Spanker Crest

Steve, Rich and Ken joined me on Saturday for what I have decided will be an annual ride I've christened Spanker Crest. It was the absolute best mountain bike ride I've done hands down. I was a little nervous heading into the ride and felt like I might have some trouble keeping up with the group. Rich is an accomplished Iron Man, Steve destroyed all comers in the ICUP this year and Ken killed it in the Tour de Park City this summer. I did myself proud and by feeding well I was able to hang all day.

We met at the base of Millcreek at 9am and headed out around 9:30ish. The plan was to ride up and over Emigration to the base of the Mormon Pioneer trail, Pioneer trail over Big Mountain, down into East Canyon and over to Jeremy Ranch. Lunch stop at the Jeremy Store, cross the freeway, poach the private singletrack in Pinebrook and climb it up to Mid Mountain. Mid Mountain all the way across to Spiro, Powerline, Scotts Pass and finally Wasatch Crest trail back to Millcreek. My rough estimate for the ride was 60 miles. It ended up being 78 miles with almost 10k feet of climbing taking 10 hours start to finish.

What a sweet ride. The trails were all in perfect condition and the weather was amazing. The Pinebrook climb is lung searingly steep but the trail is buff and has very little traffic. Mid Mountain from Pinebrook to the Canyons can't be beat. Crest is in the best condition I've seen all year as were the Millcreek trails. The only negative to the whole ride was by the time we got to the top of the road at Millcreek at around 7pm the temperature had dropped to 47 degrees. I didn't have a jacket which made for an interesting descent down Millcreek.

My main goal for the ride was to feel human at the end. When I walked in the house around 7:30 Rhonda expected me to be a zombie, crawling around moaning for food as I've done many a time after big rides. Instead I was able to hang my bike up, put all my gear away and hop in the shower without a problem. During the ride I drank 128 oz's of my homemade energy drink, 64 oz of water, 4 gels, 2 bags of Cliff Shots, a bag of peanut butter pretzel's and a giant Pumpkin cookie. That's more sugar than I usually eat in an entire week but I burned every calorie of it plus some during that ride.

I'm taking reservations now for next years running of the greatest MTB ride in the Wasatch. Spanker Crest 2009.

**update** I estimated the climbing at 10k feet but according to Rich's Garmin is was actually over 13k feet.