key and look a few turns ahead while riding easy sections.  We ended up riding Deer Lake, Wolf Branch, Ledford, Ingles Field Gap, Little Hickory, Sidehill and Explorer in 2-ish hours.  Regardless of the map hiccups, it was as beautiful as I remembered.  We snapped a photo of my wife’s Litespeed Pisgah in Pisgah and headed out for big noodles at Doc Chey’s.

(Leave a comment and win a pair of Ryders Eyewear sunglasses.  Woot!)

Video: How I Spent My Summer MTB Vacation in Park City

I had no idea until I climbed nearly 2000 feet up the Spiro Trail in Park City Utah on Saturday, September 11th, the Mid-Mountain Marathon would crowd the Mid-Mountain trail from Deer Valley to the Canyons Resort.  I planned on riding Mid-Mountain from the Spiro to the Canyons.  It is an "epic" ride, an IMBA epic in fact, a ride I kept in the back of my head throughout Cincinnati's hot and muggy summer.  I was bummed...for a few seconds.


When I got to the intersection of the Spiro and Mid-Mountain at 8:45am with frost on the ground and my breath visible in the air, I realized there was no way I could share the trail with the 100 or so runners.  I asked a cyclist from White Pine Outfitters, the best bike shop in PC in my opinion who was on the mountain side cheering for his running wife, what I should do.  He was riding a sweet XTR equipped Cannondale Scalpel.  Certainly he knew how to resurrect my ride.  


He recommended I continue up the mountain on the Powerline Trail to pretty little Shadow Lake, then take the flowing Keystone trail to Apex to the Steps, where I could intersect the Mid-Mountain again and head toward Deer Valley.  Aside from the nut buster baby head rock strewn climb up Powerline to 9000+ feet (where his advice to "just relax and climb" was dead-on), it did not disappoint.  With the vistas and sweet flowing trail of Keystone and the switchbacks of Apex and The Steps I couldn't help but pull out the cell-phone camera and capture the scenery.  On the way back to Main Street, I tossed in a Park City favorite, the Tour Des Suds as my descent from 8000 feet.  


Here's my video diary of the day.

In Heaven There Is No Clipless Pedals

…or spandex cycling shorts for that matter. I just returned from a week in Whistler, BC the home of the Nordic events of the 2010 Winter Olympics based in Vancouver. I have the Quatchi souvenir Olympic lunch box to prove it. We and maybe three other people were the only cyclists without platform pedals, baggy shorts and more suspension on our rental car than our bikes.

While expensive, Whistler is Heaven, not only in the sense of gorgeous freshwater mountain lakes surrounded by lush glaciated peaks fed by a network of great bike trails and paths, but also in the sense of pretty much any sport that that has ever graced the cover of Outside Magazine you can do in Whistler. Hiking, mountain climbing, bouldering, zip lining, eco-touring, kayaking, bungee jumping, canoeing, sky-gliding, horseback riding, ATVing, or skiing, you name it and you can do it in Whistler. While Breckenridge and Park City continue to draw more summer vacationers each time I visit, they are still only a notch above ghost town when compared to Whistler. The only difference between having a beer at the base of Whistler Mountain in September and January is the temperature and those coming down the hill in September have big bombing downhill bikes rather than ski’s and snowboards. The place was packed with people and bikes! However, I have a love-hate relationship with cycling in Whistler.

We love taking summer vacations to ski-areas more or less for the great cycling and off-peak rates. Whistler is a bit different than say a Breckenridge or a Park City. Whistler, at about 2100 feet above sea level, doesn’t have the altitude to make a fit person get a head rush climbing the stairs to the post office. If you want to travel from a low lying city like Cincinnati and go out for a five hour hike or ride or paddle in the mountains the minute you get off the plane, Whistler is the place no Sherpa or acclimatizing necessary. My big problem with Whistler is the mountain biking.

Yes. I have an issue with mountain biking in Whistler.

The issue is that the trails in Whistler are marked with easy, intermediate and expert signs when they should be marked with cartoon pictures of testicles: one small nut for easy and three huge ones for expert. I’m not talking about the downhill mountain bike park. When you put your bike up on a ski lift and are surrounded by people with full face helmets, body armor, and enough suspension to make a Hummer jealous, you know what you’re getting yourself into and you better have a big nut sack. Believe me, there were plenty of dudes wearing casts walking, hobbling or wheeling their chairs through Whistler Village to prove it. I’m talking about Whistler’s general single track trails around town, what you might call cross country trails. The Whistler Valley trail maps may try to deceive you with a variety of expert, intermediate (sign above says it all) and easy trails. There are really only two types of unpaved trails in Whistler: awkward rooty and rocky with varying degrees of drop offs or wood structures or silky smooth crushed gravel easy trails and fire roads.

Durango, Breckenridge, Park City, Pisgah, Tsali, you name it they’re all packed with what I’d call great cross country mountain bike trails. Trails that usually start out with a nice long climb and level out on some sort of ridgeline trail that traverses the mountain side. When I laid the Whistler map across the coffee table, I eyed the Intermediate (blue) Rainbow Sproat trail and a drip of drool plopped on the map. It appeared as I described above. However detailed, topo maps don’t show endless rock gardens, drop offs and the density of 4 inch tree roots per mile. While the double/single track climb was fine, when I got to the actual Rainbow Sproat Trail, it was an unrelenting exercise at maneuvering through the obstacles: rocks and roots and surprise drops. Don’t get me wrong, I did enjoy the challenge. I cleaned most of it on a sweet XT equipped rented Rocky Mountain Element from Summit Bikes. Even though the switchbacks were fun and the scenic payoff at Rainbow Falls was breathtaking, I really didn’t enjoy the riding itself.

I have daydreams about the Peaks Trail in Breckenridge and the Mid-Mountain Trail in Park City. Just like Whistler, the climbs are tough and so are the various drops, rocks and roots. Unlike Whistler, the technical sections of other mountain town trails are broken up between long stretches of flowing single track. Single track that makes you say woo-hoo as you whiz through hours and miles of forests and meadows. Whistler single track is all tough and technical. By the time I rode the intermediate ranked Rainbow Sproat, Cut Yer Bars, the tight single track at Long Lake Park and watching my wife wreck on a trail called Blueberry…I didn’t dare tackle any expert trails (photo of Comfotably Numb trail junction in Long Lake Park) without a bigger bike and more protective gear.

Whistler trails, more specifically the intermediate and expert ones, all require expert technical ability. The only discernable difference I could see between expert and intermediate trails was the size of the dropoffs or how high the wooden bridges were. Twenty meters into any intermediate trail and I soon realized why so many people were wearing body armor and baggy shorts, had platform pedals and their saddle lowered on trails outside of the ski lift area. That’s cool, if you know what you’re getting yourself into. So, now you know what you’re getting yourself into. There's no middle ground in Whistler. It's body armor or basically bike path.

Till I vacationed in Whistler, I never saw the need for more than 100mm of front suspension or to lower my saddle or wear body armor or to go with platform pedals. Although from time to time I’d prefer a full suspension XC bike, I’d take my Niner Air 9 hard tail to Breckenridge, Park City, Durango, Moab, Pisgah, Tsali or dark West Virginia single track in a heart beat. My Niner in Whistler would be like bringing a knife to a gunfight.

Whistler made me realize my favorite mountain biking combines the free flowing beauty of Whistler’s “easy” trails with the occasional challenge of Whistlers rocks, roots and drop-offs. It's just that In Whistler, you can't have both at the same time.