mud is murder

We got a fun thunderstorm Saturday evening, rolling in with lots of lightning and a decent amount of rain.  The storm didn't last all that long before it moved off east but it left enough water behind that we were concerned about the state of Round Valley's trails for MTBing.  Mud is murder on trails.  We conscientiously checked the trail conditions website when we got up Sunday morning but here's where the system breaks down.  There's no time stamp on the conditions map so there's no way of knowing when it was last updated.  When we checked it last weekend, it said that Round Valley's trails were "variable" when in fact they were dry since it had been several days since it had rained.  When we checked this past Sunday, the report said Round Valley was dry when it had just rained the night before.

When we got out there, it was quickly evident that the trails weren't dry.  The double-track and jeep roads were soft-ish but rideable; the singletrack was very soft and muddy and while we could ride portions of it, we were hopping off and on our MTBs a lot to walk around the mud.  Not fun.  (Also: a big boo-hiss to the jerky persons who were out there riding through the mud and the puddles and tearing up the nice trails.)  We managed to do our regular loop all the way to riding up My Nemesis but from there we re-routed, staying on the double-track until we could get off the dirt near the Park City ice rink.

That's a trashcan behind me, not a 

lumpy backpack on my back

From there, we headed out towards the far end of the paved bike path, taking the newly installed tunnel under the highway to see where it led.  I had hoped it would bring us to some more MTB trails - no such luck, so we looped back along the frontage road until we were back at Quinn's Trailhead, and then continued back on the paved rail-trail.  We kept going past the truck, however, at H's suggestion that we ride all the way into Park City to see what was going on at the summer's first Park Silly.  What was going on was a full-on party as the closed-off streets were swarming with people and dogs.  We left our MTBs with the free bike valet (thanks, Cole Sports!) and walked up and down the street fair on a churro hunt (no luck).  A cover band was rocking ZZ Top tunes and the only booth with a longer line than the garnish-your-own-Bloody-Mary stand was the fruit-smoothie-in-a-hollowed-out-pineapple stand.  We didn't partake but both of those options looked delicious.  There was also a Maine lobster roll food truck, selling $22.00 lobster rolls (lobster overnighted from the wharfs in Portland, Maine) and real Maine "red snapper" hot dogs.  Awesome.

More pavement this weekend

After cruising the scene we retrieved our MTBs and rode back to the truck.  We ended up with 19.2 miles on the day, slightly less than our usual 20.8 mile loop, but still respectable given the ad-libbed route-finding we were doing.