Mountain Bike Miles

My fancy new mountain bike has not been sitting idle despite all of the miles that I've been racking up on my road bike lately. Yesterday morning I rode a 30 mile loop from Diamond Fork canyon up and over the mountains into Hobble Creek canyon and then turned around and rode back to Diamond Fork.

The ride was interesting in that it incorporated 3 shorter rides or trails that Rosey and I had attempted previously in the year...

A couple of months ago we rode from Diamond Fork about 7 or 8 miles up the trail to Mollie's Nipple (I swear that's the official name of the geological formation). We speculated that if we continued on that trail that it would continue on into Hobble Creek but neither of us had the energy or water to continue on that day.

The second stretch of trail we happened upon while hiking with Rosey's stepmom Karen in March. We started at Sawmill Hollow in Diamond Fork canyon and ended up hiking to a dirt road in the middle of the mountains. At that time the whole area was still largely covered in snow. I had no idea that the dirt road that we hiked on was actually going to be the same road that mountain bike trail turned into. It was kind of neat to see the same area again without all of the snow 4 months later.

The final stretch of trail was a ride that we did a couple of months back. We had planned on riding from Hobble Creek to Diamond Fork over the dirt road. Unfortunately we were only about to make it a couple of miles before we ran into impassable snow on the road. Ironically, we stopped on the road where there was a 'T' in the road with another trail. We were curious where that trail went but figured that we would have to wait until the snow melted until we found out.

Well it turns out that trail connected to the hike that we had done earlier and then eventually to the same mountain bike trail that we had attempted in Diamond Fork. It was kind of fun to ride all three sections yesterday without even realizing that I was going to be seeing all of these familiar places.

The irony of the ride was that I really hadn't planned on doing it as a 'out and back' ride. I was going to ride from Diamond Fork to Hobble Creek and then come down Hobble Creek canyon and have Rosey pick me up with the car. I was worried that it would be too long of a ride otherwise.

Well, it turns out that the ride from Diamond Fork to Hobble Creek was actually shorter than I had imagined. It was 14.6 miles from where I had parked my car in Diamond Fork to where the pavement begins in Hobble Creek. As I reached the pavement, I thought to myself, "Hmm, I could continue down the pavement and get home early OR I could turn around and just ride back over the mountain to my car. A peak at my elevation profile will tell you which option I took :)

I took a different route on the ride back. I stayed on the main dirt road that connected the two canyons. It was actually a fairly easy ride compared to the ride out. In fact, the last 8 miles of the ride were 'cheating' miles. The dirt road ended in Diamond Fork and I coasted down 8 miles of pavement back to my car.