Utah Trip Day 1 - Gooseberry Mesa

After a 5-6 hour drive the night before and some confusion about where our hotel was, we woke up in St George on Friday morning to a beautiful day and beautiful scenery. Grabbed some breakfast at the hotel and loaded up the bikes. A quick stop at Over the Edge sports in Hurricane to get directions and we were on our way to ride Gooseberry Mesa. This is a must ride "classic" trail that we'd heard of through multiple friends and the interweb. We started out on SlickRock 101 because Lindsay had never been ridden on slickrock before. This is a pretty fun little trail that gets you used to what the terrain is going to feel like under your bike. Then we moved on to South Rim (after a short detour on cattle grate took us right back to the truck). I know, in retrospect, taking a beginner on the black diamond trail at Gooseberry right away when she's never seen slickrock before may not have been the best idea, but hey, we're challenging her to become a better rider. She rocked that trail too, I'm sure she was a little frustrated at times, but all in all I was very impressed.

In fact, Lindsay wasn't the one who had the worst fall of the day. That was definitely me. Trying to follow Russell over a little dip in the slickrock, I did an unsuccessful manual, pogo sticked my fork and went flying over the bars. Apparently this looked pretty bad. I thought I was going to be pretty hurt but after a quick assessment of all my body parts, I discovered I'd escaped with little more than a couple of bruises on my elbow. Shortly after this, Lindsay and I, feeling tired and a little sketched out respectively, ditched Russell and took Hidden Canyon back across to the fire road. I liked this trail a lot. A little less slick rock and a little more fast flowy. Not that I mind slickrock, but after my fall, I was not feeling the love so much. We made it to the fire road finally and Lindsay rode back to the truck while I rode up the fire road to try to find Russell at the point. Little did I know that speedy guy was already back at the truck waiting. Oops!! I rode out to the point, was sufficiently amazed by the view, had a snack, and turned around and rode Yellow and North Rim back to the truck.

View from the point

I was happy to finish up on these trails because I managed to get a little confidence back and made it up some slickrocky climbs that had been scaring me earlier in the day. Second fall of the day was when I got back to the fire road. Apparently somewhere along the trail, my shoe had lost a screw and my cleat turned sideways, attaching my foot pretty tightly to my pedal. I stopped to decide which way to go, and just fell over like a rookie. Anyway, I twisted my cleat the right way around and got back on my bike and pedalled back to the truck where I found Russell and Lindsay who thought I had fallen off a cliff and were just about to send out a rescue mission for me. Again, OOPS! All in all a great ride though. Another quick stop at the bike shop and some Mexican food and we were off on our way to Park City.