Wow! What a difference 10 days make.

When I last rode my bike on September 23rd it was in the afternoon, with SkiBikeJunkie, in very warm weather (the temperature was in the mid 80's). Today I did a similar ride, with SkiBikeJunkie, only the route was reversed (City Creek to Dry Creek) and the temperature was about 40 degrees cooler. What a difference 10 days makes!

However, given that fall in Utah is composed of extremes, and that the average temperature you see reported for October is just that - an average and not something that is normally experienced in real life - the fact that today's ride was abnormally cold wasn't surprising since the previous ride was abnormally hot. In fact, the average of 45 and 85 is 65, not coincidentally the average temperature for Salt Lake City in October.

Also, the fact that the mountains have received so much snow in the past week that some people have already completed their first backcountry tour of the 2009/2010 ski season means that my fall riding in the high country effectively ended before it could even begin. Which means that the fall season, at least as far as mountain biking above 8,000 feet is concerned, lasted just over 1 week this year.

And if you think that because of this abnormally cold weather the ski resorts will open early you'd be wrong, because again, fall in Utah is one of extremes. To balance out this string of extremely cold weather we'll probably be back in the 80's next week.