In what might be one of the last rides of the year, Coby, Wade H. and myself did more of the mid mountain trail that I have ever done before, and might actually be the longest ride I have ridden to date.

take a look at the map.


View Mix Mountain To Red Pine Lodge in a larger map

and the stats

Of course, the elevation  has some blips in it, but its pretty telling, mostly in the fact that the last few miles were kind of a tease.

So, going back a little, let talk about how we ended up on mid mountain instead of the crest, which was the original plan.


Well, that about sums it up.  That's a pair of snowboards at the top of guardsman, yeah apparently is snowed enough to get the crazies out to build jumps.  I used to do that, but now I realize what a silly thing that was.

Anyway, so plan B, was to finish the drive down guardsmen pass into park city and start mid mountain from deer valley stein Erickson lodge.  I want to say, that driving gaurdsmen pass is amazing and I love it!  here is my drive coming from midway the day before.


yeah, what an amazing place we live in.

back to the story, as you can guess it was pretty cold (between 38-45 degrees) since it was snowing at 10,000, but moving down to 8000 and coming over into the park city side of the Wasatch made it bearable.


bundling up in knee/leg warmers and layers of clothing helped, and it was actually quite pleasant.

Now, the plan originally was to ride the crest to the milcreek pass and then ride into the canyons were a parked car was waiting where we would ride back up and get the car.  Since the change we brought the car to deer valley but the car was still waiting at the canyons which meant that we needed to either bomb down into park city via spiro like usual and ride all the way into town, or ride the additional distance to get to the car, we chose the latter.

I guess we didn't realize how long a ride that was going to be, it ended up being about 17 miles just to the red pine lodge at the canyons, and about another 4 miles down to the car.  because we were expecting a 13 mile ride and not a 21 mile ride, we didn't have the appropriate food to power us on, so by the time we got to red pine lodge, we were pretty spent.

Having to face the prospect of having to ride up and down and up another ridge as we were was unattractive.  Fortunately,  with a small amount of persuading including a playing of the "I don't want to get struck by lightning...again" card, she let us down the gondola on the "safety concern" provision.  Certainly not something anyone should count on, but we are very grateful for for exception on our behalf.

It sounds like we were in worse shape than we were and that this ride was a rough experience, but it really wasn't, it was amazing.   The trail was perfect, the scenery was amazing and the quite at times, was overwhelming.  The terrain change from resort to resort (deer valley, Park City, Canyons) was stark and very fun to see, Deer valley having the most even keel flow, Park City being a bit more exciting in elevation, but still silky smooth, and the canyons, a very different and very north shore like ride:  mossy rocks, challenging rocky riding and dense pine forests.  This is easily one of the best rides that exists, hands down.  The best part?  there is at least another 10 miles of it that we never got to!  So next year, it will be mine.


a view from deer valley.  Imagine all those yellow leaves on the trail, and riding though aspen groves at the same time...or wait for some of the footage from Coby's gopro [In player above or on YouTube HD]

even better?  Park city FINALLY has a few good cheap places to eat in the new mini mall near kimbal junction