Dirt Road Dodge

This afternoon I started getting a hankerin' for some dirt. So when I got home I went for a quick ride up in the Orem foothills to check out a trail I'd spotted on Google Earth.

I asked Adam about this trail and he said it was a steep old jeep trail that wasn't very good. I trust Adam's judgment, but I felt compelled to see it for myself.

I took the GPS to map it. Sadly I have this bad habit of forgetting the camera when I take the GPS, so no pictures. (Even more sadly, the batteries were low in the GPS and I didn't even get a good track.)

I biked up the road, passing a few other cyclist, then up Betty, then up the lower part of Crank. An isolated storm cloud came over and I got a nice sprinkling of rain - it felt nice and cool. Instead of going up the ridge on Crank, I went left (west) and across two small gullies. Form here I could see out over Orem and down the broad ridge I was to descend.

The trail was rough and rocky in spots, but overall not bad. It had a few steeps spots where I got back off the saddle.

Half way down I looked to the east and saw a brilliantly colored double rainbow that appeared to be quite near. One end was in the gully only a few hundred yards away and I was tempted to go look for the pot of gold (which I could use). Even though the trail was fun, I kept looking left to stare at the rainbow - it was stunning. Here's a photo my wife snapped from our home, but it doesn't come close to capturing the briliance:



There weren't a lot of forks, but for the few there were the Google Earth recon helped me know which way to go. And several features looked familiar from my snowshoe venture this winter. I descended the last little gully which had one particularly steep spot that I rolled through, letting the speed kick up, then braking harder to slow down upon reaching a less steep pitch. I dropped out right below the gun range.

Most biking excursions up into the foothills I go up the dirt service road and return on it. But this trail allowed me to bypass most of the service road. The road isn't awful, but single-track is better (well, actually it's an old jeep trail, but it's becoming just one track). Coming down Crank this will be a nice option, but most days I'll probably just take Frank or the new single track added to the end of Crank.

I took the streets back home, ate a steak dinner then showered off the mud splatters. That quick ride put a nice garnish on an otherwise mundane day.