Brian Head ride report

Today was my first time to a lift assisted place to down hill bike. And I've only had a dh bike for barely a month. I had talked to other people and was given good advice about how to start in the sport so I wasn't too worried about all of this. Excited rather.

I'm going off a small pages of notes, so please bear with my fragmented, non linear ride report.

I rolled into Cedar City with no hotel reservations thinking it would be easy in a small town. Wrong. Summer time and a big Shakespeare festival had the place packed. I had to go to almost 10 hotels before I found a room. It is about a 35 minute drive from downtown CC to the base of the resort. The scenery on the drive is breathtaking. No need to speed past it.

An all day lift ticket was $24. One lift services all the bike trails. The chair uses a simple hook to hold the bike. It takes more time to ride the lift to the top almost than to do a run. They will shut the chair down for lightning. They did this for almost 80 minutes. After being in SD for soo long, being on a chairlift in the rain, hearing thunder and seeing lightning was kinda spooky.

There are basically 4 black diamond/ double black diamond trails along with two wooded sections at the bottom with what they call 'free style elements', basically man built wooden features. There was no snow at all but bits of mud due to run off here and there, only bad in one place. Generally the trails had steep, techy, loose rock sections along with highspeed single track. Some of each trail was just out in the open and then always a little bit into the trees. A very good mixture and I felt a great way to experience what one resort calls an expert/black diamond run.

I did crash twice. Once trying to pass a kid off the trail and he moved off the trail to get out of my way where I was trying to pass him. Too hard on the front brake and I went down. I have a pretty well bruised up hip. You will not miss a rock if you hit the ground here. The other time was doing a natural wall ride at the top of Timberline and just not having the speed for the line I chose. I definitely learned to let go of the brakes and let body english and the bike do its work. And things were better when I did so.

I also experienced my first bad interpersonal thing while biking. Two adults with a group of kids on Timberline. In two different groups they were stopped on the trail in bad places, just standing there. I was able to slow down and not hit anyone but the guy I happened to be riding with didn't/couldn't slow down and clipped the bikes of one of the adults. Words ensued at the bottom but nothing more than that. Both had valid points. My guy's, 'don't stop on the trail morons' and their's, 'don't be going so fast you can't stop'. The reason the stopped in the confrontation group was to stare at a kids scratches from crashing. Anyways.... the adult calmed down and the kids just wanted our GoPro footage to show their friends what a crazy trail they were on.

Pics will probably be on FB. Tomorrow I drive to Denver. Mon, Tues, Wed and Thurs I will be riding at Winter Park, Keystone and Solvista. So you'll see separate reports for them as well. After that I'll be going to Trail Side Bike Park and Deer Valley in Park City Utah, so vids and such of that as well.

I hope to not be a beginner anymore when I am done with this trip. I did every trail and every feature in this park but two. And I feel I could have/should have done one of them. We will see.......