4 AM start was most excellent. Three of us headed out with the plan of pounding out 140 miles in some remote parts of the Wasatch Front.
Cool weather made for a clam start. Not long into it and we started to hit up some of the more "sketchy" sections.
2 hours later the sun is up and we are climbing like crazy. How about these numbers.....first 15 miles took 4 hours! Things slowly started to set in....err....140 miles in how long?
Top of the first major climb and we cross over to the opposite side of the canyon for, guess what....
Yep, more climbing. There was some riding, and a lot of hike-a-bike. The walking was killing our forward progress.
Finally, we got on to a gravel road for some recovery. A much, much, much welcome change of terrain. The road last for a while. It almost doubled our distance in half the time.
Off the road and into some rock'n single track.
The next series of photos shows what became the knife in our backs.....hiking!
Very steep....and big rocks. Some of these sections took 50 minutes or more to get up.
This picture is my favorite from the whole day. What little riding was done on the last leg was well worth the suffering.
Excellent views....
....and stuff you see in magazines.
More singletrack at the end of the day. Soon before this picture we decided to ride down and call it a day.
Final decent ended with a water crossing....
...and an elbow that looks like raw hamburger.
Ride Stats
36 of 140 miles completed.
9,000 ft. of climbing
9 hrs 22 min ride time
The day ended with a ride back into town. We were all pretty beat. We made it around 45ish miles in 10 or so hours. The course looked good on paper. But, the terrain was steep and slow going. Let's just call this year a test run. And I can bet the course will be redesigned. We figured while sitting at the end of the ride that to finish the 140 miles it will take 22-26 hours of non-stop riding. Full photo documentation here.
Time for OR.