I know where the militia trains

Saturday I decided to do some exploring and ended up riding to the top of Lake Mountain, which is part of the range to the west of Utah Lake. The route begins on a dirt road that heads west from hwy. 68 (Redwood Road). The turnoff is about 17 miles south of Lehi Main, just look for the stop sign and that's the road you want to take.

Starting Point (note stop sign*):

*I point this out as there are many, many dirt roads running off into the foothills along HWY 68, but none of them have a stop sign like this one.

The first 5 miles is a good warm up on a well-maintained gravel/dirt road. It's mostly all uphill with one downhill, but the grade is never more than 5 or 6%. Then for the next 5 miles, the grade turns to a steady 7-8% with really no flats. The road also turns more rocky and uneven. Near the top, I ran into some patches of snow and some runoff, but it was manageable.

Here's the last bit before reaching the summit where there are various radio station towers.

It ended up being an 11 mile climb and 3,100 vertical ft. It's a good, long early-season climbing workout, perfect for spring when it's not scorching hot and for when you don't feel like doing laps on low elevation single track.

The view at the top was pretty rewarding. I had prepped a really cool panoramic photo that I created using Adobe Photoshop that I was hoping to share, but for some reason it was giving me an error when I tried to upload to blogger, so here's the best I could do:

The descent was fast and fun.

A few miles from my car, I looked ahead and saw about 20 "soldiers" alongside the road dressed in full camo, boots and carrying assualt rifles*. They even had a big flag flying in the wind and it wasn't the stars and stripes. As I approached, one of the yahoos was aiming his rifle directly accross the road in the direction of the area I was about to enter. I slowed down and waited until his buddy told him to put down his gun. I passed by and said, "hey.....what's up?" and then hurriedly picked up the pace.

*pretty sure these were airsoft guns as they had the orange tip on the barrel, but they sure looked real, like this one:

Different strokes for different folks. I'll ride my bike up a mountain in the middle of the desert and you can practice shooting plastic bb's at your buddies.

Commute on Dirt

Ride to Work

Today I tried something I hadn't done before and that was riding the mountain bike to work instead of the road bike. I live in N Lehi, so I drove to the start of the BST in Cedar Hills. The first several miles of the trail along the bench from Cedar Hills to Grove Creek and then to Battle Creek are all double track. There are quite a few branches off of the main road (mostly due to offroad vehicles tearing up the mountain) but as long as you're heading north/south it's easy to navigate. I saw probably over 100 deer along the way during this stretch. It's a nice, peaceful trail with minimal traffic (no motor vehicles of course). I think I'm going to bring my boys out to ride this portion of the trail as it's mostly rolling terrain with no exposure. It'll be a good way to expose them to riding the dirt.

After Battle Creek*, you climb some fairly steep, loose double track and then it turns to single track, then more climbing on single/double track and finally it's all single track the rest of the way to the shooting range.

*I wasn't going to mention this, but I crossed Battle Creek at the wrong spot, so I ended up having to cross the water while carrying my bike and unfortunately I slipped on a wet, icy rock and fell into the water up to my knees. It made for a cold rest of the ride.

Some trail between Battle and Dry near the high point.

In case you're wondering, this took me about an hour of ride time from Cedar Hills to 1600 N in Orem. Once I get the route dialed in, it'll be probably closer to 50 minutes.

Here's the GPS track:

Ride Home with a Detour

After work, I met Kanyon Kris at the shooting range. In the parking lot I saw this trailer that looks like it can carry 20 bikes. I like the design, just what were they thinking on the color?


We rode from the shooting range north past Dry on the BST and hit some side trails. We ran into Chris Holley and stopped and chatted about the awesomeness of the timp foothill trails. We all agreed we have something special in our own backyard.

As we continued on, Kris asked me how long I've been mountain biking and I confessed it's only been several months. He on the other hand has been doing this for 20 years now! I'm sure I could learn a thing or two from him.

As we finished up, I went my separate way north back to my car in Cedar Hills. What a great day of biking. The only thing I'm missing is a lunch ride!