Friday, August 22, 2008

Everybody's Doing It

Well, climbing that is. Especially Todd, who dropped the Nebo Loop twice this week: Once climbing from Payson and again climbing from Nephi. I've never tried the latter and need to give it a shot sometime. Once crazy idea I've had for a killer climbing ride up Nebo: Start in Payson, climb up and over to Nephi, refuel, reverse course and climb up and over to Payson. Both sides in a single day. Has anybody done this before?

Today I met JE and Matt for a ride to the top of American Fork Canyon and back. Being gluttons for punishment we climbed the north side of Suncrest on the way to Alpine. This was my first time up that particular beauty in 2008 and unfortunately I found it to be the same difficult, unrelenting, brute of a climb it was last year! After a quick stop at Chevron for a Coke and PayDay bar we began the climb up American Fork Canyon.

That climb is pure sweetness and thankfully the guys weren't looking to set any personal bests (well, since this was their first time up I suppose it actually was a pb) so I could enjoy the scenery. Unfortunately, JE had to be home by noon so he flipped around to start the descent just after the Timpooneke turn-off. Matt and I pressed on to the summit and as we climbed I tried talking him into extending the ride to Sundance and back.

Luckily (hindsight is always 20/20!) he declined my offer and, when he began to reconsider at the summit, I thought we'd better just head down. After a great descent - interrupted for a few minutes by a super slow RV we had to pass - we again stopped at the Chevron for another Coke (well, I had a coke since Matt hasn't consumed any soda for nearly 3 months!) and to fill our bottles with water. We set out and soon found ourselves fighting a stiff head/crosswind as we began the ascent up the south side of Suncrest. It was at this point that I really begain to appreciate our decision to scratch the trip to Sundance. What should have been a relatively easy climb quickly turned into something a bit more difficult than I wanted at that stage in the ride. However, the climb isn't long and we soon found ourselves cruising down to Draper. 20 minutes later we were back at the house, sipping a V-8 on ice in the shade.

Since JE's Garmin 305 had dead batteries, here are the stats as recorded by my bike computer and Suunto T6:

Ride time: 4:40
Distance: 61 miles
Elevation Gained: 6066 feet

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I did the Suncrest climb again, too, and the wind was nasty.

Throw in the 18 extra miles from my house to yours and I had a pretty good day in the saddle and basically got all three LOTOJA climbs in.

I pulled into the driveway at 12:01.

Eat Sleep MTB said...

Up AF, Down to Aspen Grove, then down to Crystal, and back home, is my favorite, I call it the "Best of the Alpine Loop".

As for Payson to Nephi and back over, lets do it Monday Morning (first hour in the dark). You in?

UtRider said...

Todd - No luck for me on Monday due to a standing managers meeting at 10 am. How about this: You go hammer 3-4 hours on both Monday and Tuesday and then we'll ride it together on Wednesday!

Eat Sleep MTB said...

Sounds like a plan. Shoot me an email with your Wednesday start time.

You're a manager? I thought you were a coder like me. Sellout!