Zen

After the race, and after we had recovered with some burgers, Jolene and I rode the nearby Zen trail. Chris and Kara Holley offered to show us the way, but they were with a fast group and we were too slow starting the climb - still it was helpful to see them in the distance and know we were headed in the right direction.

Zen starts with a climb up a double-track then turns into a rocky single-track. It skirts the edge of the cliffs and winds through boulders and rock formations. Plenty of technical stunts - some were too much for me, but I had plenty of fun on the easy ones and pushed myself to try some I didn't know if I could make. Here's Jolene riding between some rocks:



And a little while later, ducking under a rock roof:



The trail winds it's way through the rocks until it reaches the top of this inclined mesa-like formation. Here I am posing at the top:



The trail continues along the rim for a while like this:



Then it starts descending:



And crosses a patch of slickrock:





Then drops (steeply) into a gully. To continue on single-track we should have crossed the wash, but we were tired from the race and needed to get on the road, to get home at a decent hour, so we came out the wash and took a dirt road back to the car.

On the way home I got a text from Mark warning me that it was snowing big in Salt Lake Valley. Evidently the storm came in quicker than expected and we hit it around Beaver. The temperature dropped to 31 degrees and the wind was blowing then the snow started falling and it was a full-on blizzard. Since it was dark the view out the windshield looked like a starship going into warp, but with 10 times the number of stars. At times we had to slow down to 40 and even 30. The road was only wet at first, but then the snow started to stick - near Nephi there were a few inches on the road and it was nasty. We stopped in Nephi for a potty break and I chipped the ice off the headlights so I could see better. Ice had coated the van and the bikes looked like this:



But as we approached Santaquin it had hardly rained/snowed at all and the roads were just wet again, and even dry in central Utah Valley. Crazy weather for the drive home.