Deer Creek South Fork Loop

This evening Ed and I left work and headed up American Fork Canyon for his inaugural ride on the trails. So far I've only learned one route: The standard blue "lollipop" as outlined on the Deer Creek South Fork trail description courtesy of Utah Mountain Biking. As always (this is my third ride on this route so far this year) the trails were fantastic, even with all the dust. Perhaps sensing our dislike for the abundance of soft dirt, small rocks and dust that layered the trails, the weather gods sent us our own personal thundercloud. As we finished the Deer Creek South Fork descent it started to rain and continued to rain until we reached the summit road. It never developed into a full scale downpour, but was definitely more than a sprinkle. We didn't see any lightening but heard the rumblings of thunder as the storm passed overhead. The moisture cut down on the dust but also made the rocks and roots quite slippery. As we jumped on Ridge 157 at the summit we took the intial descent fairly easy as it was still damp. By the time we reached Pine Hollow the trails were nice & fast. Speaking of which, Ed was ripping the downhill sections as if he'd been riding these trails all his life.

This is Ed in motion:



And this is Ed waiting for me to catch up:



Luckily for me Ed is racing the XTERRA this coming Saturday so he was taking it easy on all of the climbs. Unfortunately, while he said he was going to do the same on the downs, I had a hard time keeping him in sight! Maybe if I had a 6" travel bike I could shred faster. Well, probably not...